EDP

"NOW NEARER YOU"

EDP was created in 1976 through the integrationof 13 separate regional businesses. As one national state company, EDP provided positive social and economic national benefits by developing a single electricity grid and the supply of power to almost all the population.
Since 2000, EDP has expanded outside Portugal into Spain and Brazil and today is the seventh largest electricity company in Europe.

EDP long enjoyed a monopolistic position for the supply of electricity across Portugal, yet with market liberalization it started to fast face the challenge of competition - requiring it to do more to attract and retain its customers; a goal much hindered by its brand reputation as a distant and impenetrable bureaucracy.

EDP recognised a clear and urgent need to transform its brand reputation, and to create a higher performance, customer focused business. Through a research programme that incorporated qualitative and quantitative data from all stakeholders together with competitor brand benchmark research across Europe, MyBrand
defined a differentiated brand position based on the idea of “nearness”, underpinned by the brand values of simplicity, confidence and social responsibility.

The brand position and brand values were used to
guide the creative development of EDP’s core brand communications, captured by the energetic, warm smile that forms their brand mark:
a sincere, spontaneous and friendly humangesture that projects EDP’s customer service ambitions and provokes business change. It contrasts markedly with their previous symbol: a blue turbine.



MyBrand then worked to bring the brand to life
by creating a range of customer communications applications. We designed and implemented new vehicle liveries, brochures, signage systems and uniforms as well as and the ‘look and feel’ of the website.

We created a vision book to explain the ambitions of the business to staff and the role they have in achieving this ambition - essentially
a plan for change – and we also implemented a programme of brand workshops to ensure the brand’s core principles became key drivers for business change.

The final stage of our project was to work with other suppliers, including advertising agencies, to plan and prepare the launch campaign for the new brand.

The initial results were remarkable. Portuguese consumers were fast to recognise the new brand as a clean break with the past - “a smile for everyone”- and firmly took on board the clear message that the business would deliver substantial change.

Staff too saw the new brand positively and their opinions are well summarised by Julio Pinheiro, a senior technician with 23 years service; “It was a surprise… but looking at the new brand’s symbolism, a new feeling of empathy emerges that represents a new starting point in the company’s life - an open attitude and at the same
time an enthusiastic one.

There can be no fear of change when the purpose for change is to improve our relationship with our customers; to simplify and makes their lives easier and at the same time to be better ourselves.”