An Italian energy company completely overhauled the visual identity of its intranet, moving from fragmented communication across separate group entities to a single, unified voice — new colours, seasonal campaigns, and a genuine focus on the people who join and the people who leave.
3 key project figures
- 700+ unique viewers for the most recent Christmas campaign page
- 250+ likes gathered across both seasonal campaign editions
- 15 days average time to activate a new campaign from concept to publish
The problem: many separate voices, one identity to reclaim
Before this project, the company communicated in a fragmented way. Separate mini-intranets had been built for individual group entities, each with its own editorial approach. But the company’s ambition had shifted dramatically: instead of distinct entities speaking separately to their own employees, the goal was a single group communicating with one voice.
The legacy colour palette — heavy on blues — no longer reflected the identity the company wanted to project. A deep change was needed, one that went beyond aesthetics and touched on organisational culture.
There was also a more delicate challenge tied to the people themselves. The company experiences a fairly high turnover, with several retirements each year — sometimes five in the same month. Publishing an individual welcome news item for every new joiner would have flooded the intranet with repetitive announcements, making it impossible to give any real prominence to those arriving.
The solution: new colours, new words, more humanity
The starting point was a user survey to understand browsing habits, what employees could easily find, and what remained elusive. From that work came a new visual identity: a palette replacing the blues with a deep violet — called Indigo internally — and a lime green used to animate the navigation menu on hover. Every graphic element was attended to with care: textures, custom imagery, homepage layout, and the names chosen for each section.
The naming work was particularly significant, because every label had to reflect the group identity the company wanted to convey. The individual entity mini-intranets were switched off, and all content useful to everyone was consolidated into a single platform. The people directory was given greater prominence on the homepage — colleagues had identified contact search as a priority need — alongside HR initiatives, employee benefits, and local sponsorships, from community sports teams to Christmas markets.
Handling high turnover without flooding the feed
To manage the high turnover without overwhelming users with repetitive announcements, a collective newsletter format was introduced: a single news post that gathers both farewell messages for retirees and welcome notes for new joiners. It consistently ranks among the most-read content on the entire platform. New joiners are asked to fill in a short form with a photo and a brief description — a small gesture that makes the welcome warmer and invites people to share a piece of themselves from day one.
Seasonal campaigns: two editions, two tones, consistent participation
The two Christmas campaigns run over recent years illustrate how the tone of internal communication has evolved. The first edition invited teams to share a photo representing their Christmas, with a playful and open approach, accompanied by a fictional character who told a small story each day of the campaign. The second edition, following a change in internal communications leadership and a preference for a more corporate register, asked employees to represent one of the company’s newly launched values instead.
To address legal sensitivities around sharing employee images, a mandatory disclaimer with explicit acceptance was introduced before participation was enabled. The final prize was designed together with the client’s team: the winning photo was turned into a jigsaw puzzle, delivered to the department that took it, which then assembled it together and hung it in the office — bringing a digital initiative to life as a small, real-world team moment.
The results: more traffic, stronger community, more trust
The numbers tell a story of solid participation across both editions. The first campaign gathered 290 likes; the second, more corporate one, gathered 238 — but the campaign page attracted 706 unique visitors, a figure that goes beyond direct interaction and shows how many people paused to look even without engaging. Overall intranet traffic rose during campaign periods, partly due to a dedicated homepage button that caught the attention of users who might otherwise not have read the news.
The most significant result, however, was building trust with a stakeholder who initially approached initiatives like this with caution. Every proposal required concrete examples, data from similar projects, and a clear rationale before receiving approval. Over time, even the more conservative voices within the client’s team began to open up, and today new requests arrive with considerably greater mutual confidence.
What comes next
The first priority is a full navigation menu review — over the years it has accumulated many sections and needs restructuring to remain intuitive. The second is creating a proper onboarding area, designed to guide new hires through a structured digital journey. Given the volume of people joining each year, this will require direct involvement from the HR team.
Work is also under way to build a more comprehensive analytics report, covering views on HR-related pages — a dashboard that will provide a much clearer picture of how people actually use the platform day to day.
Changing the colours of an intranet is only the visible surface of deeper work: reclaiming a common voice when previously each entity had been speaking its own separate language.
Do you want to rebrand your intranet and unify your group’s communication? Book a demo and discover how intranet.ai can guide you through the rebranding of your platform.