Reporting directly to Ford Land CEO, Jim Dobleske, Anuja Raja and I completed a benchmarking analysis and campus narrative to understand the key opportunity areas for Ford’s branded place-making.

As part of an adjacent study, we created six placemaking strategies for storytelling. The strategies are adapted from urban planning principles, bringing relevance for the interior environment as well as campus plan. They range from past, present, and future-focused. Through our network, we were able to visit the headquarters of McDonald’s, Chick-Fil-A, Coca-Cola, Pixar, Uber, and Levi’s to evaluate their branded placemaking through the six strategies. All environments were analyzed and cross-referenced to evaluate leaders and laggards in each concept. This resulted in the discovery of six key opportunity areas to guide Ford’s future investment.

Additionally, the need for a well-defined campus experience has resulted in a campus narrative and building-renaming strategy. Bringing structure to the employee journey across campus, key buildings and landmarks were given “Resumes” to evaluate their individual features and experiential signifiers. This aided the company in understanding each element’s unique contribution to the overall campus experience and is being used as the groundwork for building renaming.