Neste Easy Deli: Brand communications throughout the customer journey

How adding a new touchpoint in brand communications disrupts the customer journey in unmanned filling stations? Finland is the land of technological, design, and engineering expertise. Finns tend to find the smartest way of doing something, then make sure that thing is done with great efficiency. This, however, can cause problems. Rapid success can lead to sprawling companies (think Nokia) where agile change to difficult market conditions can be extremely difficult.

Even Neste, a heritage Finnish brand and market-leading petrochemical corporation, sees disruption on the horizon. The countryside of Finland is peppered with unmanned filling stations providing the bare minimum of convenience for consumers. A pin-pad, a couple of pumps, and a canopy overhead are the most you can expect. As physical touch points go on the customer journey, these need to be improved to cater to the needs of drivers – today and tomorrow.

So, how does a well-established brand like Neste re-engineer a commuter’s customer journey, ensuring both the physical – and the digital – touchpoints continue to deliver value while reacting and adapting to a changing world? The idea of Easy Deli is born.

Scalable service – individual connection

The brief received from Neste operated on multiple levels. The guiding concept for this project was to find out if it was possible to create a space that feels welcoming for customers – even in the absence of friendly personnel. The key Neste brand values of safety and sustainability were chosen as guiding principles for all design work.

In practical terms, this self-contained space had to house five produce vending machines from Rivender, a Paulig Dias automatic coffee machine, and supporting equipment such as compressors, servers, refrigeration, water supply, maintenance access, and security infrastructure. The initial location for the space was to be on Kirkkotie in Siltamäki, Helsinki. However, the aim was to deploy the space in multiple locations in the future, meaning all of the above had to be housed within a footprint that easily fitted onto the back of a flatbed truck and met road transportation regulations. Finally, the space had to meet all safety, accessibility and hygiene requirements pertinent to customer service environments.

In practical terms, this self-contained space had to house five produce vending machines from Rivender, a Paulig Dias automatic coffee machine, and supporting equipment such as compressors, servers, refrigeration, water supply, maintenance access, and security infrastructure.

The initial location for the space was to be on Kirkkotie in Siltamäki, Helsinki. However, the aim was to deploy the space in multiple locations in the future, meaning all of the above had to be housed within a footprint that easily fitted onto the back of a flatbed truck and met road transportation regulations. Finally, the space had to meet all safety, accessibility and hygiene requirements pertinent to customer service environments.

Reflecting Neste brand values

With this brief, we quickly came to realize a space designed to fit into the local environment – that had to also work in multiple locations – had to draw from natural thematic elements that can be found wherever unmanned filling stations are located. In an ideal world, blue skies and lush vegetation would make Neste’s primary color palette of vivid greens and blues an obvious choice for branding and design. Weather, however, is rarely that reliable!

We instead focused on two key environmental elements: the wind, and the cars that pass by. The wind is constant, it exists everywhere. Unmanned filling stations are also invariably located near main thoroughfares, so a stream of red and white lights is always close at hand. From these two elements, the idea of a kinetic installation was born – something unique and surprising that connected the car lights and the wind.