Turning three letters into a strategic frame

POI Business Interiors has been outfitting Canadian workplaces with ergonomic office furniture and workspace solutions for 60 years. It knew what it did and knew it did it well. But when we came on board to refine their brand system and build out a brand strategy guide, we discovered something that surprised us both: nobody – not even the internal team – could say with certainty what POI actually stood for.

It originally stood for Prestige Office Interiors, but POI had been the name on the door for decades. The founders moved on, the acronym stuck and the story behind it quietly disappeared. What remained was a brand running on reputation and momentum – which works fine until it doesn’t.

We went back to first principles. Starting with defining the company’s purpose – Inspired Work. Inspired Life.™ – we created a new meaning the whole organization could embrace and build upon. POI now stands for Points Of Inspiration: the people, places, partnerships and perspectives that make it a genuine partner in creating workspaces that don't just support productivity but reflect how the people working within them actually want to feel.

From there, we developed an interactive brand guide that gave POI’s marketing team a design platform for creating compelling, brand-aligned campaign materials — with visual application guidelines, tone of voice direction, key messages and templates they could put to work without needing outside support for every piece.

“Points Of Inspiration” doesn’t just work as a tagline. It functions as a strategic frame that gives POI’s team a consistent way to talk about what they do and why it matters. It gives their clients a reason to feel an emotional connection to an office chair beyond the quality of its lumbar support. And it gives a 60-year-old brand a shared story worth telling.