Our perspective is that a brand is a business issue that should have depth and commercial meaning. We work with Boards and senior managers to strengthen and build their brand reputation.
Both partners have worked at Board level in complex organizations re-branding Barclays, Aviva, Thomson Reuters, CGU, Norwich Union.
Our experience covers all stages of brand development: research, internal engagement and creative execution. We have experience integrating with PR and corporate responsibility programmes. We offer a safe pair of hands and an experienced set of eyes when businesses are reviewing their brands.
Creating a strategy that can work across different markets and different product lines is not a trivial/superficial matter. We start our work with an analysis of the financial value across the organization. Where is the value being created today and where will it come from tomorrow. All of our work is underpinned with a solid link to the business strategy.
All brands need to start with insight. That is relevant and motivating to their stakeholders. This relevance needs to be both emotionally astute and rationally appealing. The ability to listen to the customer in a manner that goes beyond the superficial category findings and unearths something that has the potential to be a powerful platform to build differentiation on – is what we do. Running the focus groups ourselves on small scale or shaping the research brief for larger scale projects.
With ‘Norwich Union’ as the chosen brand name for the merged organization, it was vital that employees had a sense of ownership of what the newly created brand ‘stood for’ – we ran workshops with employees across the organization to give them input to the brand promise and values.
Barclays is a complex organization, operating in many markets – with customers as diverse as students to large corporates and HNWIs. Working with each part of the Group, a range of engagement approaches were deployed.
For the Aviva rebrand. Employee and customer engagement took place through-out. From employee workshops across the globe to customer panels, engagement was a key part of the program. Then, once the brand strategy was developed, board executives led the mobilization of their teams.
When building a brand for Aviva corporate we placed the company’s social responsibility at the heart of the strategy. This approach fitted in and complemented the Norwich Union brand name. Building a better tomorrow was the articulation of Aviva’s corporate brand position. The creative strategy then focused on forward looking individuals who reflected this in their own lives.
With the Board’s decision to migrate Norwich Union to Aviva, our challenge was to bring the brands together. Our creative solution was to include Norwich Union’s sponsorship of UK Athletics into Aviva’s corporate brand campaigns. The brand tracker showed that both brand names worked better together than in isolation.
The advertising strategy stressed the need and importance to be seen as an international and powerful bank, not just a UK Retail high street bank. The strength of size was important and reassuring to customers. In our research the following was one customer’s analogy: “If I am to drive on the Motorway, I want a big car not a small one. It makes me feel safer. It is the same for major financial decisions that I take.”
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