Wolff Olins Global CEO Sairah Ashman sits down with Karin Lepasoon, Chief Communications & Sustainability Officer of ABB to discuss taking the brand in a new direction, its approach to sustainability, and her advice to those embarking on a similar journey.
You joined ABB in 2022 as the Chief Communications & Sustainability Officer to push the brand, reputation and sustainability positioning forward and have been instrumental in developing ABB’s global brand positioning. Coming into the position as the new Chief Communications & Sustainability Officer, did you start your tenure with a vision for taking the brand in a new direction?
I began my tenure with the goal of understanding ABB and using what I learned to drive profitable growth. My vision developed as I spoke with colleagues around the ABB world and from the market research we undertook – the opportunity we uncovered was significant and the task ahead to unlock that opportunity was clear.
While we make the world’s industries more productive, efficient and sustainable, ABB is relatively unknown as a brand in some of our markets. Yet once you become familiar with us, you’re very likely to consider us a partner because we have such an enormous impact to point to.
So, if we could simply make more people familiar with who we are and what we do as a company across all of our business areas, we would have a greater impact for our clients and for ABB.
From your perspective, what did ABB need the new brand positioning to achieve, and why?
It’s straightforward, our brand needs to make us known for the right things by our customers to drive profitable growth.
To get there, we needed to understand two things: what do our customers need from us and what do we do really well? A great brand positioning sits at the intersection of these two things.
Our customers told us: we need our operations running at high performance while ABB also helps us to become more efficient, more productive and more sustainable, so we can outperform and meet increasingly taller targets.
They also told us: ABB is known for reliable engineering technology that runs well — consistently, efficiently, productively. And for partnering up with customers to constantly push the performance of that technology, and customers’ operations.
At ABB, we’ve distilled the intersection of these things into one driving idea: Outrun. You’ll see this word in our new tagline “Engineered to Outrun”, which is our promise to customers and ambition for everything we do.
This is what we have always done best at ABB. Now we have a powerful way to talk about it.
The category in which ABB operates tends to speak about sustainability and innovation quite broadly and repetitively. How is ABB now doing this differently?
Being in the sustainability space is very important to ABB. It is core to our purpose and the impetus behind many of our technologies. But while sustainability is important, it is not something that can truly set us apart in the eyes of our customers on its own. It is — and should — be true of every brand in our space.
So we wanted to use our positioning to say something else. Something more specific that really speaks to why customers choose ABB. And what they really need is a partner to help them outrun. We are lucky this is what we do best, so we wanted to use our brand to communicate this message, while continuing to keep sustainability at our core.
You have a decentralised operating model with many stakeholders across 18 divisions, 4 business areas and 100 countries. It can’t have been easy building interest, engagement and buy-in from all of those people – What worked during this process and how did you encourage buy-in along the way?
At ABB, we have a decentralised operating model which allows for our divisions to stay close to their customers and support them in the best way possible.
So, it was key from the very beginning to involve our whole business in this process, engaging a diverse group of stakeholders at each critical step. We were lucky that there was great interest and involvement from our business areas and divisions right from the start — not just in the Executive Committee but across ABB.
We shared every phase of work with our teams, using their insights to build on our own — often sharing the same piece of work several times as we progressed through the development process.
In addition, we spoke with many current and potential customers around the world to ensure we reached the right result for all of our stakeholders.
All in all, it took a bit longer to develop the positioning than if we had gone for an approach with less involvement internally and less research externally. But the result is an engaged steering committee and a bulletproof final answer that we know will work across ABB.
Looking back on what you’ve achieved so far, is there anything you would do differently or that’s shaped your leadership style that you’d share with others embarking on a similar journey?
The project team has invested a huge amount of time and dedication over the past 15 months. But now, it is in the hands of our 105,000+ people to bring the brand positioning to life – in their own roles, in their own work, in their own conversations with customers. And that’s the most rewarding part.
If I had practical pieces of advice, it would be these:
One: take the time to anchor the work properly among key internal stakeholders. Bring them along the journey. Engage them. Make sure they have what it takes and what they need to lead the positioning by example.
Two: don’t underestimate the power of a good buffer at the end of the process — there is always more to do before you go live than what’s originally in your project plan.
And finally, take a moment to reflect on and celebrate what you’ve achieved as a team before diving straight into the next challenge.