Xella Romania
A regional leader, taught to see itself as one
Xella Romania is the local arm of Xella, a German building-materials group whose walling and insulation brands — Ytong, Silka, Multipor — are used on construction sites in about twenty countries. In Romania the operation had grown fast and brought several businesses into one company, taking in the best-selling local masonry brand Macon alongside the European flagship Ytong, and becoming the country’s leading producer of autoclaved aerated concrete. Through the engagement the group was owned by the investment firm Lone Star; that ownership is now changing, with Holcim having agreed to acquire Xella and cleared its European competition review — a change that sits above the Romanian operation rather than within the work described here.
Brandient worked with Xella Romania on two fronts. One was public: the redrawing of the Macon brand, launched in 2021 under a "smart standard" promise, which set out how the local masonry brand stood beside Ytong in one well-governed portfolio. The other was internal, and it is the subject of this case: not a logo and not a visual identity, but the organization itself — understanding the company’s culture and giving it a shared story strong enough to rally around.
The work began by listening. Through in-depth conversations with the company’s senior layers, Brandient looked for what made the team distinctive, what motivated it, where it felt friction, and what it promised the people it built for. One insight stood out, and it was an uncomfortable one: this was a regional leader that did not yet see itself as a leader. By the group’s own measures the Romanian operation was among the best in its region. But its people did not talk about themselves that way. Their pride was in effort, in resourcefulness, in being close to the client and solving the client’s problem. It was rarely in the language of leadership, of being a model others should learn from. The company led its region and had never been told so, and had never told itself so.
So the strategic move was not to invent an aspiration but to give the organization an honest, locally rooted identity it could believe in and live by. Brandient gave Xella Romania a leadership narrative and a set of guiding principles to support it, and turned the company’s values into named behaviors rather than words on a wall. Each value became a behavior: what dialogue and mutual recognition look like day to day, what owning your responsibility means in practice, what professionalism asks of each person — and, added for the local character, a can-do spirit of empowerment and engagement. Values stated as nouns change nothing; values written as behaviors can be practiced, noticed and recognized.
The local character was captured in a simple triad: a team that knows, a team with a smart way of getting things done, and a team with the resilience to see it through — know, can and do. From that came the proposition the company could honestly make to its own region: the resourceful Romanian team that always delivers. And from that came the employer promise that gave the identity a clear, memorable form: a company of smart doers. The promise did two jobs the situation demanded. Inside the company it gave a post-integration, often hybrid team a common narrative and a shared reason for pride. Toward the group above, it gave Romania a confident, clear promise to be known by.
The idea was then put to work in daily life. The narrative appeared in the places where people actually work, kept alive by regular recognition and shared celebration rather than launched once and forgotten, so the renewed sense of the company was practiced rather than just announced.
The outcome was a leader equipped to recognize itself — an organization that could finally say, to itself and to the group above it, who it was and why that mattered. Not a new look but a new self-image: a resourceful Romanian team of smart doers, ready to take pride in the leadership it had already earned.
Client:
Xella Romania
Industry:
Manufacturing and Industrial
Project type:
Brand Consultancy Specific Solutions
Date:
2020–2021
Services:
Brand Audit, Brand Positioning, Brand and Portfolio Architecture, Organizational Culture branding, EVP and Employee Brand Engagement, Communication Design
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