Alchemy

"Johannes crafted a brand story and strategy that stimulates opportunity and energy for our market while feeling familiar and approachable to decades old partners. We cannot wait to continue to grow into this brand for years to come!"

Challenge

O’Donnell Learn was a leading learning design company, with a team of over 150 teaching & learning experts, multimedia specialists, researchers and project managers dedicated to improving the experience for higher ed and workforce educators and learners.

Prior to meeting us, O’Donnell team had already conducted their own research to better understand the shifting needs of modern educators.

They had learned that the biggest problem for academic leaders at their partner institutions is the need –with limited resources– to empower faculty, to support their needs as they strive to deliver the learning experience their student’s demand. Based on this insight, they evolved their business, embraced a new business model, started to develop a new suite of technology enhanced offerings to architect solutions, and felt they also needed a rearticulation of their corporate strategy, a new branding strategy, clear branding architecture, a new name and identity to properly reflect the evolution of their business.

Process

Based on in-depth interviews with internal as well as external stakeholders, own desk-research and rigorous analysis of O’Donnell’s own research and materials, we started to sharpen the future business strategy of the company.

While the direction was clear, what was first needed was a different branding architecture to better align the offering with its different audiences. After reviewing the portfolio and discussing several options to design the future branding architecture, the team decided to create a holding company (Nectar Inc.) with target audience specific branded business units (Alchemy) as well as a joint underlying technology brand (Curie).

We went on to articulate a clear purpose, vision and mission for the holding company, to inspire employees and convince investors of the relevance and attractiveness of where the business was going.

The redefined purpose: 'Foster empathy and compassion in education'

But we did not stop there. Next was the development of a brand platform for the, at that point still to be named, educator focused side of the business. Building on insight that limited time is the common struggle among all educators and after exploring two potential paths, the team focused on a final direction, titled: 'The educator time machine.' The value proposition of ‘It is time to create time’ as well as a clearly articulated brand personality guide the future development of the brand.

Result

The newly articulated strategic direction and architecture helped to fundamentally transform the stakeholders view on the business – now emerging as a true platform company. The strategy served as part of a briefing to create a new name and identity: While we continued to advise throughout the process, both, the name and identity, were developed together with other creative and strategic partners. Alchemy is the result. The new strategy, name and identity were launched in April 2023 and have received tremendous feedback from employees and customers alike – ready to power the next chapter of a great company.