The Alias story

Alias, a leading name in luxury furniture design, offers a range of award-winning designer furniture.

Since its beginnings in 1979, Alias has always pursued the ambition of making its furnishings part of the new culture of Italian design, combining excellence and craftsmanship with creativity and a spirit of the avant-garde.

Alias products, celebrated for their timeless design, sit harmoniously in private and public spaces alike, inspiring the imagination of other makers. The brand’s reach extends well beyond Italy, through distribution covering some 800 retail outlets and a solid online presence.

Coinciding with the major event of the Salone del Mobile in Milan, Alias aimed to consolidate its position in the market by publishing a new website and running a communication campaign to showcase the rebranding it had just completed.

At the same time the company was embarking on a significant process of technological innovation intended to improve the way it manages digital data. The main objective was to create an advanced website that would integrate smoothly with its existing digital infrastructure and with what was still to be implemented, together with a product catalogue that would remove the need for manual work. Those efforts represent a significant step for Alias towards digitising its internal processes, promising an unrivalled user experience and greater operational efficiency.

To bring this ambitious project to life, we applied our IAR method (Ideas, Actions, Results). A detailed preliminary analysis allowed Alias to gain a thorough understanding of the strategies required, culminating in a brand update and a company-wide digitisation.

DAM (Digital Asset Management) proved an invaluable resource for the centralised management, storage and distribution of digital assets such as images, video and documents. Equally, PIM (Product Information Management) provided essential support for organising, managing and enriching product information, simplifying its distribution across various sales and marketing channels.

Adopting DAM and PIM laid the groundwork for the launch of the new Alias website.

The primary objective was to develop an interface that would express the excellence and singularity of Alias product design while ensuring navigation remained smooth and accessible.

To achieve that, close collaboration between web designers and developers was fundamental, turning their vision into a digital experience able to surprise and engage the user from the first visit.

The site’s user experience (UX) was attended to in the smallest detail, in order to give the products prominence without weighing down navigation. The choice of colours and typefaces and the organisation of space followed the canons of minimalist design, concentrating attention on the quality and aesthetics of the products.

Integrating the website with the PIM proved crucial, allowing product information to be managed effectively and ensuring every detail was accurate and easy to find, from a single source (the so-called SSOT, “Single Source of Truth”).

The union of technology and design produced a website that not only does justice to the aesthetics of the products but also encourages dynamic, personalised interaction with the user.

To deliver this project as well as possible, particularly in creating a web interface in keeping with the brand’s renewal, a thorough analysis of Alias’s brand strategy was fundamental.

At the heart of that strategy is the identification of a foundation of core values that guide every action the company takes and every moment of its communication. Articulating those values precisely is crucial to formulating a coherent vision and mission, which in turn define the brand’s identity and its influence in the market.

A well-defined, transparent brand position acts as a mark of quality for customers, fostering an emotional bond that can turn into loyalty and active engagement with the brand.

A thorough understanding of the buyer personas was decisive in this process, making it possible to refine focused communication that reaches the intended audience effectively. That understanding guided the creation of tailored content and the delivery of messages designed to resonate as strongly as possible with the target audience.

Through this first phase we developed a brand strategy that made it possible to create the foundation on which to build the company’s marketing plan and the launch campaign for the Salone del Mobile.

Before proceeding with the launch campaign for the Salone del Mobile, we developed a comprehensive annual marketing and communication plan for Alias. That strategic document serves as a guide for the company’s marketing and communication initiatives, setting out how Alias intends to meet its objectives in those areas and specifying the strategies, tactics, channels, timings and associated budgets.

The principal components of the strategy include:

1. Situation analysis
2. Setting objectives
3. Target audience
4. Strategies and tactics
5. Communication channels
6. Action plan and timings
7. Budget
8. Metrics for assessing how effective the initiatives are.

The plan aims to ensure every marketing and communication initiative is aligned with the company’s objectives, keeping the message and the approach consistent on every front. It also serves as a monitoring tool, allowing progress to be checked and, where necessary, strategic adjustments to be made.

The project reached its culmination with Alias‘s communication campaign for the Salone del Mobile, an event that has been at the centre of the sector’s attention for years and draws companies from all over the world. This year marked the company’s debut with a new visual identity, a completely rebuilt website and a new line of communication. To ensure maximum impact, the structure of the launch was carefully articulated in three distinct phases, each with its own duration, approach, tools and content:

• Teasing phase: to stir interest and curiosity
• Launch phase: to unveil the new identity and innovations officially
• Follow-up phase: to consolidate the messages and the relationships established.

Central to the campaign is the annual concept, which brings together and expresses three macro-topics that are both the object and the subject of the company’s communication: giving proper weight to the company’s history and photographic archive ahead of the 45th anniversary of its founding; the many launches (website, rebranding, new identity); and the founding value expressed in the phrase “Something Else”.

That deep reflection produced a launch slogan perfectly in keeping with ALIAS’s identity and with the transformation under way: “Something Old, Something New, Something Else”.

The campaign ran across:

• the company’s social channels (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn)
• paid social campaigns (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn)
• the company newsletters sent to customers, suppliers and partners.

The path taken has considerably improved the company’s efficiency in managing product data, laying solid foundations for future digital initiatives.

It has also restored lustre to the company and to its historical and cultural legacy within a sector as significant as Italian design.

At OTO Agency, we firmly believe that the success of a digital transformation lies in the synergistic integration of technology, brand strategy and communication. That approach guides us on every project, helping companies turn their digital ambitions into reality.

Our aim is to take our clients all the way to the top of digital success.