Building a Memorable Brand: Vai de Promo Rebranding

Summary: For this project, I was a part of the team that built a new brand for the travel market, with the mission to communicate its purpose and reach a new audience. You can check out how it happened below.

📔 History

"Vai de Promo" is a brand which is part of the Amo Promo group, a company recognized in the tourism market for its excellent service. In the past, Amo Promo managed three separate brands that sold airline tickets, hotel reservations, and travel insurance respectively. The goal of Vai de Promo was to merge these sales flows in one single website and brand, which would also be the place for future travel products that the company may start offering.

🚨The problem

"Vai de Promo" should be brought to live in order to solve a specific question for the management: communicating with a younger audience, mainly in terms of making the purchasing of travel products easier and faster. The brand had to be built upon the company's values as well.

Initially, "Vai de Promo" did not have a strong connection with the desired audience and also did not convey the company's values. There was no design thinking process behind the definition of the brand or product assets. Therefore, the rebranding process would essentially be the creation of a new brand that would give meaning to “Vai de Promo” and communicate its purpose. Today, we are going to talk about the brand.

🔎 Discovery

For the discovery process, the creation team decided to conduct research in three areas: internal interviews, external interviews, and market analysis.

The internal interviews were conducted with the company's management and stakeholders who had a high level of awareness about the product details. The main objective of this phase of the process was to understand the expectations regarding the final product, and also identify the values that should not be missing.

The external interviews helped understanding the expectations of the public regarding a travel brand. What does a traveler who is part of the target audience look for when buying their trips online? For this phase, we created a proto-persona to guide our decisions. The proto-persona for Vai de Promo was revealed to be:

• Female;
• 35 years old;
• In a relationship;
• Middle class;
• Wants to make trips focused on experiences and create memories;
• Gets frustrated not only with prices, but also with bureaucracy and the difficulty of planning and organizing trips;
• Makes decisions about her trip based on the content she sees mainly on social media.

Finally, the market analysis brought us business ideas, communication strategies, and visual identity tips. The objective was to identify and understand the patterns explored by our competitors in order to maintain consistency with other market tools and reduce the learning curve. At the same time, we looked for flaws in the competition to correct them in our brand. It was also the goal of this phase to understand what visual elements we needed to explore to stand out.

👓 Definition

After gathering the necessary information to start the process, we begin to define our choices.

📋 Summary of data and conclusions

To achieve its goals, “Vai de Promo” needed to be a lighter brand, both in its visions and communicatioon. Making dreams come true should be the brand's ultimate goal, as that is how it would sell trips. It needed to stand out from competitors, but without losing visual characteristics that indicate it is a tourism brand. It should embody and defend strong defining values and maintain excellence in serving its audience. But above all, it needed a purpose.

Based on these findings and the proto-persona, we selected the Explorer as the archetype to be followed for the brand. We created a moodboard to inspire the visuals and also a playlist on Spotify to inspire the team and bring the vibe. It became clear that the type of trip that would raise the interest from users would have to be focused on freedom. Photos with a visible horizon, places to explore in groups, and discoveries that would become good stories to be told would be the most desired items for them.

🌟 Strategy and Personality

As our proto-persona is from the Millennial generation, having purpose and a sense of community is essential. Many studies have indicated that this is an audience that specifically looks for this when making their online purchases. This type of approach, combined with the company's characteristic of providing efficient, fast, and human customer service, should be the core of the final brand.

Inclusion and the respect for differences are values that are widely practiced in Amo Promo and advocated as pillars of Vai de Promo by the management during the internal interview process. Therefore, it was decided that “Vai de Promo” would present itself as a brand that makes planning and organization for trips easier while taking care of the traveler. This way, they have more time to live unforgettable experiences, meet unique people, visit authentic places, and explore different cultures.

It is this exposure to new realities will improve the individual as a human being. "Improved", they return home with more awareness and ready to improve the reality around them. Following this logic, with every trip Vai de Promo sells, more people would feel inspired to bring beneficial changes to the world. From this logic, the great motto of the new brand emerges:

"Traveling changes you. Traveling changes the world!"

This is definitely a well-defined purpose and it builds a strong sense of community.

Once we had the motto clearly defined, we established our four main strategic guidelines as follows:

Unforgetable experiences; Getting to know the world in orther to actually change the world; No stress; Takes care of you so you can enjoy everything about your trip. These 4 guiding principles should lead the brand to the meeting point between stakeholders' expectations and the desires of the users.

📢 Visual and Verbal Universes

The starting point for the brand's verbal universe should be the Tone of Voice. The team's UX Writer, I understood that what would make sense for the brand would be a tone that is:

• Joyful;
• Experienced;
• Inclusive;
• Optimistic;
• Unifying.

Joy and optimism present themselves as the elements that ensure positive and worthwhile trips. Our experience is what guarantees the traveler's safety, giving them the certainty that they are traveling with a company that knows how to offer the best trips and, furthermore, has complete support before, during, and after the trip. Inclusion and the unifying tone strengthen the sense of community sought from the beginning and show that "changing the world" is an action that requires help. We, from Vai de Promo, are part of this group that wants to change the world.

This tone of voice would communicate perfectly with the brand's purpose and encourage our travelers to seek unforgettable experiences without fear.

We also wrote a brief brand manifesto that contained its personality, objectives, and impact. It was through the manifesto that we would ensure that the team understood the brand concept and did not forget it with each interaction with customers. It should also translate our values, a concern that was paramount from the beginning of the process.

“Vai de Promo is for whoever dreams very high."

It is for whoever wnats to change the world, and knows that in order for it to happen they need to get to know the world as much as they can. Discover new cultures, people and places. Go trought new experiences and find out new truths.

It is for you who wishes to build a better place to live in while making your dreams come true.

"Traveling changes you. Traveling changes the world!”

Finishing the whole process, we created a new logo. It should encapsulat all these concepts: community, experience, freedom, change, inclusion. Also, should be clearly the brand which would make travel dreams come true. Furthermore, since the brand name contains "to go" in its very name, it was clear from the beginning that the logo needed to communicate movement.

Together with our designers we thought of elements that would bring the vibe these experiences would offer, but also the peace and security of a smooth journey. We considered the different parts of the travel process: the preparation, the planning, the boarding, the flight... and, before all of that, the dream. Traveling and dreaming have a common element: they remind us of the sky. Therefore, it was from the sky that we would draw our greatest inspiration.

It is through the clouds that dreams dwell, and it is also through them that trips are made. Therefore, we took from the sky what would become our final logo.

The colors takes us the sky and the sea, horizons that instantly bring to mind traveling, exploring. But also the sun. The gradient intends to indicate the sunrise observed from the airplane window, welcoming the day of the landing in the destination of your dreams. The beginning of a series of experiences that will become unforgettable memories.

To preserve the idea of movement, we included a Gestalt with the airplane, the slight tilt of the logo to the right, and well-defined curves. The feeling of lightness, freshness, and youthfulness was present. The messages that contained the brand's concept and purpose were also included, all while maintaining aesthetic appeal.

The colors would also be adopted to compose the website, graphic pieces, and advertising materials of the brand. Therefore, we conducted a contrast test to choose the best way to apply them. Once everything proved satisfactory, we decided to produce mockups and test applications to visualize the results more easily.

⚡️ Results and Learnings

The brand was launched in June 2023 on Instagram. The product was officially released to the public the following month. In September 2023, two months after the official product launch, Vai de Promo reached the milestone of one million reais in sales.

All indicators in that month still pointed to a steep growth of the brand. Furthermore, engagement results on social media grew, as well as the number of followers, which increased from 12 to 20 thousand in the same period of June to September '23. The feedback from people impacted by the brand is 94% positive, and brand loyalty indicators have grown by 54%.

In summary, we delivered a brand with the foundation built on the values desired, accompanied by concepts that help reach the targeted audience and desired goals. Our work has satisfied stakeholders, the team, and the public. We have gathered data that proves the success of Vai de Promo in its early months of existence. I am very proud of everything our team has produced!