A brand center to empower Cuerva’s team

Services: Accompaniment; Digital Product; Development
Year: 2022

Since 2021, we have accompanied Cuerva, the Granada-based energy company, on their journey as they take energy to the next level. We began our collaboration by reinventing their brand identity to reflect their current reality and potential, after 80 years of history. We continued to adapt Cuerva's digital home to this renewed brand universe and the company's new phase. All of these changes were to be a big boost for Cuerva, but they would also be a challenge for the team. The new brand was rich in detail and nuance. Making it their own, on a day-to-day basis, replacing the previous identity, would have some complexity.

To empower the team from that first moment of adaptation, providing them with the best possible brand management experience, we saw the brand center as a valuable and sustainable solution. Our partners understood that this online platform to centralize branding elements would help everyone in this transition, allowing them to take ownership of the new brand at a strategic and tactical level, with greater agility and happiness.

One design system, two platforms

So we got down to work. The project was developed in parallel to the development of their new website by our Product and Tech teams, which allowed them to work with the same design system for both platforms. Perfect timing. The CMS would also be common for web and brand center, DatoCMS. This optimized its design and development, but also the editing tasks performed in the same ecosystem by the Cuerva teams to this day.

When we were searching for references for the website, we appropriated a fundamental insight to develop it, which also guided us to create this new tool for Cuerva: technological websites tended to simplify information and navigation. An essential point for the brand center, which would be a resource of daily use for the team and collaborators.

Architecture as the solution

In order to achieve this simplicity, we conducted workshops with the employees to elaborate user flows according to the type of user. The brand center is a single gateway for many use cases, so navigation would be key to adapt the experience as much as possible to the different needs. What do people working in design need? What do sales people need? The financial department? Or new employees in their onboarding? The tool would be the newcomers' first contact with the Cuerva world: the experience had to be up to the task.

The logo pack, the typography, the company's corporate dossier, the presentation template, the project template, the background for video calls, the instructions for collaborators who had to implement the logo... There were many operational elements that we had to provide to the team, but we also had to make the company's strategic tools and the guidelines of the new identity very accessible. After the research phase and working with the team, we were able to determine the architecture, the way the information would be organized and even detect needs for templates or formats that we would later include in the brand center.

The result? A fluid and intuitive navigation to make the people who work daily with the Cuerva brand a little happier.

The center of the brand universe

The web experience shines with the adaptation of the brand universe and, of course, the same process was carried out in the brand center. A platform coherent with the essence of Cuerva that, thanks to the Design System, we were able to work consistently, optimizing time and resources to publish and iterate. Colors, typography, images, the asterisk... All the elements of the visual identity were integrated into the brand center, where they coexist with the voice of the brand, present in all the messages of the tool and in the materials, such as videos, tutorials, guides... An immersive experience in which the team is immersed daily, but also other external collaborators who interact with the brand on an occasional basis. Consistency, ease of use, intuitive navigation and clarity of information are essential for each and every type of user.

After almost two years in operation, the brand center has proven to be a valuable tool for empowering people in the application of the Cuerva brand. Having the new resources organized, with practical information on their proper use, and available to the entire company at any time and from anywhere, has been one of the keys to making the process of adapting to the rebranding a very positive experience. And no less important, it has allowed us to align the actions and communications of this new stage, transmitting the new brand in a coherent and sustainable way at all points of contact, both physical and online, freeing the Marketing and Communication teams from mechanical tasks such as correcting incorrect implementations.

A tool for the future

At Soluble, we continue to accompany Cuerva in this purpose of going beyond, applied to its brand. This translates, in the case of its brand center, into the audit we conducted at the end of 2023. The new brand is at a more solid stage, after the initial adaptation. We have gathered feedback from the people in the team, we know that they feel proud and reflected in it and that the brand center is very useful in their day-to-day work. But we always ask ourselves what can be improved and, with the data obtained, we have detected some points of friction that are new challenges to move forward.

The aim? To continue to accompany them with design, technology and activation to achieve a more robust, aligned and empowering brand experience. For a brand center that makes the Cuerva team happier in 2024.