The Finnish Post: rebranding, experience and ATL

We designed the immense brand renewal from Itella to Posti at the Helsinki-based service design agency N2 Nolla.

Due to the transformation of the postal industry, Itella, formerly the Finnish Post, was facing a crossroads. The company known by each Finn, which has guaranteed everyone postal and logistical services since 1638, had to confront their modern-day business challenges.

The Finnish post was struggling with two different brands.

Itella’s change started in 2013 with the analysis of the two brands they had in use, Itella for logistics and Posti for postal services, and their customer experience. Possible prototypes were designed of what Itella’s future identity would look like and what its purpose is. Itella’s Vision 2020 and the new strategy were encapsulated in a short film with Itella’s employees as the narrators. I conducted the interviews both in Finland and Russia. The film is in three languages, in which I am fluent.

I conducted the interviews both in Finland and Russia for Itella’s Vision 2020 strategy film. (Finnish, English, Russian)

We had conducted surveys and focus group interviews on what the public sentiment was for the brand. The major insight was that B2B customers are also B2C customers and have a relationship with both brands. But the more heartfelt one was with the 375-year-old Posti.

So, on August 13, 2014, Itella announced to much public surprise that they were dropping their seven-year-old brand ‘Itella’ and changing their name completely to ‘Posti’.

The Finnish public was very approving of the new orange logo and getting back the old familiar name.

Itella’s Vision 2020 and Posti’s new brand strategy created a clear framework for designing the identity. Posti’s identity should communicate two messages: Posti offers postal, e-commerce and logistics services, and that Posti’s role is to streamline the everyday life of consumers and the commercial transactions of businesses.

The new post box.

Posti’s identity is a very recognizable orange in all points of contact, be it letterboxes, post offices, online shopping, cargo traffic or heavy logistics.

Understanding the customer and designing services from the customer’s perspective were put at the forefront of planning the transformation.

The retail experience was also designed to be more straightforward with service design methods.

Ote Posti-kirjasesta — Each postal employee was sent a booklet that I wrote about the new meaning of their brand and what values the company stood for. (This page describes what each element of the logo is about – the box for new strategic move from letters to parcels, the line for speed and ease and the ribbon for cordiality.)

I wrote the script for the new brand video of Posti, which went over all the main areas of the brand but, importantly, from the perspective of all the people involved in the process of one transaction happening digitally and physically. The brand was all about people, so I wrote the film to be narrated by Posti’s real employees in their own vernacular.

The story takes you from the owners of an online store, to a print ad consultant, to a postman delivering a print ad, to the customer seeing the ad and making a purchase, to a warehouse employee, to a truck driver, to a Posti retail store salesperson and finally the customer getting their package.

I was present in all the shoots to oversee that the film was true to the script and the brand.

The Posti brand film was written by me and directed by Aleksi Koskinen from Tre Film. (in Finnish)

On the basis of the brand film, a set of TV ads (40s and 3x15s) were made, which were also used in digital channels. The 15s ads were targeted at specific customer segments.