Waters Corporation: Alliance iS
A new brand for a revolutionary lab product.
In laboratories around the world, scientists rely on accurate information to make critical decisions – whether it be in the discovery of new drugs, guaranteeing the safety of food or monitoring the world’s water supplies. Waters Technology Corporation, the world's leading specialty measurement company, helps ensure the accuracy of this information through high-value analytical technologies and industry-leading scientific expertise.
Since being founded more than 60 years ago, Waters has been a market leader in the high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) space – but it operates in a competitive market and has been under pressure to defend market share.
When Waters decided to launch a new product – the Alliance iS – in 2022, it needed a brand that would reinforce its leading position in the liquid chromatography (LC) category. The new brand needed to be bold and differentiated, convey the product’s key benefits to scientists and lab operators, and work within the wider framework of the soon-to-be-updated Waters corporate identity.
SERVICES:
01. Brand strategy
02. Visual identity
03. Activation
Our work with Alliance iS
01. Brand strategy
02. Visual identity
03. Activation
It was clear that the Alliance brand needed to reinforce Waters’ credentials as market leader in an emotive and impactful way. It needed to underline the fact that Waters understood and was listening to the needs of the market.
‘The Alliance wasn’t created in our labs, it was created in yours’ became the guiding mantra for the Alliance iS brand. It enabled Waters to leave behind technical category conventions and focus instead on emotive storytelling and the benefits for end users: scientists and lab operators.
Our work with Alliance iS
01. Brand strategy
02. Visual identity
03. Activation
The visual identity for Alliance iS needed to reflect the product’s value to scientists. If the product was all about ease-of-use, simplicity and functionality, the visual identity needed to convey these points of differentiation.
The design tenets of simple, human and user-centric helped create an intuitively simple design system, which then guided the brand’s visual language. A simple square, a foundational shape in chemistry, informed the Alliance iS icon as well as the simple math of the grid system.
The colour gradient introduced the liquid chromatography process while the colours themselves represent a merger between the Empower software’s green and Waters’ blue. A single typeface expresses the brand’s messaging in a human way, reinforcing the fact that the Alliance iS isn’t just a machine; it’s an ally that helps simplify the lab experience and can be trusted and relied upon.
Our work with Alliance iS
01. Brand strategy
02. Visual identity
03. Activation
To activate the new Alliance iS brand, we created a multi-channel launch campaign across digital, print and launch events. The campaign spoke to the deep value offered by the product: how it helps scientists, saves time, prevents errors and ultimately acts as an ally to users.
The product was launched at Pittcon 2023, one of the largest North American laboratory science conferences. With more than 20,000 operators, lab managers and scientists in attendance for the launch, we invited them all to say ‘Hi,’ to their new lab ally.
