BOWERS & WILKINS

When British hi-fi company Bowers & Wilkins announced they were returning to UK ownership after 5 years of control by an American tech firm, their CMO called Automaticos. The challenge was to bring the global loudspeaker and headphones leader back to its roots through an authentic brand positioning and simpler brand architecture. They wanted to recapture brand love and preference from customers and dealers, and realign their product, marketing and sales teams across the globe.

Uncertainty about the new brand across markets led to inconsistency. Through interviews, workshops, and research, Automaticos and the CMO co-created a “new-old” Bowers & Wilkins brand story, and simplified the brand architecture and messaging frameworks for individual products.

Automaticos created the new master brand positioning for B&W, a brand architecture revamp that included product positioning charts, competitor and target audience context, and a simpler categorisation system to guide future website changes. The brand architecture and messaging framework provide a way to consistently tell the “True Sound” story across every product tier. In 2023 Automaticos created a new naming system for a line of products in the 2024 lineup.

• A complete advanced company guide on how to do brand strategy and talk about the company & products, used across product, marketing, and sales teams; becoming the playbook used to brief all new employees and agencies

• 30% increase in revenue within 1 year

• Simplified website and associated top-level navigation, and better product pages, outperforming previous version on all metrics, including e-commerce