"Engineered for ambition" - How and where the idea for Adyen's new slogan was born. And how is this change affecting the brand? We spoke to Katarina Nordin, Head of Global Marketing at Adyen, to learn more about the process.
Adyen is a payment company that enables businesses to accept e-commerce, mobile, and POS payments. Founded in 2006 by Pieter van der Does and Arnout Schuijff and headquartered in Amsterdam, Adyen currently employs over 2,000 people in 23 countries across 6 continents. The company has been profitable since 2011, reaching €1 billion in net returns for 2021.
Last month, Adyen launched "Engineered for ambition" - a new slogan that marks the next phase in the company's evolution and aims to serve as a brand platform fueling all its future creativity. To learn more about the idea behind this brand move, and what the overall creation and activation processes looked like, we spoke to Adyen's Global Head of Marketing Katarina Nordin.
Read Katarina's complete Q&A below.
How was the idea of “Engineered for ambition” born?
We believe that for a brand to drive business growth, it needs to be developed in parallel with the company strategy. Last year, we embarked on an exercise with our leadership team to define Adyen’s long-term brand, and ensure we’re telling the stories that fuel our growth. Our goal was twofold: to shape the broader story of who we are and what we offer while ensuring our proposition attracts top talent to grow their careers with us.
This process led us to ‘Engineered for Ambition,’ the cornerstone of our brand strategy which we developed in-house. It serves not only as our tagline but also as a brand platform informing all of our creativity. To bring it to life and maximize its impact, we went out with an RFP and met some incredible agencies. It was a difficult decision until we met Brand Articulations.
They fully understood our brief and took the time to get to know us. Since working together on our brand platform, we’ve collaborated on a manifesto to kick off this new exciting chapter for Adyen.
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Have you faced any challenges during the creative process?
At Adyen, we like to move fast. It took less than six months from the conception of the creative brand platform until its launch. This meant that we were pushed to make decisions on how to tell the story and distinguish the important from the nice-to-have. The time crunch was challenging, but with the right team on our side, it resulted in an outcome we’re truly excited about.
What was the motivation for the new brand positioning? Why now?
Our purpose has been the same since our founding: Adyen helps businesses grow through technology. What started with payments has become far broader. Today our single platform offers industry-leading data insights and a powerful suite of financial products. As our business continues to evolve, so too does our brand story of how we’ve engineered our payment capabilities into an innovative financial technology platform.
We noticed the launch video on social. What other activities have you planned as part of the activation campaign?
Ahead of the launch, we wanted to ensure everyone at Adyen truly understood and connected with the company tagline. It’s not a new marketing campaign or advertisement, but rather an expression of our team’s culture, mindset, and business ambitions. We knew from the beginning that to achieve this, we needed to make the tagline internally visible. We focused on making it noticeable everywhere, and secondly, we invested in a few high-impact moments to explain and contextualize what the tagline means and how it will be used.
The litmus test for the creative was launching a manifesto video that was so good that everyone working at Adyen would want to share it on social media. Our job on the day should only be about making it easy to do so. We were thrilled to see the response and that the approach was successful.
Beyond the launch, this is now the concept that informs all of our creativity - from how we position ourselves in our different markets to how we speak to prospective talent. Watch this space.
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