AWARDS
SHUI ON WORKX Brand Strategy and Bilingual Brand Name Creation
Established in 2004, Shui On Land is Shui On Group's flagship property company in Mainland China. Headquartered in Shanghai, Shui On Land’s ambition is to become the leading commercial property developer, owner and asset manager in China.
Prior to 2019, the office businesses under Shui On Land were not marketed as a brand segment and were limited to only traditional office rental. Anticipating on the future of workspace, Shui On Land was keen to create an office segment that is different from their traditional office rental business. In 2019, Shui On Land launched their office segment with unique brand positioning and a distinctive brand verbal solution created by Labbrand.
This project is a strong candidate for Best Strategic and Creative Development of a New Brand because the joint force of brand strategy and distinctive brand verbal identity helped Shui On WORK deviate from traditional workspace practices and enable the brand to nudge its way to become a one-of-kind office business segment.
Based on this new brand position, Labbrand successfully built a distinctive and all-encompassing verbal system for SHUI ON WORKX in both English and Chinese, including brand name, verbal icon, brand story, brand architecture, and module naming system.
The English brand name SHUI ON WORKX is simple yet memorable. While “WORK” being self-explanatory, the letter “X” adds a bit oomph to the name: X exudes a sense of being futuristic and high-tech driven, which is what SHUI ON WORKX strives to be. The shape of the letter “X” perfectly symbolizes the agile integrated ecosystem SHUI ON WORKX has built across the intricate workspace.
For the Chinese brand name, Labbrand arrived at 瑞安办公 [ruì ān ban gōng]. Being short and straightforward, the Chinese name carries the elements of the well-known brand name from Shui On Land (瑞安地产 [ruì ān dì chǎn]) among the Chinese consumers.
One of the highlights of this project is the conceptualization of “WORKX”, turning it into a replicable business model for future brand development. WORKX, in Chinese as 超维办公 [chāo wéi bàn gōng], meaning a workspace that creates value in 7 different dimensions including space, service, resource, development, culture, digitalization and product. Every dimension is associated with each other and together the 7 dimensions shaped the core value of “WORKX”, making the concept a standardized benchmark for replication.
Ever since 2016, Shui On Land has been rolling out a series of market plans including light-asset transformation, reserves increase, asset management enhancement, etc. And one of the initiatives is to launch our own Office brand which is highly different from current market players, either the traditional office type or co-working spaces. We are glad to fully collaborate with Labbrand team from 2018 and finally land on a great total solution. They have been a highly trusted and reliable partner along the whole journey.
