Marketing strategy and brand building in the veterinary industry

Vetro, our client, is a distributor for veterinary pharmaceuticals. The company is the leader in its niche market and offers premium products for farm and companion animals. Moreover, Vetro also provides professional consultancy, educational opportunities, and continuous training for veterinarians, as well as digital tools that make life easier for both the doctors and the patients’ parents.

The Vetro specialists understand well the needs of their clients; the ultimate purpose of all their actions is the well-being of animals. The Vetro team works for more than 1500 clients and counts 50 people, of which more than half are veterinarians.

01. The Challenge

No. 1 in Romania

Vetro aims to become no. 1 nationally in terms of revenue and as a relevant contributor to changing the mentality in their field, so that the veterinary industry changes from a „market of pain, into a market of joy”.

Opening a veterinary pharmaceuticals plant here, in Romania, as well as strengthening the business and building new business opportunities, while developing a new B2B division are some of Vetro’s ambitious objectives.

Vetro

02. The solutions

Brand building & connecting the branding and business objectives

Brandocracy applied its approach that had already been confirmed in previous projects, which connects the business and the branding objectives. It involves a modular system that allows customization of the solutions and prioritizes those activities that have the potential to drive results.

Brand building

Marketing Positioning

We also redefined the marketing positioning. Following the rebranding process, Vetro undertook the role of the change agent in the Romanian veterinary market.

Here is what Mrs. Coca Cașcaval, Vetro general manager, says about our collaboration:

“During the first seven years, Vetro found its place on the market. Last year, we started to make the necessary steps for sustainable growth, by adopting objective-focused management. We consolidated our existing teams, created new ones and we are now able to go to the next development stage with the help of the Brandocracy team, who assists us with the brand building, market positioning, defining our values, and creating a new visual identity. Our long-term objectives include entering the market for generic veterinary pharmaceutical products, along with the launch of a platform to connect Vetro, the veterinary practices, and the pet owners, an innovative marketplace for which we invest approximately 3 million euros.”

360 degree marketing strategy

We built the marketing strategy starting with the SMART objectives, then the brand building, and continued with the four types of Buyer Persona that we had identified. The strategy included local and international market research reports, as well as marketing channels and tactics. We consider that this type of integrated strategy will support Vetro achieve its objectives.

We handed in a marketing strategy that includes marketing objectives derived from the business objectives and key metrics (KPIs) to assess performance. This way the management team can track the results of the implementation. In addition, the content marketing strategy was designed to cover at least one year, so that it would support the achievement of the marketing objectives.

Employer of choice

Vetro operates on a highly competitive market, where the human resource has a key role for the success of the business. During our working together, we uncovered that becoming an employer of choice is one of Vetro’s top priorities, considering the market requirements. This objective was given special attention and we defined the first steps for an employer branding strategy.

Key messages

The Brandocracy team created the key messages that were naturally integrated into all forms of internal communication at first, then followed by the external communication, within marketing and PR campaigns. Defining these messages also meant we had to adapt the sales speech and the entire company's tone of voice; we also had to redesign the presentation templates and the social media visual assets.

Following the process of brand rebuilding and confirmation of the company values and brand pillars, we delivered to Vetro an integrated visual identity concept. The new website, vetro.vet is also part of this process.

03. The Visual Identity

The Vetro symbol traces the face of each animal

The „V” symbol

We wanted the visual identity to reflect the essence of the Vetro brand, so we started with its spirit, values, and mission, which we had identified during the brand building process. Vetro’s entire operations focus on the love for the animals and on giving support to veterinarians; we used these elements as starting points in designing the visual identity. First and foremost, the Vetro symbol means tracing the face of each animal; the letter V frames the animals’ eyes and noses. We know that each animal has unique behaviors and features; because Vetro loves all animals, farm or companion, we aimed to state, through this symbol, that it is the eyes that reflect intelligence, wisdom, and attachment.

Thus, the love for farm animals and pets is what transpires in the Vetro visual identity. In addition, besides these two categories of animals, we depicted in the footer another one, as a symbol for wisdom: the owl - the forest doctor, the Wiseman. This choice was based on the fact that Vetro’s mission is to deliver actual, innovative solutions for both the veterinary practices and the veterinarians who take direct care of pets and farm animals.

The health and well-being of animals is Vetro’s ultimate purpose.

The “V” symbol that we BUILT is a conceptual image of the animals for which Vetro devotes its efforts.

Furthermore, there is no other object better related to the medical profession than the stethoscope (also V-shaped) – even in veterinary medicine it still represents a surprisingly relevant “gadget”, keeping up with its high-tech rivals.
We also considered that Vetro’s focus is on the veterinary practices, clinics, and veterinarians so that the farm animals and the pets can grow healthy, while their “parents” stay happy.

The „V” symbol also depicts the brand positioning: „Vetro is the vector for change on the Romanian veterinary market.”

In Physics, v → is the actual symbol for the vector.

To sum up, this symbol-logo that we created for Vetro states that the brand is the vector that drives the change in this market. The company invests a great deal not only in digitizing its own business but also in creating advantages for the veterinarians who work with them. Thus, Vetro is a change agent on the national market. The vision behind this project is well defined around performance and standards and it is now reflected in the visual identity, as well: logo, brand manual, colors.

The Colors

Green is the color of life, nature, and energy. It relates to growth, harmony, freshness, safety, and the environment.

The green has healing powers and is considered the most calming and relaxing color for the human eye.

We also chose green because is generally associated with the pharmaceutical industry. In addition, the brand archetype that we identified for Vetro has a strong association with this color.

The secondary colors, blue and golden yellow, accompany the color range of the Vetro symbol.

Blue speaks about empathy and community. It represents the sky and the sea. It is associated with open space, freedom, intuition, imagination, expansiveness, inspiration, and sensitivity. Blue also stands for trust, loyalty, candor, wisdom, stability, faith, and intelligence.

Golden-yellow, in branding, symbolizes the premium quality, professional consultancy, wealth, value, prestige, generosity, optimism, power, and perfection.

Vetro became leader thanks to its offer of premium products, professional consultancy, educational opportunities, and continuous training while employing specialized digital tools.