VICOIL® — Redefining 50 Years of B2B Industrial Heritage

The Strategic Challenge

With a 50-year track record, Vaselinas Industriales de Colombia S.A. possessed massive production capacity and an exceptional quality control laboratory. However, it faced critical market positioning barriers:

• Category Naming Limitation: The historical name restricted market perception, masking a broad portfolio that includes white mineral oils, hydraulic fluids, soluble oils, solvents, and synthetic lubricants.

• Perception Gap: Lack of a unified brand language to communicate its true industrial scale and technical rigor to high-level procurement teams in the petrochemical and Oil & Gas sectors.

• Internal Pride & Cohesion: A need to realign the internal workforce behind a renewed narrative centered on operational control, transparency, and product continuity.

A Rigorous Design Thinking Process

1. Empathize (In-Depth Plant Culture & Field Research)

We facilitated collaborative workshops to map operational workflows, client touchpoints, and internal team dynamics. We discovered that the company’s core value was not merely supplying raw materials, but guaranteeing operational continuity for clients through rapid response times and expert technical support.

2. Define (Benchmarking & B2B Data Analysis)

We audited the technical presence of key market players across national and international landscapes. Market mapping highlighted major industrial hubs (Santander, Mamonal-Cartagena, Antioquia, Valle del Cauca) where growing demand for contract manufacturing, custom formulations, and strict SLA delivery demanded a elevated brand standard.

3. Co-Creation & Participatory Naming

The brand renaming was executed as a quantitative, democratic exercise. We conducted physical plant surveys and digital voting forms to evaluate name candidates alongside employees:

• Evaluation Matrix: Candidates ranged from conservative heritage names to modern technical neologisms.

• Winning Candidate: VICOIL® was selected for preserving the legacy and recognition of "VIC" (Vaselinas Industriales de Colombia) while integrating the global descriptor "OIL," eliminating product category constraints and signaling international scalability.

Design Beyond Graphics: An Operational B2B System

• High-Performance Visual Identity: We developed a technical color palette (Black Petrol, Reactor Violet, Neo Green, and Catalyst Green) engineered to stand out across industrial environments, storage tanks, and shipping drums.

• Systematized Packaging & Labeling: High-contrast typographic hierarchy designed for plant operators and engineers, prioritizing safety data, specific industrial applications, and lab certifications.

• Functional B2B Digital Ecosystem: Tools structured directly for procurement officers and technical buyers, including downloadable Technical Data Sheets (TDS), Safety Data Sheets (SDS), and an interactive product equivalence finder.

Brand Tagline: "50 years manufacturing operational trust."