Background

Simple Green, the 25-year-old manufacturer of cleaning solution, needed to extend their brand onto the internet and the world. It decided to use a fully overhauled corporate website, and a global extranet, with a sharply focused marketing strategy to accomplish this task.

Insight

The first step was a new online positioning, to be developed by Zinc. We urged the company to look beyond its traditional focus, to emphasize what the broad product line has to offer: "Keeps Your World Clean." Next, we helped the company create an integrated, brand-centered website strategy -- from site architecture and navigation to corporate messaging -- to reinforce the positioning. With these steps complete, Simple Green faced an equally complex challenge: to motivate its employees, distributors and resellers in a global organization, working in multiple supply channels, to communicate with a single corporate Voice.

It's impossible to micro-manage how constituents worldwide communicate. But it's entirely possible to teach them to communicate clearly and consistently about who Simple Green is and what it does. How? By building a global brand-centric program that fosters and rewards compliance with the corporate Voice. The global extranet called "SunshineNet"

Actions

• Create a Internet brand strategy. Develop a user interface that introduces the online world to company values, attributes, and positioning.
• Craft an online marketing strategy that enrolls the diverse Simple Green sales channels
• Create a marketing and messaging strategy that expressed the company's focus on its international customers through the positioning line, "Keeps Your World Clean"
• Craft a compelling corporate website. We supported the Simple Green message with design that illustrates the pervasiveness of the company's products. This customer-driven experience is clearly represented on every page.
• Design a simple product interface. We worked closely with the SEI development team to incorporate the product's powerful features into an easy-to-use interface.
• Create a sophisticated e-business architecture. We developed a public Web site to introduce the optimization product and initiate the sales process. A set of product demos effectively conveyed the product's high level of sophistication and ease of use.

Results

The new brand strategy and global internet presence helped Simple Green to develop a unified corporate positioning, to strengthen its image in the industry, and to extend its reputation well beyond the domestic arena as a global player. As the industry undergoes further change, the Simple Green identity remains consistent - leading the cleaning products industry by focusing on environment intelligence, safety and innovation.