Customer orientation from the beginning

Client

Varda Care is a healthcare technology company that provides insight and security about your own health - without you noticing it! Through a sensor technology kit added to chairs and mattresses, five different types of health data are measured. The health data is made available via a user-friendly app and major discrepancies are notified - to you, relatives or other caregivers. The company was established on 2 January 2020.

Ambition

The new organisation needed a name and a strategy that could help build a position as an international brand. They wanted to include everyone involved in the company to make sure the new concept was well anchored internally.

Context

Varda Care has its origins in Helland Møbler. A company that builds on over fifty years of experience in delivering furniture to healthcare institutions. Helland had gained insight on how the elderly spend large parts of the day in their chair. There was a need among the elderly to become more active and aware of the state of their health. Perhaps the chair itself could also be the solution? In society, there is increased attention to a healthy lifestyle, as well as the “wave” of elderly people and longer life expectancy. In collaboration with a number of organisations, a solution was developed that could make it possible to use an armchair to measure health data. The project manager at Helland Møbler took the leap and became general manager of the new spin-off company. During the spring, three more people were hired. The new company needed a name, and they needed a clear direction on how to build the brand.

Approach

The company wanted to develop a name and brand strategy, while at the same time also building their team. The plan was to run this as a series of three workshops, starting with the name and then moving on to positioning. The first workshop, facilitated by Brand Valley, was planned to run a full day in Ålesund on 13 March 2020.

On 12 March, the Norwegian government announced a national lockdown due to the Covid-19 pandemic. To avoid coming behind schedule, the workshop had to be quickly set up online. As this was the first project the team did together, solving it all digitally was an exciting creative challenge that they had to.

An online process made it possible to divide the work into several parts, creating more processable packages of work, without this leading to increased travel costs or lost time. For a period of three weeks, we conducted a weekly two-hour session with brainstorming, research and discussions before the team voted on names. Dividing the work into packages made it possible to press on with certain tasks, while allowing for days or weeks of contemplation where ideas need maturing. Working digitally also provided easy access to content sharing along the way. Online searches for open-source material were also used as part of the idea development. Challenges on how to build trust, was met by having the team member to share music that was personal.

The next time Brand Valley met the Varda Care team, we had the opportunity to do so in person. In this physical workshop we had two days where we explored a potential position. As this was a new client where communication previously only had been online, we were surprised by how effortless it was to continue the work together.

Outcome

The name the team decided upon was Varda Care. It refers to the company’s Nordic heritage, by building on the Norse word “Varđa,” which means “ward” in English. The word has given its name to a beacon system or optical telegraph which was based on lighting bonfires on mountain peaks to signal danger. “Care” refers to the sector the company belongs to. The name reflects the company’s desire to help people stay one step ahead and to contribute to knowledge and security about their own health.

Before the physical workshop, Varda Care´s marketing manager had made a draft of the brand platform, which we build upon. During two intensive days, we worked our way through customer needs, stories to be told, and where Varda Care see themselves in the landscape of other technology and healthcare organisations. A main challenge Varda Care faced was that their brand did not belong to a single product category, but to several. Since categories are essential in how humans understand the world, establishing a new category is challenging. It therefore became essential for Varda Care to continue with identifying and building their solution as well as working on how to communicate about customer needs.

Varda Care was a truly inspiring case to work with. The project started at a time where we all were isolated in our own homes. However, finding ways to collaborate and continue to develop in changing circumstances created results as well as different opportunities.

Thank you for an exciting collaboration. We look forward to following Varda Care’s development as they are now heading into a new phase.

Read other client cases here.