Case study BHW
BHW is a German organization that supports people with physical and mental challenges to help them live a full life. Located in the German state of Hessia, they have several institutions that integrate and support their clients.
Challenge
BHW acknowledged that their brand name (Support Agency for Impaired People) is not acceptable in a modern society that no longer wishes to stigmatize humans with challenges. GCVB was asked to support them on a re-branding project that will make the brand even more accessible.
Approach
GCVB set up a re-branding process that included stakeholder and competitor research, and conducted a survey among stakeholders that have real interest in the subject.
- The first step in the process was to map the market, in the specific region our client offers their services. How do competitors market their services, which catch- and keywords do they use in their company name? And how effective are they in terms of search volume?
- Keeping in mind the specific positioning of our client, we then searched for alternative catch- and keywords that could potentially have a similar effect on stakeholders that would conduct search engine inquiries.
- In the creative phase, we invented new names that were based on our insights from the previous steps.
- In the final step, we asked stakeholders with a true interest in improving the lives of challenged people, which of the proposed corporate names (and logos) they would prefer.
Results
In the end, BHW didn’t choose any of our suggestions. Despite a clear tendency to favor one of our suggestions initially, in a second internal review, they found that it could be perceived as being too close to one of their competitors. Instead, they used our approach to identify, in another internal project, similar names and chose a new corporate name. Was our work successful?