Skogen borrows from scouting, not tech, for GridScout’s identity

GridScout makes sensor units that bolt to power-line poles and sit out in Norwegian weather at its most extreme – picking up vibration, temperature, moisture, woodpecker damage and pole tilt long before any of it becomes an outage. The units deter woodpeckers as well, playing the call of a rival bird. Most of the people that GridScout is built for are former scouts once, or at least spend their free time hunting and hiking. Trondheim-based creative agency Skogen was commissioned to create the identity. The client’s first ask was an explainer film that would make the complex product easy to follow, along with stand materials for industry fairs. With a go-to-market phase coming, a review of the existing brand was also required. “We had some elements in place, but the identity foundation was incomplete. We gave Skogen our existing materials, told them that nothing was sacred except the name itself, and that we were not necessarily looking to change our logo,” explains Espen Gerhardsen, GridScout’s CEO. All six employees took part, led primarily by Gerhardsen and Head of Business Development, Eva Hoff. The industry that GridScout sells into is often conservative and risk-averse. The identity had to work for line crews and operators in the field, for network managers and grid owners, and for boards weighing safety, cost and risk. Skogen positioned GridScout as ‘a reliable colleague on every pole.’ “We wanted the brand to signal that we deliver robust sensor technology for a demanding industry, while at the same time reaching decision-makers at every level in the industry,” Gerhardsen notes. “We keep the identity consistent across every surface it appears on, so it looks much the same in the boardroom as it does with a line crew. The tone shifts, naturally quieter in sales material, presentations and on the website, but the system underneath doesn’t change,” details Skogen’s Senior Designer Embla Eide Robertson. “There’s real pride in being a scout, real history. Scouting felt like the right thing to borrow from, not a tech reference,” she tells us. Skogen had to keep the identity warm and straight-talking, but also technical enough to be trusted with critical infrastructure.