Rebranding VSG

We were given the task of providing language services to the Association of the Swiss Natural Gas Industry (Verband der Schweizerischen Gasindustrie – VSG) for the complete reworking of the brand strategy and marketing campaign. This complex project ran for more than six months. The second stage started in the autumn of 2019, and Diction was once again on board.

The client

The VSG represents the interests of the Swiss gas industry domestically and internationally, and counts around 90 gas suppliers among its members. The VSG is headquartered in Zurich and offers its members support in areas such as policy, marketing, training and PR. Diction works with the VSG via the agency Heimat Zürich.

The task

The Swiss gas industry recently launched the gazenergie brand. This new name now provides a single brand for the industry’s products, technologies, network infrastructure, services and gas applications. But what does language have to do with rebranding? Quite a lot, actually. Consistent wording is essential for all texts and communication – across all languages. Diction was given the task of proofreading the marketing material in German and translating it into French and Italian.

This included strategy outlines, presentations, manuals, training material, glossaries, print ads, posters, reports, videos, online texts and slogans. The real challenge was ensuring that we used the same tone, style and terminology for all of these different texts across the various media channels in order to maintain a consistent and recognisable voice in all three languages.

The solution

As usual, we relied on our team of language experts and the right technology. In order to ensure consistency, our in-house translators and proofreaders from the various language teams constantly communicated with one another – for example, the Italian team might wanted to check how the French team interpreted a specific term or phrase. We were also in constant contact with the client, as the project continued to change and grow while we were working on it and providing the client with advice on the French and Italian translations.

We also received regular updates and feedback that had to be implemented and clearly documented. The task was made quite a lot easier by our computer-aided translation (CAT) software. In each language team, our translators ensured that the VSG’s translation memory and termbase were constantly updated with the most recent information. We recorded all the relevant terminology and corporate language, and kept note of any words that the client didn’t want us to use in its texts.

The bottom line: this was an exciting large-scale project that allowed us to support the VSG with our expertise and translation technologies over the course of several months.

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