Turning Jotun’s coatings into creative tools.
Powder coating is everywhere.
As one of the world’s biggest producers of paints and coatings, Jotun is a well-known global brand. One of their biggest segments is powder coating, a product fairly unknown to the average person. Powder coating is what gives the highest tower in the world - the Burj Khalifa in Dubai - its lasting colour. It’s also what gives fridges, motorbikes and oil pipelines their protective shades. But what if this industrial product was also a creative tool?
Appointed as Jotun’s first ever strategic creative transformation partner, Nomads have been involved in transforming every part of their business - from product development and customer segmentation, to employee communications and external marketing campaigns.
A rapid transformation.
Over the past five years, we’ve helped Jotun innovate their services, as well as helping them truly connect with a whole new audience through the use of data and our human-centred service design ethic.
Together with our concept design and communications, we’ve helped them shift from being a paint supplier to becoming a preferred partner to creatives - from architects, to product and furniture designers.
From factory parts to furniture.
Powder coating is a well-established industrial tool, primarily used to colour and protect metal and aluminium.
Even though it’s more sustainable, more durable and its aesthetics are superior to wet paint – it had never been used in the furniture design world. Innovation had not kept up with trends in design, so when Jotun developed the first ever powder coating for furniture design application, they changed the game and created a new world of possibilities. Our job was to open this new audience’s eyes to the possibilities of design using a brand new medium: powder.
Becoming credible with creatives.
In an age where digital tools bring designs to life, initial ideas often still take shape in an age-old way: through pencil on paper.
What if we could help Jotun to add value to this key part of the design process, long before regular paints and production are even considered? What if we could give furniture designers a way to show we really understand them and thier creative process?
The imagination collection.
We developed ‘The Imagination Collection’ - our name for Jotun's new line of powder coatings especially designed for furniture - inspiring designers to consider the creative possibilities of this new medium.
Instead of simply creating a brochure with colour swatches to try and interest furniture designers in Jotun’s new collection, we created a direct mail piece in a language all designers understand: pencils and sketchbooks. We created a powder coated pencil case with pencils that exactly matched the colours of Jotun’s new powder collection, showing our commitment to this new audience and helping furniture designers imagine their finished pieces before they even started.
For the first time ever, Jotun Powder Coatings was part of the design process before other brands had even been considered.
Connecting with architects.
Powder coating has been used to give aluminium surfaces the look of wood for years. The only problem was that up to now, it looked rather fake and not something architects were eager to use.
But what if Jotun could change this? What if we could find a way to show that this wood-look coating can in fact be a powerful creative tool?
The Jotun sauna.
Challenged with how best to showcase the real looking effect of Jotun’s wood coating product called Woodspiration, we realised that we had to go to the experts in wooden structures. We took two sauna experts (a Swede and a Norwegian) and we headed to the hottest place on earth, to build a sauna. The trick? What looked like an ordinary wooden sauna, was in fact made from aluminium. The effect - perhaps the first self-heating sauna in the world. We then filmed an instructional ‘How to’ video which we shared with architects and designers to show them just how real the look of Woodspiration was. So real, that even experts themselves were fooled.
