We know that September is a bit like a professional New Year's Eve: a time for reflection on the past year, on the objectives achieved and on the resolutions for the coming year. At Trainect we have decided to start (almost) 2023 with a new dress or a new branding: a new visual image that reflects who we have become and who we want to be.
In this article we want to tell you about the process with which we arrived at this new aspect , because it coincides with the path we have taken and because we want to share it with those who have kept us company in recent years and with those who will discover us from today onwards.
Let's start from the beginning
Trainect was born from the meeting of Alberto, Federico, Loris and Simone, our 4 Co-Founders, united by the desire to get involved with an entrepreneurial challenge and by a passion for sport and what it represents in terms of sociality and well-being.
In fact, what clearly shone through even then was an idea of physical activity as an expedient for spending quality time together , strengthening bonds and increasing one's awareness of the importance of well-being. In short, something that had little to do with mere physical training. This idea is also realized in the choice of the name Trainect: from the union of training and connect , to immediately make clear the importance we wanted to give to the connection between people.
Wellbeing is a topic that in unsuspecting times, in fact it was 2019, was not talked about at all in the company except in cold terms of welfare and benefits. From here the intuition was born: to offer well-being within the company's reach. Trainect therefore begins to position itself as a provider of wellness-related services conceived and designed to be intended exclusively for corporate populations.
Furthermore , the idea of holistic well-being is definitively rooted and the offer is enriched, offering contents and events that not only concern the physical sphere but also the mental one: we have brought yoga and meditation into the company , involving people in all-round sessions. It is opened with professional coaches and offering courses designed specifically for male and female workers.
Don't just call it welfare
The intuition not only turned out to be correct but almost prescient. In fact, with 2020 and the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, the interest in the well-being of employees and the attention to topics related to Wellbeing literally exploded together with the trend of training (whether physical or mental) online, facilitated by the use of content directly from your device.
It is an opportunity for Trainect to strengthen its bond with workers, focusing on listening to their needs and requirements, often ignored by their own company. In fact, it is thanks to surveys or other listening systems administered to our users that problems and critical issues have sometimes emerged regarding the internal climate and well-being of which the company was not aware.
As the latest research is demonstrating, a low level of wellbeing has important repercussions on business : poor engagement and team building, high turnover, increased work-related stress, are all aspects that impact productivity.
The context also required us to push towards the digitalisation of the service, thus bringing to light our web app, rich in video and podcast content: from running to yoga, from cardio fitness to meditation, there is something for everyone tastes and levels and user involvement through gamification becomes a trademark.
After two years of pandemic and lockdown it is clear that wellbeing is here to stay and that the characteristics of the approach to work have completely changed. Sensitive to these changes, in Trainect we realize that what is clear and evident to us (concept of holistic well-being, importance of mental and emotional well-being, attention to increasing environmental and social issues, increasingly hybrid and fluid dimensions of work) it does not shine through in our brand image or in our vision and mission.
This is why we decide to meet to reflect on our identity, as a work group and as a company: who are we today? What are our visions for the future? We thus organize a workshop facilitated with the Design Thinking methodology and redesign our values so that they reflect our new intentions.
A new value charter
We believe in an idea of well-being that is circular, responsible and shared. Our goal is to bring this idea within companies to encourage well-being that means taking care of yourself, the people around you and the surrounding environment.
Circularity My well-being corresponds to the environment around me and vice versa, in an interdependent and continuous relationship.
This also applies to the working context, which is why Trainect offers a tool that allows you to improve your physical and mental well-being and that of your surrounding environment at the same time, also making available the possibility of transforming your results into charity works.
Responsibility
Innovation always has consequences and we at Trainect choose to give it a positive impact.
This is why we adopt a bottom-up approach, which starts from listening to each other and the user base, with the aim of creating a human product in which all people can feel at ease, respected and included.
Sharing
Wellbeing cannot be extended if it is not shared and without sharing we believe there is no growth.
This is why we like to imagine ourselves as a meeting point, a further communication channel between the company and its people. Training is just a vehicle for a collective experience from which discussion, harmony and growth can arise.
Three milestones that guide our choices, from communication to the development of the technological platform, from UX to the choice of partners with which to build our value ecosystem.
Purple like Wellbeing
For the subsequent and consequent work on the rebranding we started first of all by listening to our potential users and stakeholders who we asked to participate in a survey to map the current perception of the brand . The results confirmed what it was now clear we wanted to abandon: an association that was too strong with the world of fitness.
The result is the new look that you see and which we will now tell you in more detail.
Imagery From a typical sport approach, such as the use of high definition photos, with strong contrast and sensations of dynamism and physical prowess, we have moved on to the use of illustrations, more friendly and reassuring which allow us to abstract the subjects represented adopting a more inclusive approach and who focus more on the concept of holistic well-being rather than merely on the physical and training-related one.
Colors We abandoned red which, being an activating color, brought back physical explosiveness, by virtue of a holistic approach in this case too, therefore choosing color palettes with a purple/blue dominant , which convey the idea of training and culture around well-being . The rest of the palette reinforces this concept, broadening the vision we have of well-being.
Typography
The change of direction regarding primary typography is consistent with the new approach described. In this sense, the choice to use a font like Neue Haas Grotesk, very varied in terms of styles and weights and which was created for display use, confirms the desire to approach a totally digital approach, with greater attention to of a more reassuring look and feel within everyone's reach. This results in improved readability and a lower barrier to entry across all of our touchpoints.
Tone of Voice
He has moved in a more informal and colloquial direction while always remaining professional, abandoning the "personal trainer" style to adopt one more like a wellness coach: more empathetic, which tries to bring the recipient closer to the concepts dear to us. This change is clearly visible also in the change of claim.
We have in fact gone from "well-being within the company's reach" to "Well-being is not a company priority" , to reiterate with a small provocation the importance of well-being and our siding with workers
Something that has not changed and will not change for the moment is our logo, our T, a symbol of flexibility and adaptability . Characteristics that brought us to where we are now, which still represent us today in our way of working (we are a full remote company) and in the way of use that we make available to our users, providing tools that are always ready to adapt to their needs , never the opposite.
Today, Monday 10 October, we officially announce the launch of our new branding, focusing once again on our belief that Wellbeing is a corporate priority for the simple fact that it is a priority of people, the only possible center of every healthy and sustainable organisation.