How to own the big ideas transforming your industry
CBRE had a content challenge that revealed a larger headwind in overall perception—across the company and across most lines of business, clients fundamentally did not understand what the firm could do.
At a fundamental level people didn’t get the company’s value prop, because the brand wasn’t telling a consistent or coherent story—about itself, about the world, or about its impact. It lacked a clear point of view. It needed to create and articulate a simple, intuitive story that connects the brand’s potential with it’s audiences’ experience and needs.
Approach
We aimed higher than real estate. We studied the most elite consulting companies in the B2B landscape, modeled how they use thought leadership and trend analysis to lead conversation and in turn generate demand for specific consulting verticals. Then we developed a global research and trend analysis framework to create a commercial real-estate version of that ecosystem.
Strategy
Help audiences see CBRE as more than just a source for real estate listings and marketplace data by leveraging research content to position the brand as the experts and thought leaders who can help clients identify challenges, interpret trends, and deliver custom consulting solutions.
Solution
Establish a global thematic framework to explore the high-level trends shaping both data and the brand’s solutions offerings.
Help CBRE demonstrate every day how partnership with the brand can help clients own the big ideas transforming the industry.
Our brand story about the future
Key External Transformation
Where before there was a chronological cadence of one-off data publications, now there is an Insights Platform telling a steady, evolving story that helps clients navigate the future.
An excerpt from the consulting model we built to get C-suite buy-in
Key Cultural Evolution
The new thematic framework reminds that research and solutions expertise are not separate lines of business—rather they’re connected expressions of a singular brand POV, leveraging insights to clarify the value of solutions offerings, and cutting across silos to catalyze collaboration throughout the company.
Project Overview
Agency
Trollbäck and Co.
Creative Deliverables
We delivered a new creative strategy and framework for CBRE’s global data and insights—long term themes to establish a brand story that connects with the company’s solutions offerings, trending topics to showcase emergent shorter-term trends, and a simplified portfolio of publication categories, types and names to standardize output and deliver consistent clarity to the firm’s clients.
Strategy
Intake
Conducted stakeholder interviews and ongoing close collaboration to define the challenges and identify the opportunitiesModeling
Modeled the most elite consulting companies in the B2B landscape, how they use thought leadership and trend analysis to lead conversation and in turn generate demand for specific consulting verticalsLandscape Analysis + Whitespace
Performed qualitative analysis of the landscape and competitive set to identity potential whitespace
Framework
Creative Strategy
Designed creative content strategy to empower CBRE to own the big ideas transforming the marketplaceBrand Story
Identified and named core themes that will establish a new brand story in the minds of audiences, as well as inspire and shape ongoing efforts by the research and content teams
Training
Workshop Design
Designed a training program to socialize the new framework and instruct teams around the globe on how to implement and create content that builds the brand storyWorkshop Lead
Co-lead a series of interactive workshops to instruct and practice thematic content creation