Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington is reaching beyond the capital – with a brand new offering focused on the cutting edge of business learning.
Kāpuhipuhi Wellington Uni-Professional represents a more flexible, dynamic and tailored way of learning – to help professionals build a more holistic blend of commercial, cultural and emotional skills that are designed to meet today’s demands.
And with help from strategic branding agency Launchsight, Kāpuhipuhi Wellington Uni-Professional is now launching courses in Auckland from June 2022.
Launchsight was engaged to lead a market validation process, developing the customer journey, brand strategy and design – beginning with coaching the Uni-Professional team through an in-depth customer empathy and innovation process to create a highly-contemporary learning experience for today’s professional people.
The team’s research revealed that professional people faced huge change and disruption – even prior to Covid – requiring rapid adaptation and the continual building of a much broader range of contemporary skills, that they can immediately apply.
Traditional ‘professional development’ can often fail to meet this core need. Often highly industry specific, it can also be seen as technically-focussed, theoretical, inconvenient to access and not easily malleable to an individual’s unique skillset needs.
Launchsight strategy director Chris Meade says: “The Kāpuhipuhi Wellington Uni-Professional opportunity was to offer the complete set of contemporary skills professionals need right now. Skills that compliment traditional industry training and grow an individual’s confidence and wellbeing.”
With contemporary skills delivered in easy, interchangeable modules that can be relevant across different industries, a brand story and positioning defined this offer as ‘the new intelligence’ – reflecting both the skills and innovative methods on offer, and the business learners who recognise and embrace their value.
A brand foundation built on ‘Empowering Fresh Skillsets’ led to brand design that combined personable, human warmth, with a clean, intelligent modernity …reflecting the underpinning thought leadership of Te Herenga Waka-Victoria University of Wellington.
The name Kāpuhipuhi, referring to the cluster of new growth branches at the top of a tree, was gifted by Mana Whenua Te Ātiawa. The name represents the green shoots, the growth seeking the light – synonymous with professional excellence and reaching your potential.
What stood out for Gary Ward, Wellington Uni-Professional’s General Manager Engagement, was the detail of the insights the Launchsight process revealed.
“Through the market validation process customers told us they didn’t associate a ‘university’ with ‘professional development’, however, they did recognise it as giving any learning a powerful mark of quality. Based on the work with Launchsight we saw previously unexplored markets or professions where our contemporary skills offering was a perfect complement for existing vocational or technical skills,” says Ward.
