Inventive collaborators: Tesco and Wolff Olins
Wolff Olins started working with Tesco back in 2014 when then CEO Dave Lewis hired the agency to put the supermarket brand back at the center of British life. It was an enormous undertaking that saw the agency pull back the “branding architecture” from Tesco and create a new identity system, as well as signage, store design, font, marketing communications and price tags. Recently, Wolff Olins has developed a new branding for Tesco Mobile that better adapts to Tesco's visual identity.
Simon Threadkell, Group Marketing Director, Branding and Customer Experience at Tesco, said the Tesco brand was "a little complicated" in 2014. He has already brought together several internal teams – including store design, format development and packaging design. He had previously sat in different groups to try to create a more coherent overall branding team for the company. Threadkell's approach was that design and branding should not be superimposed on specific business areas. it had to be woven into everything Tesco did. One of the reasons Wolff Olins won the work, Threadkell says, was her innate understanding of it.
"The way we tried to answer the letter was a much narrower way of thinking about things," explains Chris Moody, Wolff Olins' global chief design officer. "The letter was interesting because it wasn't an identity letter, a store design letter, or a letter titled 'Look at the logo'. It was about how design can tell a better story."
Threadkell had a head start in the client-agency relationship after spending much of his career with design and branding agencies. He says his experience on "both sides of the fence" gave him a clear understanding of how Tesco can get the most out of Wolff Olins, starting with openness and honesty.