Since supercomputer Meluxina went live in June 2021, Luxprovide’s teams began ensuring the machine was being employed for different use cases as well as testing and optimising its performance. But another key aspect of Luxprovide’s remit has been the onboarding of customers, with several businesses in Luxembourg being given early access to Meluxina’s top-of-the-range computing capacity.

The feedback Luxprovide received from those companies was that even though they recognised the extraordinary performance of Meluxina, the pure computing service it was pushing was covering the infrastructure needs but missing the business support. So, Luxprovide sought to reimagine its strategy. “If you would summarise what we are doing with this refreshed vision, it’s going from a push to a pull mode,” says Luxprovide’s marketing manager Luisa Marchina. “What customers told us was that they needed more than merely the infrastructure level. They needed the data sciences service on top of that.”

As Marchina explains, the marketing department’s efforts are now focused on pulling customers towards Luxprovide by making sure they get the appropriate offer. “So they don’t see Meluxina as just a tool that they have to imagine how to exploit. We want to accompany them and really co-develop and co-design solutions with them.”

This involved undertaking a deep exercise that initially meant delineating the new vision and extracting go-to-market to find the right target audiences, and also going through what Marchina calls a messaging framework to define everything from the tagline to the boilerplate to the brand stories.

As she explains, the exercise included also the development of the refreshed brand identity that unveils a new logo accompanied by a logomark and a visual campaign.

The new graphical element, synthetized also in the logomark, represents three main concepts. Firstly, elasticity, meaning that Luxprovide is able to scale, adapt and be flexible. “It is really the fact that we can adapt to any size of business, and we can work on tailor-made projects.” Then there is the connectivity element, which is all about collaboration, co-creation, and design thinking. “Basically being on the journey with the client.” And finally the concept of the platform itself and the way it is layered, with expertise and solutions sitting on top of the actual infrastructure. What’s interesting about the graphic element is that it has infinite modulation. “We have created a form that represents these three pillars and keeps on evolving,” says Marchina. “So, it's not always the same, and that really represents Luxprovide.”

The visual campaign comes on top and depicts the human-first focus, the environmental component, and the journey that LuxProvide takes its customers on, taking the next step.  

Multi-layered messaging

The messaging is also multi-layered and includes raising general awareness in addition to aiming at specific business and research audiences, as well as B2C communication. The latter required an approach that could make supercomputing more relatable by explaining it in comparison to cars and their horsepower, for example.

Luxprovide also presented the new messaging to a group of CIOs and CEOs from a range of Luxembourg companies familiar with digitalization. “We asked them if they understood the message and whether it matched their needs, and we captured their feedback. It was a very interesting experience.”

It was especially interesting for Marchina, who has a strong background working in industry, both for a small family business in her native Italy as well as for a big American multinational. “I've seen the two sides. The big planning and the hands-on approach. And I’ve always dealt with tangible product and production on the ‘pull’ side. I've been the customer that we are confronting today and I know how they think, how busy they are with their current processes, and how difficult it is to tell them to take some time to learn a new way to do things.”

So, the aim of the new marketing strategy at this phase is to generate customer engagement.  “Going further, of course, we want to make sure that we build reputation, build trust and therefore loyalty. The focus is on consistency and especially delivery, to maintain dialogue with the customers and to constantly evolve it.”

As for tangible targets, Marchina says that Luxprovide’s ambition is to reach anyone in Luxembourg and the greater region who needs support for their digital transformation journey regarding innovation, AI, simulation, digital twins and everything it can offer. “Ideally, we wouldn't want any business or research centre in this geographical area, not to know about who we are by the end of the year.”