29 April 2004
Medium-Sized Companies Harness the Power of Their Brands

MetaDesign Develops a New Brand Image for Merten

Merten GmbH & Co. KG introduced its new brand image at the Light + Building show in Frankfurt (18 to 22 April 2004). MetaDesign AG, a Berlin-based corporate identity agency, developed and implemented the brand communication strategy, which emphasizes the medium-sized company as a provider of user-oriented intelligent building solutions. MetaDesign also helped develop merten@home, the first complete system for international building management.

"As a medium-sized company that is increasingly active in foreign markets, we are well aware of the importance of having a strong, internationally established brand," stresses Jörg Lamers, marketing director at Merten. "For this reason we wanted to shift from a product-oriented to an integrated brand communication strategy, one that optimally exploits the valuable capital of the Merten brand." According to Lamers, MetaDesign was an ideal partner for this process, since the Berlin corporate identity agency not only offers brand and media expertise from a single source, but also has many years of experience in working with medium-sized companies in the field of interior design.

Within one year, MetaDesign created a new integrated brand presence for Merten. At the start of the project, MetaDesign held a workshop in which participants developed the future image of the Merten brand in a step-by-step process. "Merten provides customer-oriented solutions for intelligent buildings. Both their design and their technology are impressive," says marketing director Jörg Lamers. The objective was to reflect this core expertise in the brand image. This was achieved in the brand workshop using visualization methods. "The vision, image and promise of a brand, as well as its strategic positioning in a competitive environment, are abstract ideas, so we visualize the semantic horizons and give them clearer contours," says MetaDesign's creative director, Thomas Klein, explaining the agency's work process.

MetaDesign developed a new corporate design for Merten on the basis of its more clearly defined brand image. The cross-media system was tailored to the target group and presents Merten as a provider of intelligent solutions in an array of communication channels, including catalogues, brochures, the Internet, trade fair stands and packaging design. "When developing and implementing corporate design, MetaDesign always thinks beyond the individual medium in order to create a consistent integrated brand presence. This sets the stage for continued, comprehensive brand management at Merten," emphasizes Thomas Klein.

For MetaDesign, the new building management system merten@home demonstrates the substance behind the brand?s promise of providing intelligent building solutions. It enables users to control all building functions via input media such as PDAs, PCs, TV sets and touch screens. MetaDesign designed the user interface for this new control element, which makes it possible to network Merten?s entire product range. "merten@home demonstrates that our expertise extends well beyond traditional corporate design services. Naturally, we will use merten@home at MetaHause, our Berlin office building," says MetaDesign's executive board member Uli Mayer-Johanssen, pleased about the fruits of the joint project.

Brief Portrait of Merten:

Merten was founded in 1906 and employs 600 people in four plants. It has seven sales subsidiaries in Germany and over 40 offices around the world.

Merten is a provider of intelligent building solutions, ranging from switches and security programs to building systems technology. Merten is at home throughout the world - wherever high-utility solutions are in demand: in private homes, public buildings, hotels and businesses.