Distinguished communication

PPR’s new communication brightens up the face of a Group in constant evolution by valuing the diversity of its business lines and its brands.

The three prizes¹ awarded to the 2006 Group Annual Report this autumn for the quality of its design present the opportu-nity to assess PPR’s communication, started in 2005. This year, François-Henri Pinault took control of the Group. Pinault Printemps Redoute changed name to adopt the simple and punchy PPR. This was a choice in line with the group’s actions and has the advantage of better expressing the new face of the Group (the former name only reflected one part of its business) and its international dimension; both simple and precise, PPR is easier to pronounce in every language. Moreover, the Group equipped itself with the signature “An adventure of enterprise” in the same impulse, revealed its visual identity around its new logo and puts a drastically re-modelled website online! “An adventure of enterprise” reflects the state of mind of a Group which is fundamentally animated by the entrepreneurial spirit. At PPR, energy supports action. Constantly moving forward, PPR’s greatest asset is the diversity of its business lines and its brands.
Publisher of ideas
The second act came in May 2007, with the publication of the Annual Report. As an institutional “rendezvous”, this publication applies new editorial and graphic principles based on a novelistic style, which now come in a variety of forms: letter to the shareholders, audit charter, Univercité booklet, presentation supports…Its compact format makes it easier to handle. The elegance of its colours and its page layout breathe a breath of fresh air into the whole collection. Care is also taken over the readability: the letters of the logo have been slightly separated so they can be read more easily. A new PPR style was launched: that of a “publisher of ideas”.
Tree symbol
The third act came in the form of a film signed by the modish duo Olivier Kuntzel and Florence Deygas, whose major work includes the impressive credits of Steven Spielberg’s “Catch me if you can”. This film shows PPR, its teams, its brands and its companies through of a symbolic tree. It is a styled and graphic tree whose trunk represents just as much an urban landscape as exchanges by road or the web of the internet, but above all, it is a tree with a dou-ble structure. “One part of the tree is developed in an architectural sense, sharp angles, branches drawn with straight lines which evoke the idea of rigour, and the other part, subtle and organic shapes, perfect for evoking intuition”, explain the two creators.

 

¹ The 2006 Annual Report walked away successively with three awards organized by Stratégies magazine:  the 2007 Strategies of design Grand Prix in the Institutional Publications category, the Stratégies / Condé Nast Luxury Grand Prix in the Publications category and the Communications strategies Grand Prix in the Corporate publication category.