Evolution not revolution 

As a global organisation with over 6,000 employees, can you describe the main challenges for Logicalis to developing and delivering consistent brand messaging?

Logicalis grew up as a family of families. The business has a history of acquisitions – indeed, it was how the company was created. Acquiring capabilities, skills and footprint meant we had a lot of different operations in different market segments, different partners, different levels of maturity and different layers of expertise, if you will. In a connected world, businesses just cannot operate like that. Clients are global; they will speak to each other about you and share their experiences – good and bad – of you online. So our challenge was to bring consistency of approach to all areas of our business and get a unified set of messages about who we are into the world. That was not easy because each region, sometimes each country within a region, was trying to create their own history from a marketing perspective, and not necessarily aligned with the existing brand platform. But with global partners and clients, we cannot present ourselves as five or so different Logicalises anymore. 

How has the Logicalis marketing team helped bring things together across regions? 

Given our history of growing by acquisition, it took something of a cultural shift for us to get there. Luckily, marketing was always part of the Logicalis Group team so we were well-positioned to help bring consistency to our messaging, although for a long time there was a misperception that marketing was all about events, giveaways, the fun part of things and less about a strategic discipline. That’s all changed now, though. We’re supporting the company at a fundamental level and to do that, we have had to immerse ourselves in the drivers of the business so that we can align our thoughts and activities with its needs.

What do you think is the best way to ‘land’ or embed ‘Architects of Change’ within the wider Logicalis team?

To bring the ‘Architects of Change’ brand idea to life, we need to engage our entire team. I like the idea of people owning that space and feeling a part of the organisation, no matter what their role. Our job in marketing and as members of senior management is to communicate what ‘Architects of Change’ means, what behaviours it embodies and how it differentiates us from the competition. I like the expression, ‘Walk the talk’. If senior management don’t walk the talk, why should anyone else follow? So we need to be ‘Architects of Change’ in action and be the first to embrace our own brand message. 

How will more clearly articulating your brand benefit the company?

We are, metaphorically, architects – and good architects help clients to achieve their vision. I sit down with you, understand your needs, and I put my expertise, my resources and all my knowledge, into helping you fulfil your needs. In a nutshell, that’s the type of experience that I want our customers to have and that our brand promise offers. It’s not that we are going to create a bespoke product for each customer, but we are going to put all of our knowledge and experience into meeting each customer’s needs – we will be their ‘Architects of Change’. Now that our proposition is stronger, our customers have clarity about what we can do for them. 

Which brand component (purpose, proposition, behaviours or personality) do you think will drive most change within Logicalis? 

There is not one component that is more important than any other, they are completely interrelated. If I have this purpose, then this is how I am going to position my actions, and if this is the position I am adopting, how will I behave? And if I behave that way, it’s because I am able to share the personalities that we are promoting internally. Do you see what I mean? It’s all about taking a holistic view.

So, looking back over what we’ve done so far with the project, what has been your favourite part?

I loved all the interviews. It was great how you combined all that data from so many people, so many different personalities, so many regions and cultures and expressed it as actionable items or insights. It even brought to light points I would never have imagined being of significance. I’ve been through other projects like this before but used a very ‘inside-out’ perspective and we missed some of what key stakeholders thought about us. When I look back, we came up with a value proposition that was too ‘intellectual’. People couldn’t relate to it. It was how we evaluated ourselves rather than a true reflection of the business. Having the opportunity to listen to key external stakeholders and the diversity of opinions makes a hell of a difference. We took account of customer comment and criticism and that helped, too. If it’s good in life to have at least one candid friend whose opinion you value, it’s good in business to canvass far and wide for what customers think about you.

What excites you most about ‘Architects of Change’? What do you think it can really do for Logicalis as a business?

What I love saying is, “We’re going to have ‘Architects of Change’ in action.” I don’t want it to be just a slogan on a website. We have a great chance of metamorphosing as a business into our own brand promise, of quite literally becoming ‘Architects of Change’. I’m really excited about this. And because our regional CEOs understood and bought into the idea, the marketing teams are a part of the discussion and we have a lot of ambassadors and a lot of advocates that will help us make this a sustainable, competitive advantage. I cannot wait to hear the stories of how we are promoting ‘Architects of Change’ in our business and to put them up on our website. How we translate ‘Architects of Change’ into innovative solutions, innovative processes, innovative ways of looking to solve problems – that’s the thing that I feel most excited about. How we can be more innovative, how we can have a whole organisation worldwide behaving like ‘Architects of Change’. We have the right attitude. And yes, at the end of the day, it’s all about the attitude. 

The Luminous view

Logicalis knew they had something good with the phrase ‘Architects of Change,’ but they didn’t really know how to explain it. So they took the bold step of giving the idea greater context, by defining their brand platform in its entirety. As we recommend to all of our clients, they went about this organically, asking Luminous to unearth exactly what ‘Architects of Change’ meant to a comprehensive cross section of employees so that they could articulate the authentic view, rather than impose an ‘intellectual’, but artificial, definition. As Renata Randi explains, Logicalis now has a brand that speaks to everyone equally within the organisation while carrying its promise highly effectively to both existing and potential clients.