Nagüeva

PEOPLE ARE ALSO BRANDS AND CAN BUILD A GREAT ASSET ON THEIR NAMES. Guilherme “Nagüeva” is a multidisciplinary professional who had a very unusual trajectory in design. He was one of the pioneers in WordPress and SEO in Southern Brazil. He was the Chief Design Officer in a car sharing startup acting in areas such as service design, business intelligence and design leadership. He also held the position of Senior UX Designer at Philips Brazil, being responsible for the automation of design processes for Tasy EMR, a leading product in the healthcare sector in Latin America. In order to stand out professionally, Nagüeva approached Saad to develop a personal branding project, focused on understanding his differentials, exploring market opportunities and defining his positioning.

giving voice to ideas 

During the course of the researches and workshops conducted by Saad with the professional himself, as well as interviews with people close to him and working partners, Nagüeva’s main differential value became clear: solving complex challenges in an unusual and effective way through design and technology – embodied into the brand idea “Cha(lle)nger” (changer + challenger). In addition, some features stood out: phrases like “I am the synthesis of excess“, “I don’t fit into anything and, at the same time, I adapt to everything” and “break away from what is mainstream“, along with the meaning of the name (“Nagüeva” came from a joke between friends and it means “what is in my throat, what I want to talk about”). It all led to the creation of a minimalist identity in black and white that uses only text (the main element of the brand, referring to the meaning of the name) that adapts to the most different sizes, formats and platforms, translating attributes such as intensity, transformation and experimentation in a direct, bold and unconventional way.

big new cha(lle)nges

The personal branding project included the definition of the entire brand platform (buyer personas, drivers, archetype, purpose, positioning, mission and brand persona, in addition to the main communication channels, tone of voice and strategic recommendations). Less than a year after the project, Nagüeva was promoted and transferred from Brazil to the global headquarters of Philips in Eindhoven – the Netherlands, where he now holds the position of Senior Design Technologist. In the words of Nagüeva himself: “I used the new brand strategy in the way I positioned myself in meetings, conversations, as a team leader and project leader and it was essential for what I am living today. Here [in Europe] I took on the projects that were less relevant, that nobody was paying attention to and that nobody wanted and used the brand platform that we defined with them. One of these projects has become part of Philips’ global scalability strategy and another, a low-priority project from earlier this year, is now one of the main projects and is directly linked to one of Philips Design’s KPIs. It’s a one-year journey here in the Netherlands and it’s unbelievable. If I didn’t have my personal brand project, if we hadn’t stopped back then to think strategically about how I would position myself as a professional, I wouldn’t have achieved all of this.”