TBS creates an image for the city of Zurich: employees as brand ambassadors
After a fundamental overhaul of its brand image, the city of Zurich presents itself with a new image. Christina Stücheli, City Council Information Officer, and Beat Aeschlimann from the Zurich agency TBS talk in an interview about how the new appearance came about through co-creation.
– January 26, 2022
The process of further developing the City of Zurich’s image began in October 2019, and the new image has been fully rolled out and in use since 2021. Despite the variety of city information, services and products, a clear recognizability is achieved and the city is perceived as citizen-oriented and modern.
Christina Stücheli, representative of the commissioning city, and Beat Aeschlimann, project manager for TBS, are there Werbewoche.ch talked about the implementation.
advertising week.ch: Christina Stücheli, what is the task?
Christina Stuecheli: We aim to communicate at eye level, to make a modern, active role of the administration visible and tangible for residents and visitors to the city. In addition, an identity should be created that IS independent, captures the character of Zurich and does justice to the city in its diversity.
Keyword diversity – was that also a challenge?
Stuffed: Definitely. It’s about reconciling the most diverse communication needs and the actual messages of the city. One administration and around 50 offices and specialist departments, hundreds of topics and the target groups. We wanted to reduce complexity because the city has countless topics, channels and dialogue groups. So it was our goal to create consistency and unity while at the same time providing possible diversity.
Beat Aeschlimann, how did you tackle this task as an agency?
Beat Aeschlimann: About co-creation, because a brand thrives on its brand ambassadors and is carried by them to the outside world – in communication as well as in behavior. A living identity was the maxim for us from the beginning when implementing this mammoth project. This requires a process-based approach that first collects all needs and then manages to reconcile them all. We were able to show this approach, which was probably also the decisive factor in our being chosen as the agency partner for this job.
How was this specifically addressed?
Äschlimann: The kick-off was an active onboarding of those significantly involved in communication. The requirements of the various stakeholders were collected and actively integrated into the process and the development of the solution. In walk-in labs, the future appearance of the city was defined together with interested parties from various departments and positions. Through projects with individual departments, we have thoroughly tested a wide variety of applications, learned a lot and optimized them.
What were the learnings?
Äschlimann: During the process, we quickly realized that the system shouldn’t be too rigid. The design has to work just as well for a broad information campaign as it does for a ballot booklet or a mobility study, for a very specific info flyer as well as for the city’s very precise website with all its online services and its wealth of information. For topics as diverse as old age care, voting or the city as an employer.
How then was this applied?
Stuffed: Finally, during the launch, training and an accompanying rollout ensured that identity was properly anchored and lived. This was the starting signal to motivate all participants and co-creators, according to the motto: “You all can now help shape the new city of Zurich!”
to die Implementation phase started a good year ago – how does the new CD work in everyday life?
Stuffed: The new CD should also be understood as a starting point and opportunity to question communicative activities and to design them from scratch. The needs of the recipients will be in the foreground in the future: what we want to say, achieve and solve. These goals define the content of the communication. A good example of this is the voting information: The new design has certainly made it more attractive and clearer, but at the same time it has been fundamentally revised conceptually, thus creating more orientation and bringing the relevant information from the voters’ point of view to the point even more quickly.
Has this approach already borne fruit?
Stuffed: Clearly. For example with the Corona campaign, which was briefed, developed, produced and posted at 1,500 poster sites in less than 72 hours. It became the key visual of Corona, so to speak – also in the media. In addition, the urban campaigns are now much more uniform, so the sender is clearly recognizable. The city of Zurich is finally becoming as visible in public space as it is in everyday life: the city makes sure that people are doing well.
What are you particularly proud of?
Stuffed: We are delighted with the relatively quick and smooth introduction within 18 months – and with the great commitment of everyone involved.
Äschlimann: That we managed to convince the well-established, visible communication departments of the city of our approach. Some then fundamentally reviewed their activities, redefined their range of instruments and implemented them in the CD – or they are in the process of doing so.
Stuffed: Of course, there are also organizational units that have fewer resources. The new appearance then helps all the more to communicate more professionally. The CD and the templates support you in implementing your content efficiently, strikingly and appealingly to the outside world.
Äschlimann: We are pleased about the positive feedback from users – from those responsible for communication to the designers and the city council, i.e. on all levels. And of course also praise directly from the population.
Stuffed: Now we are proud of the strong recognition: a face and a voice that suits us as Zurich. We even quickly found imitators, the new appearance is so striking.
The new CD manual is publicly available Stadt-zuerich.ch/cd accessible.
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