(Re)awaken a reason for being with BOGNER
- Bastian Lindberg
- Feb 13, 2023
- 4 min read
Case Study: Purpose and values for the Luxury-Sports-Brand BOGNER
Challenge
From person cult to brand cult - (re)awakening the reason for being of the premium sportswear brand BOGNER and uncovering central corporate values
Outcome
A purpose (statement and narrative) developed radically collaboratively from within the company, as well as four core corporate values that link the company's history and future.
Key Facts
Client: BOGNER
Industry: Fashion / Sports
Service: Purpose development | Value design | Creative prototyping
Methodology: Human-Centred-Design | Vision Talks & Story Interviews | Insight-to-action | Co-Creation | Prototyping
Year: 2021
Numbers: 10 Employees from 5 different divisions
with different company affiliation
300+ engaged employees
3 Purpose-Prototypes
25 interactive MURAL Boards
6 digital workshops
1 live co-creation workshop
4 digital retrospectives
Background
BOGNER, a brand with an impressive history and a unique heritage in premium sportswear. Over decades, the company has achieved great success in the fast-moving and highly competitive apparel market. This success was also closely linked to the founder Willy Bogner, whose personality shaped the brand for decades. The retirement of the founder in 2019 brought with it the challenge for the management to further develop the brand from the personality cult Willy Bogner to the brand cult.
The question of the brand's reason for being and its core values had to be answered. Both purpose and corporate values are important constants that give employees support and strength to face and master change with an open mind. And, to show current and future customers the relevance of their own actions.
Design-Challenge
How can we (re)awaken a reason for being (Purpose) for Bogner to connect and mobilize the company?
Our approach
Why does the world need us as a brand, what mission do we follow? What relevance do we have as a brand in people's lives? Questions that also accompanied us on our 4-month Purpose Journey with BOGNER. We are deeply convinced that the answers lie within the company, with the people themselves.
Together with a project team composed of different departments and positions (Design, Controlling, Sales, Communications and HR), we start the BOGNER Purpose Journey in January 2021 - a 4-month journey that, due to the prevailing pandemic, took place predominantly in the digital space.
What did our work look like in detail? (click on arrow for more details):
"Challenge-the-Challenge" Session
Team and project set-up and identification of initial fields of action and magic for the BOGNER Purpose.
Two-part digital kick-off workshop
via Zoom/Mural
Foundation for the co-creative way of working, in which the team got to know each other anew in a human way
Team agreements (e.g. #wecare or #nosolo) created trust.
A clear distribution of roles and responsibilities based on the RASCI method ensured transparency and commitment.
Identification of initial purpose magic fields (hypotheses), which served as the basis for designing the next phase of the project.
Build empathy
We dived deep into the BOGNER organization, heard exciting stories and, together with the project team, painted a picture of the BOGNER brand made up of human truths (insights).
Vision Talks with important decision-makers and personalities who have shaped or are shaping the past and future of Willy BOGNER as a company.
Story interviews with long-standing, new and talented employees to uncover formative stories from an employee's perspective
Company-wide employee survey on values and the relevance of the company for both employees and customers
Facilitation of a Insights-Surfacing
Workshops (digital), in which a co-creative analysis of the Empathy Phase and an elaboration of central truths for the awakening of the BOGNER Purpose and the uncovering of the corporate values took place
90-minute retrospective of the 'Build Empathy' phase
Purpose scenarios and prototyping
Based on the uncovered truths about the BOGNER brand, three relevant purpose scenarios with associated cosmos of values were developed and further developed together with the project team and tested with employees
Strategic consolidation of the empathy phase and development of resilient purpose scenarios and value fields
1-day Purpose Workshop (digital - split over two days of 4 hours each) for co-creative sharpening of Purpose scenarios and translation of scenarios into prototypes
Testing of the prototypes with selected employees
90-minute retrospective
Finalize & Purpose Doing Session
Final decision and further development of the favored purpose scenario and value cosmos into a final purpose statement with narrative and four central corporate values. Finally, we conducted a digital purpose doing session with the project team to translate purpose and corporate values into concrete behavior
1-day purpose workshop on site at BOGNER for the final decision which purpose scenario will be further developed
Finalization of purpose statement, narrative and value cosmos
Implementation Workshop - Design and delivery of a half-day workshop to kick off the planning of the implementation of the BOGNER Purpose and Cosmos of Values.
Outcomes
A unifying and motivating purpose statement and narrative.
Four new core corporate values that guide the organization's behavior.
Learning journey for the project team through the world of co-creative and digital collaboration.
Implementation impulses for the different activation areas: Proposition, Culture, Organization, Brand
Stephanie Eibich, Director Business Transformation
"I was blown away by the level of empathy and understanding that A Tribe Called Humans brought to the table. Their human-centered approach and creative facilitation skills helped us to unlock our team's creativity and bring our project to life in a way that we never could have done on our own."
