Rusal sought to position its eco-friendly aluminum offering in a differentiated way. The company needed deeper understanding of customer groups, complex buying behaviors, and decision drivers to inform a credible brand and go-to-market strategy for green aluminum.
Vivaldi conducted interviews with 40+ stakeholders across the US, Europe, and Asia — spanning automotive, construction, consumer electronics, and packaging — to understand how board-level decision-makers evaluate aluminum suppliers and what brand signals resonate. Workshops and further analysis informed the strategy.
The project produced a comprehensive demand ecosystem analysis and a tailored brand strategy, positioning Rusal to better target customer segments and pursue higher-margin opportunities in low-carbon aluminum.
Rusal engaged Vivaldi to position its low-carbon aluminum offering in a differentiated way and inform a credible brand and go-to-market strategy across complex buying behaviors and decision drivers. Vivaldi conducted interviews with 40+ stakeholders across the US, Europe, and Asia spanning automotive, construction, consumer electronics, and packaging, then ran workshops and analysis to produce a comprehensive demand ecosystem analysis and a tailored brand strategy targeting higher-margin green aluminum opportunities.
Rusal is one of the world’s largest aluminum producers, historically headquartered in Moscow with operations across Russia and internationally. The company has positioned itself as a producer of low-carbon “green” aluminum, leveraging hydropower-based smelting to reduce the carbon intensity of its primary metal.
Vivaldi produced a demand ecosystem analysis and a tailored brand strategy that positioned Rusal to better target customer segments and pursue higher-margin green aluminum opportunities. The work gave Rusal a brand and go-to-market platform anchored in how board-level decision-makers in automotive, construction, electronics, and packaging actually evaluate aluminum suppliers.
The interviews covered the US, Europe, and Asia across four downstream industries because aluminum’s brand signals work very differently for an automotive procurement team than for a packaging procurement team, and a single positioning has to hold across all four. Workshops then translated the interview signals into a positioning that survived the variance across geographies and end markets, which is what made the ecosystem analysis actionable rather than descriptive.
Low-carbon aluminum gets specified by sustainability teams, paid for by procurement, and validated by engineering, and the decision often involves customer-of-customer pressure from downstream brand owners. Selling green aluminum as a product to procurement misses three of the four decision-makers, while an ecosystem brand strategy addresses the demand drivers across the whole chain, which is where the margin actually sits.
The transferable lesson is that sustainable materials premiums are captured at the ecosystem layer, not the product layer, because the willingness to pay is being created by brand owners several steps downstream from the smelter or mill. Materials companies that try to extract a green premium through product positioning alone leave the larger value on the table for whoever talks to the brand owners directly.
