IDEO / GSHS_1
A redesign/rebrand of the Korean home shopping company GS Home Shopping. Delivering the corporation a brand essence, identity and experience along with the launch of a sub-brand.
This was the first part of a 2-part project. While this touches more on the brand essence, the second part deals with the process of designing the brand identity & experience.
IDEO is a global design consulting firm headquartered in Palo Alto, California. They are strongly associated with the design thinking approach to designing products, services, environments, brands, and digital experiences. GS Group is one of the largest South Korean corporations with severeal subsidiaries and affiliates. GS Home Shopping (now GS Shop) was their popular homeshopping entity. They split from LG Group a few years prior to this project and hired IDEO as design consultants to revamp GSHS.
GSHS once brought home-shopping to Korea and was a leader with little competition in an industry that grew in parallel with the spread of cable TV. A dozen years later, the growth was nearing a plateau.
A number of other channels were now competing in the space and the offerings were not differentiated. The internet had exploded as a market place and GSHS was only capturing a fraction of that traffic.
Learnings:
Part of the research phase included gaining insights from current/potential customers and key stakeholders of GSHS. As a perk, it also allowed us to immerse ourselves in Korean culture in general.
We conducted interviews with their current customers and a variety of other shoppers.
6 key insights were found with relevance to GSHS and the home shopping category.
- People seek out connection through curation, expertise and relationships. They were not finding this through GSHS.
- Home shopping brands were generally undifferentiated. Customers weren’t loyal to specific home shopping companies.
- TV shopping is human, entertaining, educational and inspirational.
- The TV platform is often the beginning – not the end – of the journey.
- Home shopping was TV shopping. GSHS was narrowly perceived as a home shopping company (customers mostly equate GS with “Oil”).
- Customers leverage different shopping platforms for different reasons, and seldom stay with one company throughout the entire shopping experience.
Shopping Focus:
The research revealed 5 behavioral modes that describe how people approach their shopping journey.
The GSHS offering accommodated the Functional, Spontaneous and Escapist modes. However, these modes didn’t lead to loyalty.
Focusing on the Comprehensive and Experiential modes was recommended. People who favored these modes were seeking deeper engagement – leading to loyalty.
1. Comprehensive
Motivations: Comparison, Empowerment, Credibility, Expertise, Rationale
2. Experiential
Motivations: Connection, Tangibility, Demonstration, Assurance, Sensory Stimulus
3. Escapist
Motivations: Window-shopping, Dreaming, Inspiration, Stimulation, Passive Entertainment
4. Spontaneous
Motivations: Instant Gratification, FOMO, Pressure-Motivated Deals, Last Chance Offers, Small thrills
5. Functional
Motivations: Pragmatic, Time and Freedom, No fuss, Efficiency, Utility
Targeted Modes
The Journey
Home shopping lives within a broader context of shopping activities. Within this larger context, we were able to synthesize shopper behavior in a journey.
Customers were using multiple platforms and had strong preferences for which to use and when as they move along the journey.
Customers were satisfying a range of needs across the journey but the GSHS experience at the time was focused on transactions – pushing customers to complete a purchase.
The Big Challenge
People were leaving the GSHS shopping platforms at various points along the journey. The GSHS platforms were not working together in harmony to enable the targeted comprehensive and experiential shopping modes.
We found an opportunity to shift focus.
By leveraging their platform portfolio to build lasting relationships with their customers, we suggested that GSHS should aim to edify, inspire and reward them through a cross-platform experience.
- Inspire: Inspire customers with exceptional products presented with rich, dynamic stories.
- Edify: Enable personal growth and improvement through engaging, transformative programming and offerings.
- Reward: Build and nurture rewarding relationships that would evolve over time by the creation of opportunities for participation and deeper engagement.
- Personality: Communicating that GSHS was above all, human. Elevate people in the process – including customers – by cultivating a personality.
In order to make this shift happen, we needed to define the GSHS Brand Essence
People were leaving the GSHS shopping platforms at various points along the journey. The GSHS platforms were not working together in harmony to enable the targeted comprehensive and experiential shopping modes.
- An essence can be informative, inspirational and enabling.
- It’s a guiding philosophy that gives basic understanding of who a company is and what it stands for.
- It also helps direct the people who are responsible for bringing the brand to life.
- The essence is brought to life through the external expressions of a brand – the identity, products, services, platforms and customer interactions.
What makes up a brand?
A little bit of hand-holding was needed to explain the differences between the Brand Essence, Identity and Experience. These also happen to be the project phases.
1. Brand Essence
(Internal compass)
(Internal compass)
What you are:
Brand Essence
What you are about:
Principles
2. Brand Identity
(External expression)
(External expression)
What you look like:
Logo / Logotype
How you communicate:
Visual language
How you talk:
Tone of voice
3. Brand Experience
(External expression)
(External expression)
What you do:
Products, Platforms, Interactions, Services, etc.
Other immediate challenges we acknowledged
- Their association with GS was limiting their ability to engage on an emotional level with their customers.
- As previously mentioned, customers immediately think “oil” rather than shopping or entertainment.
- Home Shopping was associated with TV only. Their customers were not giving them credit for how many platforms they had.
- The GSHS family of brands was confusing. Their customers didn’t understand the purpose and value of their various sub brands.
The Brand Essence
Through their TV flagship, we recommended they engage people in a direct and personal way – right in their homes. Products would come alive as people get the full story, get excited, feel connected, and imagine new possibilities. It would have impact, be immersive and feel human – it would feel real.
Manifesto:
At its core, The Real Deal is about breaking down artifice and having honest relationships with their customers based on mutual respect.
To do this, The Real Deal focuses on people and choice. It’s the way products come alive and how connections are made. It’s frank opinions and thriving communities.
The Real Deal inspires customers to participate, be opinionated, to engage. It invites them behind the scenes and ensures that GSHS only delivers exceptional products and services.
The Real Deal creates a true cross-platform experience. It helps focus their offering no matter how customers choose to engage.
People were already discerning, savvy shoppers. Their value would be helping them find exactly what they want. The Real Deal makes this easy, as well as entertaining.
The Real Deal is rooted in their history. It’s the best of who they are and inspiration for what’s to come.
Core Values:
Participation
We give everyone a voice by inviting people into the process and asking them to be as opinionated as our own experts.
Transparency
We take people behind the scenes and really evaluate our products from every angle so we can share the results (good and bad) with the world.
Enthusiasm
We encourage lively interactions by developing entertaining new ways to engage with our brand, our products and our customers.
Personalization
We create personal experiences so unique, that just like people, no two are ever exactly alike.
Distinction
We are only as good as the products we offer, which means we only offer the best.
Sample future vision from initial pitch deck.
This was part 1 of a 2-part project. Once the Brand Essence was established and given the green light, we went right to work on Identity & Experience .