Embrace the Elements

Abstract

This report comprises a strategical design graduation assignment, drafted for the Strategic Product Design master at the Delft University of Technology. The project is commissioned by boardsport lifestyle brand Brunotti.

Project goal
The many differences between Brunotti’s two product collections (boardsport hardware and boardsport lifestyle apparel) imply brand inconsistencies. This project aims to reveal these inconsistencies and, accordingly, propose a strategy that (1) helps eliminating the inconsistencies and (2) helps gaining competitive advantage.

Literary substantiation
Literature confirms the importance of consistency for Brunotti by supporting that offering a wide variety of products has a positive effect on a brand’s perception, but only if the overall message it embodies is consistent. Besides a brand’s effort to convey a certain message, the customers’ character proves to play an important role in how a brand is perceived and, as a result, how likely they are to accept brand extensions.

Brand analysis
The message that Brunotti wants to convey can be traced back to its origin in many ways, despite the several major operational changes that the company has gone through. Whereas the brand was founded from a single man’s (Claudio Brunotti) passion for windsurfing, it is now an internationally well-established corporate. Despite this large transformation, Brunotti stayed close to Claudio’s love for boardsports and sense for fashion design and high-quality products.

At the very core of Brunotti’s intended message are the values ‘Authentic’, ‘Active’, and ‘Innovative’. ‘Authenticity’ embodies the brand’s rich heritage, ‘Active’ embodies the boardsport lifestyle that the brand propagates, and ‘Innovative’ embodies the aim for technical products that set new standards. Secondly, at the core of Brunotti’s identity is the philosophy ‘No Matter The Conditions’. The philosophy calls to embrace the forces of the elements, the ever-changing weather conditions and unpredictable seasons. The third important part of Brunotti’s intended message is the brand’s desire of becoming a more premium brand. Being an premium brand typically means being well-known, taking position in the high-end of the market and conveying high-quality.

Brand perception analysis
A quantitative research among Brunotti’s (potential) hardware and apparel customers is conducted in the form of an online questionnaire. The research is setup to reveal the gaps between Brunotti’s intended and the perceived message. Thus, it aims to disclose inconsistencies in what Brunotti wants to be and what they are in the eyes of the customer. Somewhat 200 responses reveal that the most critical inconsistencies (gaps) between Brunotti’s intended and perceived identity do not occur between the two customer segments (hardware and apparel), nor between the perception of the two product collections (hardware and apparel). The most critical gaps occur between the customers’ overall perception and Brunotti’s intentions in term of:

Quality. The perceived quality is not low, but still consistently lower than intended. To reach a premium brand status, a higher perceived quality is desirable.
Innovative character. The brand Brunotti and its products are perceived as far less innovative than intended. Being one of Brunotti’s core values, this sense of innovativeness needs to become much stronger in the minds of the customer.
Philosophy. The brand perception analysis indicates a lower association with reliability and honesty than intended. This denotes a mismatch with Brunotti’s philosophy to support their customers ‘No Matter The Conditions’.

The Solution Space
The solutions to closing the identified gaps are to exist in the solution space that derived from the brand perception analysis. This virtual space is where high quality and innovative product features, that are applicable to Brunotti hardware- and apparel products, support their customers’ lifestyle ‘No Matter The Conditions’. Hereto, over a hundred boardsport lifestyle pains are identified in an exploratory session with four boardsport practitioners. To come up with innovative solutions for these pains, smart materials served as input for several creative problem-solving sessions. The ‘No Matter The Conditions’ philosophy is the final piece to the puzzle. From this philosophy, the ‘Embrace the Elements’ strategy emerged. The ‘Embrace the Elements’ strategy employs the four basic elements (sun, air, earth and water) to classify, not only the proposed product features, but also Brunotti’s products, and the boardsports that are the very reason for existence of the brand. In this way, Brunotti conveys a consistent message on all three levels, namely;

Product-feature ideas
The strategy is employable to the brand-core-, and product-level through mere classification. How the strategy is employable on a product-feature level becomes concrete in the ideation phase of this project. A large number of - element - product feature ideas proved the versatility of the ‘Embrace the Element’ strategy. Some ideas are of course better than others. Therefore, a selection is made together with Brunotti’s Head of Design and Development Director. Moreover, one of the selected ideas is brought into a further stage of development and prototyped as a real-life showcase of the strategy’s capability of driving innovation.

Strategic implementation
The applicability of the features to both product collections and planning are of great importance for the strategic implementation. An overview of the features’ applicability (to hardware and apparel products) helps showcasing their suitability for creating consistency throughout Brunotti’s product portfolio. Depending on the complexity of the idea and the readiness of the technology it holds, some ideas can be put to market quicker than others. Subsequently, a product feature-introduction-planning is proposed. Keeping Brunotti’s minimal develop period in mind, the first ‘Embrace the Elements’ strategy’s product features can be introduced to the market in 2020.

Product-feature showcase
A prototype of an integrated vacuum compartment in a Brunotti trolley, that allows users to take more luggage, showcases an ‘air’-class innovative product. It showcases the strategy’s capability of driving innovation. Moreover, the prototype allows Brunotti to communicate the idea to manufacturers, and thus accelerates the development process.

Finalisation
The report concludes with a confident note on the ‘Embrace the Elements’ strategy’s capability of achieving the project’s goals, depending on how well the strategy is implemented. It than gives some recommendation on the first steps to take for this implementation. Though some limitations in the research’ setup and distribution, and strategy’s implementation are identified, there is no reason to assume that they cancel out the value of the project’s outcomes.