Viking Maritime, one of the world’s leading maritime services companies, unveils the new brand identity for its portfolio of businesses including Viking Crew, Chiltern Maritime and the Maritime Skills Academy. The work was undertaken by London and Kent based Think Studio, a leading creative agency specialising in brand and digital.
As Viking Maritime expands throughout the maritime world, from cruise lines to commercial shipping to super yacht industries, the aim was to create a distinctive yet aligned brand experience between its individual businesses, as well define a shared group brand identity.
Think Studio responded to the brief by creating a new parent corporate brand, Viking Maritime, under which all the companies could be represented.
Proving the rare power that can be extracted from a truly trusted and collaborative relationship, the leadership team at Viking Maritime participated in Think Studio’s brand EnVisioning Programme which enabled Think Studio to gain customer perceptions and market insights which shaped the creative process and ensured it also had commercial appeal.
The brand transformation resulted in freshly positioned and aligned visual identities, four new websites plus marketing collateral for Viking Maritime and its three core businesses – Viking Crew, Chiltern Maritime and the Maritime Skills Academy. The progressive and highly collaborative project took place within a six-month timeframe and Viking Maritime now has the capacity to offer group-wide services to its clients including a wide range of multinational corporate customers.
Matthew Jaenicke, Managing Director at Viking Maritime comments, “Our brief was to create distinctive, strong and complementary identities for each individual business within our portfolio whilst still retain the heritage of our founding company and Think Studio have surpassed that challenge. We are absolutely delighted with the outcome particularly as we can already see positive results. For example, Chiltern Maritime’s website now has a bounce rate of under 1%, having previously been 70%, and it is evident that this is due to the new identity, tone and messaging which is appealing to our cadets. One of our core brand attributes is that our customers can refer to all our companies at various touchpoints in their careers – from starting a cadetship to finding jobs to maritime training and professional development – and we believe that the united and revitalized positioning will enable us to attract and develop more talent and expertise within the global maritime industry.”
Alex Ridings, CEO and Founder of Think Studio, said, “It was an absolute pleasure to work with Viking Maritime as they are leaders in their field with a refreshingly open-minded approach to change.We became fully immersed in all aspects of the organization, including simulating jumping off a liner in an emergency evacuation, to gain a greater understanding of the company and its culture plus we interviewed customers and clients, past and present, to ensure that our solution delivered both commercially and creatively. We are extremely proud of the results as Viking Maritime now showcases an aligned outlook which befits the company’s status and ambition.”
The final piece of the Viking Maritime brand journey also included the re-naming and visual identity of Viking Recruitment to Viking Crew which reflects its business proposition progression today offering many wider maritime crew services – placement, management and deployment.
Viking Maritime’s re-brand also coincides with the creation of a new internationally focused website capable of serving the rising quantity of candidate applications received every month. The new website will offer a mobile app-style experience for candidates visiting the site from all four corners of the globe, sometimes even at sea!
For further information or images, please contact hettie.allison@think.studio(07913750202)
