Bringing community to the local launderette brand
Despite being a pioneer in its field and enjoying growth throughout South East Asia, the Cleanpro Holdings (9-figure annual revenue) launderette brand struggled to connect with its clientele. As the launch of 100 new locations was approaching, Cleanpro believed it was now or never to create a consistent brand that customers would love.
The challenge
Established in 2008, Cleanpro is the largest self-service launderette chain in Malaysia with active expansion plans into South East Asia (SEA). The company’s history is marked by ‘firsts’: it was the first self-service launderette in the country, the first launderette to use ionized water and, most recently, the first launderette in SEA to launch with Visa’s cashless payments solutions. In an industry that is in many ways ‘washed up’, Cleanpro stood apart as a pioneer.
However, leadership believed its differentiating technology investments had not translated into positive brand perceptions. They knew locations had inconsistent branding, and could admit to being unclear on the brand’s positioning amongst competitors. Further branding problems, they feared, may be lurking below the surface.
When my team was approached, Cleanpro was planning a massive expansion of 100 new locations in the next year. It was clear the customer perception of Cleanpro had to shift quickly to support the new locations and expected growth projections of our client. Repositioning and restructuring a brand successfully in a tight timeframe would be difficult - doing so in an industry that tends towards commoditized purchasing behaviours would be a challenge.
The insight
My team first needed to get a clear understanding of how Cleanpro was currently perceived. We conducted service design research across four locations in Kuala Lumpur consisting of both passive observation and interviews.
First, it was clear the Cleanpro brand was sorely lacking in brand recognition. In what may have been the most enlightening conversations of our research, many customers did not realize that the launderette in which they were doing their laundry was called Cleanpro. No matter how the brand would be positioned, plans to increase brand awareness would be necessary.
Second, we found that the customer experience was not only inconsistent but could also prove detrimental to efforts to increase brand awareness. The list of grievances was long - based on brand guru Marty Neumeier’s refrain of “your brand isn’t what you say it is. It’s what they say it is”, Cleanpro was in trouble. We understood that an updated brand would require a more satisfying customer experience if it were to be successful.
Third, though most of our interviews indicated that price was the only factor that determined purchase decisions, a group of regulars who admitted to frequenting Cleanpro for years provided two others: location and routine. Laundry is a universally tiresome chore and we found customers would, where possible, routinely choose the closest launderette to eliminate the effort of making decisions - even when they said routine had them regularly at a location with subpar customer experience.
We believed that the opening of 100 new locations would create the ‘in’ for Cleanpro to disrupt the routines of non-customers by providing more accessible locations; the trick would be to make sure that the on-boarding experience at the locations were as friendly and hassle free as possible to ensure the new routine would stick.
Finally, after our interviews we found ourselves coming back to the observation of how interwoven launderettes are in the daily functioning of communities. We suspected that a brand that could better establish ties to the community could create feelings of ownership and commitment from its customers.
The solve
As the company’s timeline for an effective rebrand was short, my team believed that our mandate to reposition the brand would be an exercise in pinpointing rather than stretching. In other words, the repositioned brand had to be within the bounds of believable from a current or short-term customer experience timeframe.
Based on an audit of the company’s core competencies, we came to a strategic positioning that was both appealing and attainable: your local launderette. We emphasized ubiquity, accessibility, and community to distinguish ourselves from our discount-focused competition.
Next, we set about redesigning a customer journey that could support the positioning’s attributes. Each step of the customer experience had to deliver on ease and friendliness if we were going to make a community brand worthy of routine. Amongst the changes, signage proved to be an important factor. Signage was an important opportunity to not only ease customers into a new routine; but also to educate them on how Cleanpro’s technology could help them get the best results for their laundry. If Cleanpro wanted to be a community brand, it started with treating its customers like neighbours and lending a hand with their chores.
We knew a new visual system would be an important factor in increasing brand awareness - when customers were in a Cleanpro, we wanted to make sure they knew it. Our visual team set about creating two variants of a consistent visual identity and logo redesign that could be deployed across locations, as well as digital touch points (such as a smartphone app) that would help further increase brand recognition. In both variations the visual identity emphasized clean lines, simple illustrations, and a playfulness that could help customers feel immediately at home in the redesigned locations.
Lastly, our team recognized that to be a community brand required a high degree of trust. As a final recommendation we designed corporate responsibility principles to steer investment in the local communities each location operated in.
