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Kenwood turn to Rodd for strategic guidance

Earlier this year Rodd Design completed a piece of design strategy for Kenwood, manufacturer of small domestic appliances and home to the legendary Kenwood CHEF food mixer. From its beginnings Kenwood has always maintained a strong design ethos, which is now managed by its own internal design team run by Johan Santer.

By their own admission internal groups can often need reassurance that their own strategy is the right one, the pressures on these groups from other internal and external pressures mean the old adage ‘cant see the wood for the trees’ often is the case. Johan and his team faced a similar issue with Kenwood¹s breakfast category.

Rodd was selected above other groups as it offered a fresh and independent view of the issues tempered with our own in-house knowledge of Kenwood. Rodd¹s Senior designer, Mark Morgan worked alongside Johan in the early noughties designing the classically modern CHEF model and the award winning EON range of breakfast products.

During early discussions we linked up with James Surridge and his team at Ideaology who had already created a brandprint booklet that described Kenwood brand aspirations and ‘Kenwoodness’, the consumer touchpoints that make Kenwood different and unique. Whilst these design values are clearly obvious in the CHEF and K-Mix range they are harder to see in the current breakfast category.

Early effort was directed into understanding buyer groups and the needs and aspirations of these users. These needs were translated into product values, values about quality and ‘look and feel’ that these consumers would expect from their products. Finally ‘examplar’ products were designed showing how these values would manifest themselves in real products.

Many of our suggestions for the future strategy for the breakfast category matched the conclusions of the internal group whilst other recommendations breathed a fresh approach to how design was communicated internally and externally at Kenwood.

Johan Santer commented

“From the outset Rodd had all the right credentials and experience we were looking for to provide the insight and independent thinking essential to this project. Peter and Mark never failed to deliver on this and although it’s conclusion was to validate our own thinking and design direction I’m confident they would have delivered highly creative design solutions and a thoroughly professional service had it turned out differently. It was a pleasure working with Mark again and with Peter for the first time and I look forward to future opportunities to work together “

For more information about this story contact Peter Phillips.

:: Email me: Peter Phillips