Carré Blanc
Reworking a consumer brand’s
voice
Carré Blanc is a well-known household linen brand that was founded in the Rhone Valley, a region that is home to many textile companies. As the company approached its fortieth birthday, it wanted to embark on a comprehensive rebranding, including its brand voice.
Focusing on the linguistic aspects of rebranding
The creative agency Skarand was already working on Carré Blanc’s rebranding when it contacted me, looking for help with the editorial aspect of the project.
Putting the brand identity
into words
Skarand had already conducted workshops with Carré Blanc, so I used the transcripts of these sessions to improve my understanding of the brand’s past, present and future, along with an editorial audit, benchmark and additional interviews.
Verbalising a creative concept
Skarand’s creative concept revolved around the ideas of freedom, brightness, movement and senses. I considered how these ideas could affect the way the brand talked and formalised some principles to be added to the new brand platform. These principles included:
- Playing with societal norms and paradoxes
- Shaking things up a little (such as moving away from using vocabulary focused on tradition)
- Being more creative (personifying products, boiling down the text for a more direct style, etc.)
Here, I described Carré Blanc’s brand personality and the relationship it wants to build with its audiences.
A style guide with rewriting examples for editorial consistency
I ensured that the brand manifesto and style guide were as practical as possible.
In addition to written explanations and implementation examples, I provided rewriting examples for every principle mentioned.
A focus group to reflect
on the tagline
This rebranding was also an opportunity to begin a process to reflect on the brand’s tagline. After a phase of creative research, we selected the best options with Carré Blanc’s content team and I conducted focus groups with real customers who provided feedback on our propositions. We presented our recommendation to the company’s management; they were very satisfied with the work but are yet to make a decision about the brand’s tagline.
Implementing this new brand voice
I was delighted to continue working with Carré Blanc to provide guidance on using this editorial identity on a day-to-day basis:
- I proofread and rewrote the two catalogues which were subsequently published to ensure that they reflected the principles we had agreed on. I provided explanations in the comments to help the editorial team get to grips with the new style for future content pieces.
- I proofread and rewrote the templates used by Carré Blanc’s customer service to answer questions on social media.
- I wrote corporate content for Carré Blanc’s website when Skarand redesigned it a year later.
‘We worked with Loreleï to update our editorial style guide. She immediately understood our expectations and our brand identity. The deliverables were of excellent quality and we are extremely satisfied with her work. I highly recommend her!’ ’
Amandine Laroche, Former Head of Marketing at Carré Blanc
‘We worked with Loreleï to update our editorial charter. She immediately understood our expectations and our brand identity. The deliverables were of excellent quality and we are extremely satisfied with her work. I highly recommend her!’ ’
Amandine Laroche, Former Head of Marketing at Carré Blanc
