El País Brand
Architecture
Creating a strong brand for El País without forgetting its historical importance by working on a recognizable identity and simple usability. We wanted to portray El País’ online TV channel as a window to the world thanks to its quality video content.
CAPABILITIES
Business Design
Research & Analysis
Positioning
Brand Architecture
Product Roadmap
Visual Identity
BRIEF
El País is the most prestigious communication and media company in the Spanish language. Established in 1976 in Madrid, it is a conglomerate of brands, services, and companies with enormous power of influence, both in Spain and Latin America.
The project carried out was based on the need to organize their extensive portfolio of brands, seeking an ease of identification via the visual codes to ensure coherence across them. On the other hand, an exhaustive project was undertaken to analyse the different content clusters which are configured across different business units.
The challenge was enormous as there are around 50 brands of products and services associated with the El País brands. The objective of the project, beyond organizing the product portfolio, was to reinforce the marketing and commercial synergies and the visibility of the company.
Sharing
the concept
STRATEGY
The project was planned with an analysis phase that included researching the consumption habits of readers, the definition of target audiences, the performance of each product, and a series of interviews and workshops with the group’s management team. This phase was complemented by a study of international media such as the Washington Post, Le Monde, and The Guardian, as well as new players from outside the world of news such as Vice and Netflix. This analysis looked at their brand architectures and business models, including monetization, paywalls, video, and strategic priorities.
BRAND ARCHITECTURE
The brand architecture took the form of a new ecosystem of orbits, where the products closest to the center are more linked to the core of the group (news and current affairs) and those furthest away are products and services more focussed on lasting content, sometimes developed by other companies as a partnership model. This system also defines the group’s services (employment, online store, subscriptions, etc.) and how they are related to each product.
The project also involved the distinction between thematic segmentation (Culture, Sports, Economy, etc.), products (Tentaciones, Babelia, Retina, etc.), and services (Employment, Loyalty Programmes, Ecommerce, etc.). The treatment of each brand and the type of content produced were also clearly defined, as well as the relationship between editorial content and a connection with ecommerce efforts. The possibilities when communicating externally as the El País brand were also defined to promote a link back to it.
We also conducted an in-depth analysis of each product and thematic area, where strategic recommendations were made. These included suggestions such as the promotion of “Culture” due to its prestige and its potential growth in Latin America, transferring “Retina” to the Business area to represent everything that the new economy envelops, and recommending that “Tentaciones” become a solely digital product, discontinuing the printed version.
The outcome consisted of a new brand architecture and a visual identity system to organise the entire ecosystem of products and services.