The market for academic diaries has changed significantly. Family-run business Pirong’s had to move with the times and explore new ways to remain competitive after 50 years in the business.
Maintaining the position as the No.1 retailer of academic diaries was the aim for this project that would redefine their brand and tell their story. The challenge was to take this trusted brand, rooted in tradition, and reinvigorate it with some future thinking. As a family business with a very loyal customer base, it was important that the name remained and stakeholders were involved in this change process. At a workshop with staff and customers, together we explored and filtered ideas for innovative new products that went through to development. They would stick within academia as their primary market, but they expanded with a new range of products to support academic life, from clocks to post-it notes as well as a much broader selection of diaries. The new branding across the company and the new range repositioned Pirong’s as modern, playful, and optimistically strong.
“For many years we managed our own design, slightly erratically, but we muddled through. We now have a brand that is totally original, neither over commits or restricts us. Not only do we have more clarity, but we very much enjoyed the process.”
Robin Pirong, Joint Managing Director