KEKO – Striking brand and website for an ecosystem project

How can we make buildings more intelligent, energy efficient and productive while also ensuring they are safe, comfortable and user-friendly? The increasing demands on buildings call for better utilization of building data.

The data can be almost anything from kilowatt-hours and visitor counts to CO₂ levels in the indoor air. As there is so much data with so much development potential available, utilizing the data requires collaboration.

KEKO is a consortium founded in 2019 to create an efficient and dynamic ecosystem around building data. The project’s founders are KONE, Nokia, YIT, Caverion, Halton, VTT and Netox. Business Finland has funded the project.

The more participants there are in an ecosystem, the more efficient it becomes. This is why KEKO had to send a powerful message about the project to potential partners and clients.

For the message to go through, KEKO needed to define its brand core, design a brand identity and build a website to inform people about the project. Encouraged by our collaboration with Caverion and VTT, KEKO’s communications team selected Paper Planes to execute the project.

Brand work completed in two workshops

Using our brand framework, we facilitated two workshops where we could quickly define a brand story and design a visual identity to accommodate the story.

In the first half-day workshop, we concentrated on creating a brand core and a brand story. The exercises we used in the workshop are based on Google Ventures’s Three-Hour Brand Sprint model, which we slightly tailor to suit the needs of each project. The workshop consisted of around 15 people, involving experts from communications to engineering.

The decisions made in the workshop helped us to finalize the brand core (vision, mission, purpose, values etc.) and the brand story in seamless collaboration with KEKO.

The brand definition process took two weeks, comments and revisions included.

Exquisite and forward-looking visual identity

After completing the brand definition process, we facilitated a visual identity workshop. To create a visual identity that reflects the brand, we used the participants’ favorite examples, custom moodboards and rough sketches of potential styles.

In the workshop, we concluded that KEKO’s essence would be best reflected in a visual identity that combines mystical, darker colors with the freshness and optimism of bright accent colors, with the logo adding a hint of artistry to the mix.

After the workshop, we finalized the corporate identity. At the same time, we used the website as a testing ground that provided examples of the visual identity creation process. Creating the brand book and the website prototype simultaneously enabled us to move quickly.

Fast, impressive and expansive website

The KEKO website was built using WordPress and was published in early April 2020. From the first brand workshop to the website publication, the whole project took approximately two months.

The site loads fast, meets accessibility requirements and is optimized for search engines. Captured leads are collected to HubSpot, and it’s easy to add new content to the site.

With a quality product in our hands, it was safe to launch and present KEKO to a wider audience. We wrote the press releases in Finnish and English, and they got impressive coverage in both national and international media outlets.

The most important achievement, however, has been the fact that KEKO has reached and convinced the right audience. The KEKO consortium has been flooded with contact requests from potential partners.