Conduct design audit of all Lada's brand touch points and visual communications including Moscow, St.-Petersburg and Russian regional towns. Identify the main issues to be taken into consideration for developing a compelling Lada brand experience in Russia; strengthen its attractiveness and competitiveness both in Russia and abroad.

After buying in 2007 a 25% stake in Russia's largest car manufacturer Avtovaz - owner of Lada brand, Renault undertook a design audit of all Lada brand touch points to showcase Lada in a brand new light. Russian design research and strategy consultancy Lumiknows together with French design and brand consultancy undertook a vast design research to help Renault in this endeavour.

Among the objectives of this design research project were:
Brand Audit - to develop a better understanding of the Lada brand perception in Russia, including its image, identity, brand experince and customer touch points;
Mentality Research - to improve Renault's understanding of drivers and basis of mindset of the Lada existing and potential customers;
Marketplace Research - benchmark of both car brands competing to the Lada brand and those to which current Lada customers tend to switch to;
Visual Storytelling - to facilitate Renault to develop a coherent brand appealing to visual and emotional preferences of the Russian customers through synthesizing the findings in visual storytelling.

The scope of research included visiting and shooting in more than fifty car outlets in Moscow, St.-Petersburg, Novgorod and Kolomna of not only Lada's but of other car makers from lower-price segment to some presenting premium one. Focus group discussions in the both Russian capitals, in accordance with a methodology specially designed by Russian design consultancy Lumiknows for this project, were conducted. Among others, the issues discussed during the FGD were analysis of Lada logo, "visual universes", adverts, printing materials, commercials, in-store experience, Lada brand emotionality comparing with other automotive and non-automotive brands well known in the Russian market.

The outcomes and insights of the project were put together in the form of recommendations concerning Lada brand positioning and identity, preferences of Lada target audiences, visual consistency of brand touch points, Lada logo restyling, ways of endorsing Lada brand experience as well as identifying peculiarities of the Russians' perception of colours, visuals and textual information.

You can see other design research and design audit projects aimed at the Russian market: Samsung Electronics, Danfoss/DEVI.

Design Research for Russia  |  Product Design & Development in Russia  |  Culture Transformation