Great office branding makes for a great place to work
As O2’s headquarters closes. I’m reminded of how much innovation was packed inside these 200,000ft of offices.
A dream brief as a head of brand was to create a new welcoming European HQ for 3000 O2 employees.
The brief. Link an old building and a new build. Create a clear vision to better connect our people. Make the design and employee brand experience seamless. Demonstrate how innovative the brand could be and how we could push boundaries creatively. And live the brand internally.
Rooms were based on park names. Each room was a visual delight. Bringing to life what each park was famous for. From bird boxes to mosaics. The boardroom was called Windsor Great Park and had an actual fibreglass Oaktree. We even had a campaign room where characters from our TV ads appeared to re-enforce both the products, services and brand.
Rooms also featured what we were most proud of from our interactive partnerships like The O2 and Rugby to our loyalty programme, O2 Priority.
My personal favourite was segment street. Where rooms were dedicated to customers. Instead of reading insights and research, we encouraged our teams to put themselves into the customers shoes literately. The aim was to create insight led products and services.
Although I know everyone there had their own favourite rooms.
The attention to to detail was amazing. We obsessed about getting it right and making it a great place to work. When it opened in 2008, some 15 years ago it really felt like anything was possible. It was a great place to work with so many talented people.