CEDES: Positioning an evolving company to flourish in its next era

  • The situation

    CEDES was an organization undergoing a transformation that was held back by their branding, had outgrown their product specific tagline “Sensor Pioneers,” and felt rudderless without a clear brand purpose. 

  • My role

    Reposition the brand and help it find its purpose, strengthening it for the future. 

    Conduct internal and customer interviews to provide a fresh perspective via customer and market insights to start the project from an informed place.

    From there, I led the CEDES team in developing a new brand positioning, mission statement, and values statements that accurately reflect the company's identity and goals.

  • The result

    CEDES gained not only a new tagline, but a unified perspective of their own brand and a compelling way to speak about their brand to differentiate them in crowded markets. CEDES walked away from the process with renewed confidence in their brand and a vision and roadmap for their future communications.

    I also collaborated with their marketing team to craft a new tagline and align the brand voice with the new understanding of their brand.

The process

Internal stakeholder interviews across various areas and levels

To understand deeply who CEDES was as a company and what ideas they align on to understand the common threads that run through the organization.

Customer interviews
across markets

To understand how customers and the general market see CEDES in reality.

Competitive landscape analysis

To understand how competitors position themselves in the market in order to find a unique positioning for CEDES.

Brand Purpose
workshop

To be able to communicate internally and externally in a way that is aligned with CEDES mission and values and conveys the value CEDES provides.

Observed deeply ingrained, yet overlooked, industry tropes to avoid:

”from humble begginnings” to global …

CEDES: “From those humble beginnings, it took the company less than a decade to become a global leader in elevator sensor technology.”
P+F: “From our humble beginnings, we have progressed to become a leading manufacturer in sensor technology, intrinsic safety, and explosion protection equipment.”

TELCO: “Telco has come a long way since its humble beginnings, but during all those years we have never lost focus of the core competences that have made Telco a success.”

Banner Engineering: “Banner Engineering began as a small engineering firm [...] Today, Banner Engineering is a globally recognized leader in the field of industrial automation”

The industry was full of a lot of sameness and many competitors were all telling the same “brand story,” CEDES included.

Identified where customer and employee perceptions align and collide

While customers bemoan CEDES’s slower speed in product development, they credit CEDES's service response time and value CEDES’s reliability because they, too, are cautious.

Align

CEDES’s deep understanding of the industry and applications means they anticipate and mitigate problems.

Align

CEDES products are considered reliable and of high quality

Align

CEDES has innovative and new ways thinking and ways of working, but slow delivery speed

Collide

While many CEDES employees are proud of their Swissness, it is inconsequential or double-edged sword to customers.

Innovation isn’t necessarily the right message in an
industries that proceed with caution

Another industry trope, “innovation,” became a meaningless buzzword that also signaled higher costs and unnecessary changes to customers.

Their customers, mainly in the elevator and escalator industries, balance “innovation” with costs, risk assessment, and conservative industries.

Their reality: Quick to respond, slower to deliver, but ultimately very reliable

When CEDES does something, they do it the right way, not the fast way. They are forward-thinking, but they proceed with caution and rigor. They identify advancements that will truly matter and make a difference to the industries they serve.

And their customers recognize this.

While customers bemoan CEDES’s slower speed when it comes to product development, they credit CEDES service response time and value CEDES’s reliability because they, too, are cautious.

Where CEDES’s brand truth and customer truth meet, we found a strategic opportunity

Golden Circle

Through a workshop with management team members and employees throughout the organization, we shared and discussed stories that demonstrated when CEDES is at its best. Then, we boiled those stories down to the core attributes that make CEDES uniquely and proudly CEDES.

Along with the Marketing Team, we articulated these attributes into the Golden Circle template.

Positioning Statement

It became apparent that given the shifting nature of their business, a Positioning Statement would be exceptionally useful for them to refer to internally to guide their communications.

This Positioning Statement captures the conflicted position many of their customers find themselves in, balancing improving their product with competing business priorities and how CEDES can uniquely meet their needs. “Purposeful advancements” is core to the CEDES communications strategy, as a counter message to innovation just for innovation's sake. CEDES carefully considers what new developments, products, or services would best serve their markets and executes them to perfection, even if it takes a little longer.

Mission

Inspiring progress in the flow of people and goods through
advancements that matter.

Values

Exploration

Our real-world experience and expertise do not stop us from continuing to explore possibilities others have not considered. We value curiosity, openness to new challenges, and never becoming complacent.

Collaboration

We are a team of passionate people who love collaborative problem-solving and the open exchange of ideas. We nurture trusting relationships with our customers. Together, we act to anticipate and mitigate future challenges.

Reliability

We rely on each other, just as our customers and partners rely on us. We always strive to turn our visions into solutions that perform in the real world, refusing to compromise our high standards of quality and reliability.

Tone

Informative, not salesy

Passionate, but not overly emotional

Confident, not arrogant

Clear, with a touch of humor

Technical, but not unnecessarily complicated

New Tagline

I consulted with the CEDES team on the creation and selection of a new tagline to be featured in their logo. Along with their management team, they selected a tagline that highlights their forward-looking vision, ability to anticipate issues for customers and in the industry in general, the core role of protection in their product, and their reputation for consistent and reliable performance.

The feedback

Steven Freedman, Chief Revenue Officer & President, Americas

“Our company made the brilliant decision to hire Kathleen as a consultant to lead us through a rebranding effort and we couldn’t be more proud of the result. Kathleen has an incredible natural gift for brand development which is strengthened by her impressive experience.

She took us through a clear and extremely effective process that allowed us to gain a deep understanding of what drives our employees to be the kind of company we have become as well as providing useful insights into how our branding fits into the broader industry in general and with our competitors.. From that understanding, we were able to redefine the most impactful messages to use both internally and externally for much more effective communication in general. These insights also allowed us to shift our branding within the landscape of the industries we serve to carve out much clearer differentiation from our competition. From there, Kathleen led us through the creation of a new tagline, mission statement, values statements, as well as helping us align our brand voice to this new understanding. I cannot emphasize enough how important Kathleen’s contribution to our brand direction has been. In addition, the team found Kathleen to be a joy to work with personally, a clear and effective communicator throughout the process, and she quickly became an integral part of our team. I look forward to finding the next opportunity to work with Kathleen. She helped bring us so much further forward than we expected.

If you are considering hiring Kathleen - just do it; you will be thrilled with the result. Feel free to message me if you would like to talk directly about our experience working with Kathleen, and I will share my contact information.”