Gira

The German family-owned company Gira, founded in 1905, develops system solutions for electromechanical building control. Today, the company is one of the leading providers and one of the most distinctive, well-known brands in the industry. In the eyes of customers, the company has been predominantly associated with switches. However, in view of the trend towards smart homes and smart buildings, Gira recognised that this would not be enough to lead the Gira brand into the future. Therefore, the company decided to reposition the brand in 2020. In concrete terms, the task was to open the Gira brand towards the end customer on the one hand and to establish it in the smart home and smart building sector on the other. The brand was to find customer favour in the field of intelligent building control and be established as an integral part of architectural planning. With its new brand identity, Gira is consciously focusing on different ways of addressing partners from the electronics trade and industry on the one hand and end customers on the other. While the focus in the B2B area is on technically sound, factual arguments and expressive product demonstrations, the B2C target group is addressed with emotional texts and human motifs, the skilful play of light and shadow and the selective application of spectral colours at an emotional level. Although technology plays a communicative role at Gira, the perspective clearly changes in that people should not have to understand technology, but instead technology should understand people. The new brand identity has been implemented in a two-phase campaign. In the first phase, the Gira employees were involved and actively contributed to answering surprising and courageous questions that encourage people to think or start a dialogue, questions such as “Will we still need switches tomorrow?” or “Isn’t intuition the best control element?”. This teaser campaign was intended to attract the attention of the trade audience and increase the level of commitment to the brand, especially among employees and specialist partners. In a second phase, the so-called “On / Off” campaign was launched across brochures, advertisements, on social media platforms and so forth in order to expand the target group address to include end customers. The campaign has culminated in the new claim: “We are the ones with the switches. But we’re also so much more. Smart home pioneers, KNX partners and shapers of the future.”