Travel Hub, previously named Central Mall, approached Mäd as part of their planned expansion from one flagship location to multiple retail location across some of Phnom Penh's busiest retail spots such as AEON 1 & 2.
The brief was simply: take the Central Mall brand and bring clarity to the market that Central Mall was the destination you visit prior to taking a trip, where you can find anything you might want with regards to luggage and travel accessories.
Our first step was to run a Design Sprint with the client and then start to understand both the market and gain some consumer insights via market research.
The name of a brand is perhaps one of the most important aspects of a brand. A good name can make communication effortless and create desire, while a bad name can create confusion, make you forgettable and undifferentiated.
One thing that become clear was that the name Central Mall was not equated with travel, and a large number of savvy and well-travelled consumers – the precise target audience! – actually confused Central Mall with the large Bangkok-based shopping mall.
With this in mind, it was decided to not just create a visual rebrand, but to work with the client team to create a completely new brand with a new name that would better communicate with consumers about the key products that are on offer.
The naming choice was eventually narrowed down to two concepts:
Further consumer testing revealed that CompassPoint had more connotations of a Taxi or travel-related mobile app, and TravelHub tested exceptionally well, and so the naming choice become clear.
Travel Hub was born.
Because the primary retail locations would be based in visually crowded retail malls and by the Central Market, we decided to create a highly modern, distinct, and recognizable visual identity that was made up of two primary elements:
The first, the Primary Logo, is the core of the brand and is used across all branded communications materials.
The second, which we called "The Swoosh" was to be used as a supporting visual element both in the retail locations as well as in advertising materials in social media.
The concepts of the retails stores aims to maintain a balance between a minimalistic and expressive theme. While the base of the store concept is minimalistic and sophisticated, certain part of the store reflect and express Travel Hub’s characteristics and the “travel” theme in an expressive way.
We also created detailed brand guidelines that covered every aspect and usage of brand including print, digital, and also guidelines for the interior design team to create the precise retails designs.
The brand was also rolled out across multiple social media templates, with a distinct photography style that instantly brings to mind travel and adventure.
To sell products, it's not enough to purely show the images of the products in isolation, you need to inspire.
This is why showcasing the lifestyle and usage of products is key, so that potential customers can image the feeling of actually owning that product, and this speaks to a far deeper, more emotive state of mind that purely trying to rationally convince a person to make a purchase.
As a final touch, we created a beautiful and functional website that provided consumers with key information on brands available, the locations of the retails stores, and also the warranty and guarantee information from Travel Hub.
This ensures that no matter how the consumer engages with Travel Hub, whether it's via the retail stores, social media, or the website, they have a consistently branded high-quality experience.
Mäd managed to completely transform Central Mall into a modern lifestyle brand that speaks to the fashionable well-travelled consumer. Travel Hub then expanded from one to four locations, cementing its position as the place where your journey begins.
Shortly after the project was completed, Mäd was then engaged by Travel Hub's parent company in Singapore, Campore Group, to roll out their corporate website.
For us, this is always the ultimate mark of success, building long-lasting client relationships that span multiple projects and business units, and forms one of the core parts of our strategy, which is why we have absolutely no sales people or account managers.
We believe great works should sell itself.
