Tag: Digital strategy

  • Green Street Advisors – Capturing the distinct brand of a leading real estate advisor

    Green Street Advisors – Capturing the distinct brand of a leading real estate advisor

    Real estate investors are always looking for an edge – a way to get into the market at the right time, with the right strategy. That takes real skill, as demonstrated by Green Street Advisors. Founded in 1985, this pioneering firm has earned a reputation for delivering results. The unmatched depth and quality of Green Street’s perspective on the U.S. real estate market and the objectivity of their insights and analysis has made them the dominant voice in the industry.

    From inward confidence to customer-centered value

    The company had a confident, “California cool” personality that served it well as it grew. But with ambitions to capture a bigger share of the growing global market for in-depth research, Green Street knew it had to offer a customer experience that delivers the well-established quality of the company’s information and insights.

    So began the brand-building process that involved key stakeholders across the organization and Green Street’s customer base. Tenet Partners conducted intensive research to gain a full understanding of the company’s vision and values. That informed recommendations for a new brand strategy that emphasizes how clients rely on Green Street’s expertise to make smarter investment choices. That brand promise is captured in the tagline that shows what customers are able to accomplish by working with Green Street: Enabling better decisions through better research. This acknowledged what Green Street was known for, while making a subtle shift from internal focus (better research) to customer value (better decisions).

    Adding value to the customer experience

    Tenet designers captured the new brand promise and personality in a logo and design system that evokes precision and accuracy, coupled with enterprising drive. It was a departure from the previous “cool” image that communicated forward-looking change – a clear movement onto the world stage.

    The next step was to recraft the customer experience itself. Working together with Green Street’s analysts and IT group, Tenet’s strategy, design and digital teams created a new user experience for the firm’s clients that drove the core idea of the brand through to product and information design.

    The company delivers research to analysis to its clients through emailed reports and an online portal. These are the heart of the customer experience, and they needed to pay off on the concept of decision enablement like never before. That meant a redesign that was more than skin-deep: it had to create a direct, clear path to Green Street’s actionable insight. The combined team revisited the architecture, navigation and format for the research portal and electronic report templates. This made it easier for clients to find, view and compare different kinds of information.

    Entering the world stage

    Green Street’s new positioning, identity and customer experience gave the firm what it was looking for: a launching point for strategic entry onto the world stage. Green Street wanted to make a splash with its first foray into Europe, and it did. The firm opened its new London trading desk on the same day that the brand was launched.

    Since that day in 2008, Green Street has thrived, successfully weathering the real estate crisis. Today, it’s the preeminent independent research, analytics, trading and consulting firm to the commercial real estate market in North America and Europe.

    The proof of performance

    2015 marks Green Street’s 30th anniversary and the numbers show just how successful its strategy has been. Over the last decade Green Street’s recommendations generated annualized total returns of 25%. A high rate of return by any measure, and doubly impressive given that the overall real estate investment trust market achieved just over 11%.*

    * Returns based on the FTSE NAREIT All Equity index. Source: REITs and Real Estate: Complementary through good times and bad. TIAA-CREF Asset Management, Fall 2014.

  • NPS Pharma – Putting science at work for the health of patients

    NPS Pharma – Putting science at work for the health of patients

    Nancy has been suffering from hypoparathyroidism for nearly ten years, putting her at risk for calcification of her brain and heart, as well as for kidney failure. Nancy belongs to a fairly small community with only 60,000 people in the United States with hypoparathyroidism. There are no therapies or cures offered by pharmaceutical companies because the size of the afflicted population is so limited.

    Enter NPS Pharmaceuticals

    NPS Pharmaceuticals is not your average big pharma. Dedicated to the innovation and development of therapies that transform the lives of patients with rare diseases, the company has a distinct focus on populations not addressed by any other pharmaceutical company.

    Patients first

    In 2013, NPS introduced Gattex. This orphan drug to treat short bowel syndrome was the company’s first commercial endeavor. NPS is also working closely with people, like Nancy, who suffer from hypoparathyroidism with the hope of introducing a second therapy to treat that affliction.

    With this product launch, NPS set out to turn the typical pharmaceutical model on its head, shifting its primary focus away from the medical community to the patients themselves. To reinforce this patient connection, NPS also built a support network to provide customized care to patients. This dedicated network helps patients locate, initiate and manage NPS therapies.

    NPS reached out to Tenet Partners to communicate its mission through a compelling visual and verbal identity. Through interviews with various groups of stakeholders, as well as a competitive audit, Tenet confirmed that NPS’ primary focus on patients was indeed unique.

    Our research further uncovered a remarkable emphasis on scientific rigor and innovation. Together with its approach to patient care, this earned NPS the right to stake its position at the intersection of science and humanity.

    Giving meaning to a name and a brand

    Such a bold approach required the right brand representation, one firmly anchored in four key attributes: transparency, humanity, connections and focus. Together, NPS and Tenet worked to develop a voice that rang true and a face that reflected the mission of the company and its evolving business strategy.

    Tenet created a simple, yet compelling tagline: The Nexus of Patients and Science. This tagline speaks not only to the human patient connection, but also to the compelling science that underlies those relationships. Additionally, it offers meaning to the NPS name.

    Tenet’s design team worked seamlessly with our strategists to make sure that the visual identity supported the strategy. The goal was to create a visual expression that emphasized patients’ radical transitions from sick to well and most importantly, the ability to get back to living. Using a calming blue hue, a gradient as a symbol for transition and people portraits, the NPS visual system became a compelling story, cementing the company’s commitment to putting patients first.

    Extending the new brand to the digital space

    Stepping up to this commitment also meant re-engineering the website. Where before the site was aimed at the medical community, the Tenet team of digital specialists worked at developing a site that would speak to patients first. Our primary focus was to create a vehicle that delivers the information patients need in a way that is easy to access and share.

    Today, NPS’s website highlights those whose lives are improved by the work the company carries out. It also communicates the unflagging sense of urgency that drives NPS to continue pioneering and delivering, worldwide, innovative therapies that transform the lives of those suffering from rare diseases.