The first week in Superunion

- This is the comparison between the visual identitity of Lianhua and other cases.
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By Hunter Zhu
Graphic and Media design

In the wonderful September, I came to Shanghai to work as an intern for DPS project in WPP Superunion , a great company that I have been looking up to for a long time.

Since January 2018, WPP Group, the world's largest group of advertising communication, restructured its five creative and well-known companies （Brand Union、The Partners、Lambie-Nairn、Addison and VBAT） into a new agency for consultation and design of global brands. The restructured company is named "Superunion", which has set up 23 offices in 18 countries and will mainly provide services for brand image, animation, packaging design and digital media design. Jim Prior, the global chief executive of Superunion, said: "The world needs creative solutions to stimulate growth, which cannot be achieved with traditional methods. This is why we have formed the "Superunion". Originality must be applied to the core of an enterprise, since it can influence the innovation, cultural change, products and services. We will provide more comprehensive services to help customers to achieve success.”

I have been working in Superunion Shanghai office as an intern in the Creative Department.The Shanghai office was formerly known as The Brand Union, one of the first international brand consultancies to do business in China. It has been operating in China since 1999, focusing on introducing leading foreign brands into China and looking for effective operating models in line with the local reality. While helping Chinese businesses build their brands, they also help well-known foreign businesses or brands to find an appropriate brand development path when trying to enter the Chinese market. Their customers include both international and Chinese well-known companies. International customers include: American Express, HP, Bank of America, Suntech Power, SABMiller, Unilever, Mars, Motorola, Vodafone, Credit Suisse, Corus and KPMG. Brand Union has enjoyed a sound development in China in recent years. In addition, typical domestic clients include: COFCO, China Mobile, and OCT. Relatively satisfying cases involves ENN Energy and rebranding Legend Capital which has recently announced the completion of Lenovo Investment.

In the first week of on and off duty in Superunion, I’ve been given a research task of ours new project which to re-create the brand identity of a Chinese well known chain supermarket called Lianhua. Their theme color is yellow and blue, basically it’s quite similar to the visual identity of IKEA, but that of IKEA is much better than the VI of our client, people can recognize classical ‘blue’ of IKEA in miles, what’s more, the brand identity is been used on every details including: price tag, package, checkout point, wall decoration… in IKEA’s department store. Although the brand positioning of IKEA and Lianhua is quite different, and they are selling different kinds of products. But I think use the case study of IKEA can describe a good future of Lianhua to our client. My job is to research and design the applications like: package for our client. And our department as a outline design team, we believe we can create a remarkable branding image for our client, in order to be successfully survive in the China’s fast-changing retail market which is full of competitions.