Below: Before and After Images in Slide Show, Video, Summary, Credits
Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (MHI) is one of the world’s leading engineering companies, creating everything from air conditioners to aircraft, power station turbines to space launch vehicles.
With little identity of its own, MHI was poorly understood. Those who didn’t know the company confused it with other parts of the Mitsubishi Group, such as Mitsubishi Motors. Those who did considered it part of a problem: dirty, big industry polluters with links to the military. MHI needed to come out of the shadows and stand boldly upright, sensitive to its role in the larger company but distinctively separate from it.o confirm that they didn’t need to worry. We conducting anonymous interviews with a representative sample of those they work with.
We unlocked the pride that MHI had hidden. By reinventing MHI as a clean, sophisticated innovator whose technology opens up exciting areas such as space exploration, we gave the company a cool new NASA-like personality that looks resolutely ahead. Our strategic direction “Future forward” linked MHI with velocity, excitement and cutting-edge technology. We matched the direction to near-monochrome imagery that suggests science and the unlimited possibilities of tomorrow. In this way, we helped MHI make even the commonplace seem interesting. To balance the large-scale graphics, we gave MHI a human-scale tone of voice that connects emotionally with both internal and external audiences.
From the inside out, MHI has been recreated as the company it had never dared to reveal: confident, large scale, and at the heart of the human adventure. It no longer looks or speaks like a big industry behemoth. The change in attitude is tangible from increased investment to brighter recruitment. Even its most futuristic ambitions now seem within reach — and for once, this is a company that can genuinely deliver on the promise. Watch this space!
Client: Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Group – www.mhi.co.jp
General Manager, Global Marketing Communication: Hiroyuki Suematsu
Manager, Corporate Communication Department: Tomomi Anzai
Manager, Corporate Communication Department: Takanobu Itaya
Branding Director, Corporate Communication Department: John Shaw
Brand Strategists/Designers: Interbrand – www.interbrand.com
Chief Creative Officer: William Woduschegg
Creative Director: Hideto Matsuo
Design Director: Yuki Muramatsu
Designer: Yosuke Azuma
Designer: Masakazu Okura
Designer: Hiroyuki Suzuki
Designer: Kenji Terai
Project Manager: Kazuo Suguro
Executive Director, Client Service: Masamichi Nakamura
Photographer: Mitsuru Sakurai
