Let’s play happy families

Brands help people navigate choice

Brands help people navigate choice. When an organisation has multiple brands, getting the ‘brand family’ dynamics right is essential in helping people understand and trust the brands.

Things can get messy fast when a masterbrand (the parent) adds or incorporates sub-brands (relatives: siblings and children). Decisions to extend services or introduce new initiatives are often done at pace which can mean that these brands start to experience growing pains, with the ‘family’ not gelling.

When this happens, it makes sense to zoom out and review how your brand family works together. Do the relationships between the brands help you fulfil your mission? Are they all contributing to the organisation’s vision? Getting straight on your brand architecture is vital to answering these questions.

That said, thinking about brand architecture can tie you up in knots. It’s something that quickly becomes more technical than useful but there are certain principles that always hold true. In unpacking the three main models, I’m going to illustrate how these principles can be applied to help you build a highly functional brand family dynamic.

The different models

There are three main models for organising brand families: pluralistic, monolithic and endorsed. And, on occasion, there’s justification for choosing a hybrid solution (a combination of two or more of these models).

Pluralistic: House of Brands

Defined by a portfolio of distinctive brands, the pluralistic approach means the parent organisation’s identity is hidden or regarded as irrelevant to the end user.

For example, Unilever’s brands operate independently with no visible connection to Unilever on their packaging or in their marketing activity. With brands such as Dove, Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum, the House of Brands approach enables Unilever to tailor its marketing to specific audiences without diluting brand equity. Some of its brands, eg Ben & Jerry’s and Magnum, even occupy the same space.

Brand architecture House of brands model

This one’s a ‘no’

Let’s put this model to bed from the get-go. My focus in this post is on third sector organisations, not the consumer brands that are most often associated with this approach. The example of Unilever, often cited as a successful brand family solution is, in practice, in this sector, vanishingly rare. Even non-profits and charities with the largest budgets would struggle to justify the management and marketing costs of a House of Brands approach. So, for the purpose of this post, we can safely set aside the pluralist model.

The Branded House and Endorsed brand models are far more common in the third sector:

Monolithic: Branded House architecture

The monolithic approach is centred on a dominant, singular masterbrand which is the primary driver of trust. Audience decisions are driven by loyalty to the master brand with its brand promise and personality exerting greater influence than any specific services or initiatives.

Extensions of the brand often see the parent brand’s name paired with descriptive, generic terms. In consumer-brand-land, the example of FedEx is cited as an example of this with its FedEx Express, FedEx Freight etc sub-brands.

Brand architecture Branded House model

An example of an organisation in our sector that uses the Branded House model is UAL.

Masterbrand: UAL: University of the Arts London
Sub-brands: UAL: Central St Martins, UAL: London College of Fashion, UAL: Chelsea College of Arts and so on.

Branded House model UAL

Although we’re labelling the above approach as monolithic, in practice we soon find that the brand and its sub-brands operate, day-to-day, in a more hybrid way, borrowing elements of an Endorsed Brand marketing strategy to maintain the individuality and legacy of UAL’s constituent colleges.

So, what’s an Endorsed Brand?

Endorsed Brand architecture

The Endorsed Brand model sees sub-brands having a clearly defined market presence while, at the same time, benefiting from the association, endorsement and visibility of the parent. The parent brand is almost always presented and associated with the sub-brands.

Brand architecture Endorsed brand model

Eg International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement

Masterbrand: International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement
Endorsed sub-brands: International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC) and national societies like the British Red Cross or American Red Cross.

The red cross, red crescent and red crystal are symbols of protection.

Each organisation serves its own unique role but benefits from the globally recognised Red Cross/Red Crescent identity. It is designed quite literally, to protect the authorised medics who wear them.

Endorsed brand model Red Cross Red Crescent

Perhaps an easier way to explain the differences between Branded House (monolithic) and Endorsed Brand architecture is to view the two models side by side:

Endorsed Brand modelBranded House model
RelationshipSub-brands can be distinct but are always presented and associated with the masterbrand. Or represented via a version of the phrase “by”: “part of…”, “powered by…” etc.

(Adobe + Photoshop, Illustrator, United Nations + UNICEF, UNHCR)
All offerings fall under one unified brand identity.

In its wordmark, the masterbrand is always integral to the sub-brand.

(UAL + its colleges, WWF + its National offices UK, USA, Australia)
IndependenceSub-brands maintain more independence in positioning, look and messaging.
All sub-brands share the same primary positioning and identity.
Masterbrand’s roleActs as a guarantor of quality or trust but allows sub-brands to shine individually.Dominates all communications and is the primary driver of trust.
Sub-brand IdentitySub-brands may have unique names, logos and target audiences but are likely to share a family resemblance.Sub-brands are strongly tied to the master brand and rarely, if ever, have independent identities.
Brand equity sharingEquity flows both ways: the masterbrand supports sub-brands and sub-brands give back to the masterbrand.Equity is consolidated within the masterbrand, benefiting all offerings and sub-brands.
Risk/Benefit balanceThe failures or successes of sub-brands have limited impact on the masterbrand.The failures or successes of individual offerings directly affect the entire brand family.

Mash up and blend – the hybrid solution

It’s worth saying that the world of brands is complex and no one single model can ever be applied uniformly across all activities and regions. It’s not uncommon for Unilever, for example, to  incorporate elements of an Endorsed Brand approach when they’re looking to boost credibility or roll out global recognition.

In our sector, The Salvation Army is an example which, although more Branded House as far as its public-facing identity is concerned, adopts an Endorsed Brand approach in its operational structure. This duality stems from:

  • Its need to be recognisable and trusted as a singular brand.
  • The operational flexibility that is required of it in meeting local needs effectively.

Brand architecture hybrid model

The principles

Whichever route you choose, Branded House or Endorsed Brand, the following are some key principles that you should explore:

  1. Start with audience-first – Brands serve as tools to help your audience navigate choice and understand relationships. Every decision you make should be through the audience’s lens and designed to make their lives easier. Never make brand architecture decisions on the basis of meeting purely organisational needs.
  2. Align on mission and values – Whatever model you adopt, your people’s day-to-day work will always cut across and encompass a variety of functions, themes and initiatives.
    For example: the Red Cross/Red Crescent Movement operates under a shared mission that unites its various component organisations under a cohesive global purpose while allowing each entity a degree of autonomy to address specific regional needs or goals.
  3. Make your brand family work for you – Maybe your masterbrand is getting lost in the noise of the competing pluralist House of Brands. The strategy should then become one which brings the sub-brands together to help build the authority of the masterbrand. Or perhaps your brand family feels constrained and you’re starting to recognise the benefit of moving towards an Endorsed Brand framework. This aspiration indicates that you need a strategy to build trust, recognition and equity in the masterbrand with some guardrails around how far the sub-brands can exercise independence.
  4. Labels matter – When renaming or simply combining with the masterbrand, follow the rules – Marty Neumeier sets them out so well here. Think of all the use cases you might have for the masterbrand and the sub-brand names. For example, when written in prose you can’t just rely on the logo to do the talking, write rules and provide guidance on how to use masterbrand + sub-brand, masterbrand + sub-brands, masterbrand + sub-brand + partner brand in prose.
  5. Be ruthless – Brands take time, energy and budgets to manage. Be hard-nosed when it comes to rationalising how many sub-brands you have. Are they in fact departments? Could several be grouped under one theme? In contrast…
  6. Protect and respect difference – An organisation with sub-brands that speak to very different personas might need a differentiated tone of voice in each case. A brand that arises out of a merger may have a founding story and heritage that will always carry value and resonance, and this too should be recognised.
  7. Allow room for expression – As with any brand, singular or suite, it’s wise to build in room to flex. Even UAL’s Branded House approach demonstrates elasticity. Pentagram designed a visual identity that can ‘withstand’ the creative expression of various agencies. The colon ‘:’ acts as a holding device for creative expression, see Johnson Banks’ example below (left) and similarly, in Alphabetical’s vibrant campaign (right):
    Branded House model UAL flexible system
    This offers proof that Pentagram’s identity is a unifier not a straitjacket – brand architecture that offers enough room for interior designers to flourish!
  8. Empower your team – As well as providing clear guidance for everyone in the organisation, also take time to educate and engage senior leadership on the rationale and importance of the chosen brand architecture. Leading by example trickles down. If a member of the SLT goes rogue and breaks all the rules in an internal PowerPoint presentation, that sends out a message to the wider organisation that the rules can be broken.
  9. Leave egos at the door – Closely linked to point 1. Some people don’t like change; they can’t always see the benefit of revising the model they are so aligned with. Listen to their concerns and invite independent advice. Show them how alignment will help them deliver on, not hinder, their goals.

To wrap up

Brand strategies need revisiting regularly. As equity grows in the masterbrand or indeed in its sub-brand/s, the model you currently employ may need reconsidering. In the past I would have defined Adobe as following an Endorsed Brand model but over time the Adobe name has grown in importance within the overall brand strategy. It’s likely that Adobe’s branding strategy has evolved over time from an Endorsed Brand model to a more monolithic Branded House model as its masterbrand has gained strength and recognition. This kind of strategic shift often happens when a company realises that consolidating its branding can create stronger brand equity and build on customer loyalty.

If your brand family feels like a soupy mess or a bland straitjacket, take time to review and rationalise.

As with most brand strategy projects, start with zooming out, using a wide-angled lens and looking at how your strategic plan aligns with your audience and your marketplace. Make radical change or evolve gradually – there is no one-size-fits-all approach. Do what’s right for your organisation at the time while keeping a keen eye on the future.

Protect and de-risk your brand

Trademark protection for brand names

Constant, unpredictable change has become the background against which we live our lives and run our businesses and organisations. And with light-fingered AI adding to the uncertainty, helping itself to our creative and commercial endeavours – protecting what’s ours has never been more important.

So, if you’re thinking about rebranding or changing your brand name or, if you’re concerned about preserving what you already have – the authority, reputation and value associated with your existing brand – you may want to consider formally registering your trade mark. Doing things by the book, you will have registered your organisation’s name with Companies House or the Charity Commission, but registering your brand itself offers so much more than just protection.

Brand names are the most universally recognisable communication tool in the world.

Naomi Klein, No Logo: Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies

In this post I focus on the process I recently went through to register The Co-Foundry brand name and some of the benefits that can be gained from doing so. (There are, of course, other types of trade marks – they can include words, logos, shapes (think the Coke bottle shape), colours and even sounds, the Intel audio jingle for example.)

The value of a brand name

A brand name is one of your most valuable assets, with rebranding and/or renaming your organisation being one of the biggest marketing investments you undertake. The processes are both time- and resource-intensive – not just during the initial project but also in the effort it takes to build brand recognition consistently and over time, post-launch. With this in mind, is it worth skipping a step that can protect that investment?

When I rebranded as The Co-Foundry I took that risk. Buoyed up by the excitement of it all, I wanted to get going fast and launch my new consultancy. Being a company of one meant that this course of action (or inaction) posed a far lower risk than it would have done for a medium-sized or large charity or SME. But now, three years on, I have taken the time to protect the name – partly because it’s the right thing to do and also because it allows me, in having a taste of my own medicine, to gain an in-depth understanding of the process.

It’s all in the name

So that I can set out the most complete version of the registration process, I’ve chosen to take you through the steps involved in registering a newly named or renamed organisation.

Renaming is fun. It’s like going out and buying yourself a whole new wardrobe. You can’t wait for the right occasion to show it off. The clothes fit better than the last lot, maybe you’d ‘expanded’ or realised that particular shade of green is a bit off but I digress…Your reasons for renaming can be many and varied.

Renaming isn’t something that should ever be done lightly. As a brand design consultant I only ever recommend a name change when I have solid evidence to support it. This year we’ve worked on renaming two organisations: a digital agency (client interviews revealed that people couldn’t pronounce the quirkily spelt name and found it hard to type and remember) and a young person’s mental health charity (parents in particular found the brand’s initials hard to recall and no one in the organisation could explain what the letters stood for. Parents even went so far as to say that not knowing what the initials meant, made them feel stupid and excluded in a sector that is, after all, awash with acronyms and abbreviations).

Don’t fall in love just yet

When you’re thinking of names, don’t settle on coming up with just one name to put forward. Keep your options open. We always advise running stakeholder testing for your ‘long’ shortlist before settling on a ‘short’ shortlist. We do basic domain name and Companies House checks but these are never as thorough or watertight as those undertaken by an IP lawyer and, speaking from personal experience, it definitely pays to have one in your corner! There’s always the chance that quite early into the process you’ll discover that the name you want is not up for grabs, so we recommend taking three names into step 1 below.

How to register your brand name

Broadly speaking there are four steps you need to complete to achieve a trade mark registration:

  1. A ‘knockout’ search for a shortlist of say, three names (if renaming) or your existing name – these high-level searches of the trade mark register are done to see whether there are any immediate red flags. This manages the risk of conflict and takes just a few days.
  2. A full UK clearance search for the preferred name – this is a wider search, and covers not just identical and near-identical, but similar trade marks as well. There’s obviously no guarantee, but following this search you can (assuming the results of the search are relatively clear) be feeling comfortable that the brand name is available from a legal perspective. This step takes around a week from start to finish.
  3. Filing a trade mark application – typically the first step is filing a UK trade mark application. The Intellectual Property Office (IPO) then examines the eligibility of the trade mark. If there are objections, your IP lawyer responds to them. Before registration is granted, applications are published on the IPO website. With no major objections or oppositions, this Opposition Period can take up to 3 months. If there are other territories that are of interest to you, you could then look at applying for an International Registration, designating these territories, and ‘claiming priority’ from the UK application (provided you file within 6 months of filing the UK application) such that your overseas filings enjoy the initial filing date in the UK.
  4. Recording the name – assuming the application is successful you are then free to record the new name with the Charity Commission and/or Companies House. And use the ® at the end of your name and logo should you wish to.

 

With The Co-Foundry it wasn’t necessary to check multiple names, and we’d already registered our name with Companies House so we skipped steps one and four.

Why register your brand name

De-risks your brand

Taking you back to that ‘new wardrobe’ analogy, unwittingly picking a name that a competitor is using, is a whole lot worse than going to a wedding and meeting someone in the same outfit. At best, you risk being politely asked to cease using the name.

Some years ago, Pfizer, a major pharmaceutical company, was ordered to pay $143 million in damages to Trovan Ltd. for using the trade mark TROVAN, as the name of an antibiotic. Pfizer admitted that it was unaware the mark had been previously used and registered, as it had not performed a trade mark clearance search before adopting the name for their product.

Builds value in your brand

As a charity or as a business owner you may be looking to do due diligence on your existing brand name or you may, in the case of a business, be looking to sell at some point in the future (a buyer would almost certainly expect to see trade mark registrations). A formally registered name helps to signal to both clients and potential investors that you’re a serious operator. Other benefits, linked to (steps 1 & 2) clearance searches and (step 3) registrations are as follows:

Benefits of running Clearance Searches

  • The main benefit is being sure that you can use your brand without the risk of being sued for trade mark infringement. A relatively modest outlay in the early stages can help avoid potentially significant re-branding costs.
  • It makes you confident in the knowledge that if you were to file a trade mark application you’d have an unopposed, clear path to registration.
  • Potential investors in your company (or a purchaser if you’re looking to make an exit) will likely need to see evidence of thorough clearance searches, offering reassurance the brand name is available to use.

Benefits of owning trade mark registrations

  • It allows you to take action against ‘copycats’ who may be trying to use an identical or similar trade mark, for identical or similar services.
  • It helps to signal to potential investors that you are a serious operator when pitching for new business or investment. Also, it allows you to use the ® symbol in your marketing materials, albeit this isn’t obligatory. Looking further forward, if you ever want to make an exit, a buyer would almost certainly expect to see trade mark registrations.
  • Trade mark protection is one way in which a business can attempt to put a price on its brand, an otherwise intangible asset. Like any other asset, it can also be exploited to increase turnover for your business (e.g. through selling trade mark registrations that are no longer of commercial interest, collecting royalties from licensed trade marks, or using a trade mark as security for a loan).
  • It offers market clarity, providing an understanding of the competitive landscape and avoiding unintentional association with existing brands, which might have a negative impact on yours.
  • A registered trade mark can provide a competitive advantage in the market by solidifying brand presence and reducing the risk of brand dilution.
  • It builds trust – the ® symbol is a sign that the organisation takes its brand seriously and can be trusted.

Trade marking – a proactive strategy

Conducting thorough trade mark clearance searches is a proactive step in the branding process. It can prevent many potential issues and ensure the longevity and success of a brand. Owning trade mark registrations is a strategic move that provides significant legal, commercial and financial benefits, helping to safeguard and enhance the value of a brand.

This month I received the news that The Co-Foundry® is official! I have the lovely Jonty Warner to thank for holding my hand through the process.

Trademark protection for brand names

 

There is nothing quite like eating your own dog food.


Endnote

As you might imagine, I’m a passionate advocate for using specialist professional consultants. Rather than going with a large agency or, in this case, law firm, I chose to work with an independent lawyer Jonty Warner. Jonty has provided the process and legal advice for this article. Every case of trade marking will be different and times change so always seek advice directly from a professional. This article is intended as an introduction, recounting a personal experience and does not constitute legal advice.

Brand strategy lessons from Tamagotchi

Tamagotchi brand strategy

Nineties-led nostalgia seems to be everywhere, so much so that Tamagotchi has been making a bit of a comeback in recent years. (In case it was before or after your time, Tamagotchi is a handheld digital pet that needs ongoing virtual care and feeding and playing with to keep it happy and healthy.)

And so, as in life, so in branding – the attention you need to give your Tamagotchi to help it thrive makes an excellent metaphor for how you should approach looking after your brand.

Your brand – it’s never ‘one and done’

Many of my clients come to me for help because they’re aware that their brand, and how it shows up in the world, doesn’t reflect the current realities of the business and/or sector it operates in. I work with them collaboratively – first, defining a brand strategy, then bringing in my Co-Foundry collaborators to develop a visual and verbal identity and website that reflects this redefined brand positioning and strategic underpinning.

Brand todo list

But branding is never a ‘one and done’ event, it’s an ongoing process of monitoring, nurturing and evolution – and that’s where the Tamagotchi metaphor comes into its own.

Brands are in the memory-making business

Your box-fresh brand, brand refresh or rebrand needs to carry on telling that single, strong story long after it’s launched into the world.

A consistent narrative that is also able to flex to how your business and markets are evolving is how you stake your place in your audiences’ minds. Whatever business you’re in, your brand has to be in the business of creating memories, ensuring your target audiences remember you when the time comes for them to buy. And building this mental availability in audiences’ minds takes time.

The 95:5 rule

Up to 95% of B2B clients are not in the market for buying services at any one time.

This 95:5 Rule, researched and developed by the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute, is typically applied to marketing, specifically advertising, but the principle is easily applied to the experience of third sector and service-based business brands too.

Being consistent over the long term and proactively monitoring brand effectiveness is key to creating brand success. You need to stay relevant and continually engage and resonate with your audience.

After all, the brand that gets remembered, is the brand that gets bought.

The ‘Tamagotchi approach’

Thinking of your brand as a Tamagotchi means that you don’t allow your brand identity, positioning and newly defined brand DNA to gather dust. A ‘Tamagotchi approach’ means treating your brand strategy as a living strategy, not a once-in-a-while strategy. It’s a sure-fire means of keeping your brand alive and protecting your investment and reputation.

Reputations are delicate. A good one can keep a brand healthy, a bad one can kill it. It can be an infection you hardly notice with a slow and painful death, or one that kills you so fast people will forget you ever existed.

Michael Wolf, Wolff Olins

In this post I look at why brands might, over time, lose direction and unravel as well as demonstrating how you can monitor this, maintain that all-important brand momentum and fix areas of concern.

Here’s to channelling that nurturing Tamagotchi-owning mindset and being on the lookout for potential distress signals!

How brands unravel (and how they can be fixed)

They lose the narrative

The temptation to press ‘publish’ and be done with it is always lurking in the background. So much energy and effort goes into defining and developing a brand identity that the focus, once the work is done, can shift too quickly to tactics. This might mean that the brand foundations (the thinking behind the brand) aren’t fully communicated across your organisation. The danger here is that if the thinking isn’t adequately embedded, tactical decisions might take you off in all sorts of (off-brand) directions.

Sit, walk or run but don’t wobble.

– Zen proverb

A brand will only ever be consistent and come across as confident if the team understands why decisions have been made. Hopefully, you’ll have involved them at various stages of the brand development process but rolling out the rationale behind the final decisions is as important as rolling out the new branding or messaging.

“Throughout the design process, we consulted widely and established a project board comprising key representatives from across the organisation and its regions. We hosted a series of Brand Engagement sessions to take staff on the journey and explain the rationale behind our decisions, ensuring ample opportunities for internal feedback to guide us. The Brand Team was available to address any questions throughout the project, and we worked closely with Internal Communications to maintain regular engagement, which ramped up as we approached the launch. Continuing the Brand Engagement sessions post-launch meant that we didn’t let internal engagement drop off a cliff; instead, we ensured ongoing immersion in the process. We have also maintained regular internal communications since launch to remind staff of the guidelines and keep them updated on the latest refreshed assets available in our online brand centre.”

– Helen Thorpe, Head of Brand and Digital, WithYou

Brand guidelines are often seen simply as a rule book. If however, you make them more into a set of guiding principles – a brand book – and place brand statements front and centre to remind internal team members and third party creatives of the why, what and how behind the branding and messaging, they become an altogether more powerful tool.

A brand narrative explainer is an accessible and easily digestible way to launch your new brand narrative. Here’s an example from a recent Co-Foundry client rebrand – the explainer communicates the why, how and what of the brand, and also introduces the visual metaphors and meaning used in the branding:

Another important element that helps keep a tight rein on your narrative is embedding your brand strategy in your marketing and content marketing plans and ensuring that your brand positioning points align with your content pillars (your content marketing themes). You might also want to consider coaching the writers and speakers within your organisation on the best ways to draw out those key brand themes.

Changes at the top

The chief exec and senior management are, invariably, strong brand advocates. When these people move on and say, leave the organisation, that commitment to the brand narrative and values can get lost or diluted.

Trustees or board members have a vital role to play here as they are ideally placed to hand the baton to the new guard. For that to work well though, the trustees or board members need to have been involved in the brand development work, or at the very least, have engaged with the strategy at the point of application. As with the rest of the team and any volunteers who join your organisation, use the interview and induction process as an opportunity to introduce the brand’s narrative and design rationale.

And if your rebrand has meant there were large numbers of changes, running some Values in Action sessions will help embed the redefined brand values and bring everyone in your teams up to speed.

Siloed strategies

Brand strategies and business strategies should always overlap and inform each other.

In reality, they often sit in different and very separate places. This may result in a situation where you end up with two mission or vision statements (one for the business and one for the brand and marketing team). If this happens, look for ways to combine them into one overriding business brand strategy. This may require a fundamental culture change in your organisation but will result in a far more effective, single source of truth for your organisation.

Failure to flex

During the brand strategy development phase you will have agreed on key position points – those key things you want people to remember about you and how you want them to feel about you. These position points are never defined in a vacuum – they take everything in and around your organisation into account – the competition, the cultural environment, company attributes and specialisms, and customer and stakeholder concerns and desires.

The 4 Cs

Should any one of those four ‘forces’ change down the line you may need to recalibrate. Strategy is, after all, an unfolding network of associations and a brand is always in motion. Be vigilant, establish a routine of carrying out regular positioning audits to see if your narrative needs any tweaks or, indeed something more fundamental is required.

And if you’re planning to introduce new products or initiatives – check how they fit in with the bigger picture and how they sit within the architecture of the overarching brand.

Random acts of branding

It’s easy to get bored. We look at our own branding and messaging day in and day out so the urge to change things up can become strong. But, thinking back to the 95:5 rule – showing up consistently with your brand coherence intact is essential when it comes to your audience being able to build those all-important associations – and make brand memories.

The thing is not to leave things be for the sake of consistency alone but rather to get into the habit of checking in regularly with your branding and messaging output. Depending on the extent of your output, this exercise can be as simple as collating recent social media posts and marketing comms and assessing them for quality and consistency or it might require a more formal brand audit.

And with prevention being better than cure…Stop random acts of branding at source by making sure that the brand system and brand guidelines you come out with at the end of the branding process give you enough freedom to develop distinct campaigns and engaging marketing without losing that core brand DNA.

Lose sight of who they’re for

Brands are not just how we look, how we talk, how we behave or what we say. They’re also very much about the experience we provide. Your primary touchpoint, your website is the portal to accessing your service and experiencing your brand. In an ideal world you will have considered the user experience, tested it, planned the content around the main narrative themes and checked the site for accessibility compliance.

Nevertheless, the website experience remains a strand that can unravel fast. With different administrators and authors creating content it’s all too easy to find that user journeys become increasingly convoluted and stray from the core strategic narrative. Referring back to your content marketing strategy and running regular user testing will help combat this potential pitfall.

Your stakeholders will be the best judges of how things are working for them and will help you avoid making decisions based on personal bias. After all, not everyone thinks or acts like you and you may not even be a member of your target audience!

“Making decisions based on assumption is a dangerous route to take – you can end up designing for yourself, or just because the CEO thinks it’s the “right” thing to do, and ultimately the experience won’t then serve your users. I like to remind my clients “you are not your user”, even if you feel you know and understand them well. Despite being a researcher, I don’t feel you have to do a ton of research before doing any work on your website, that just isn’t practical. Simply build user-testing into your ongoing project processes – you could test your current website to help you understand what’s wrong, or, test your new website prototype. The input from users at this stage can be absolute gold. It enables you to iterate early and refine those user journeys, before you move into development where it suddenly becomes very costly to make any amends.”

Becky Taylor, UX Consultant at Deckchair

 

Keeping your brand happy

Brands – the constructs around which trust is formed – have never been so central to businesses … It is no longer enough to have a static business and brand offering … the world’s most successful companies start not with product, but with brand – as their critical growth asset and engine.

(Interbrand Best Global Brands 2022 Report)

Just like the ’90s digital pet that needs care and attention, brands are living things that serve your business so much better when they’re checked in on, nurtured and given the room to grow and adapt alongside your business.

That freshly minted brand strategy shouldn’t be left to fall by the wayside – the thinking behind it needs to be firmly embedded in your organisation before you press ‘play’ on any tactics. There’s a strong case for saying that the role of the external brand consultants you bring in, shouldn’t end with the brand launch but move into an altogether new phase.

It’s something I’ve been trialling at The Co-Foundry, introducing a Brand Champion service last year. In keeping with the theme of this piece, it’s a work in progress that’s being collaboratively developed with clients and collaborators alike. If you have any thoughts or ideas on what support you’d find useful, do get in touch – I’d love to hear from you.

Happy brand

 

 


Tamagotchi photo by COSMOH LOVE on Unsplash

Download: Brand positioning done right

Positioning download

Why taking shortcuts doesn’t lead to brand positioning done right.

Click here for your free download.

 

Brand positioning – why it’s fundamental and how to get it right

Positioning jigsaw

When you’re looking to have work done on your brand – whether it’s a full rebrand or a brand refresh – you want to be bold and decisive, all the better to stake your position in the marketplace and gain that all-important brand advantage.

A brand agency or individual expert can help you make sense of everything that goes into making your organisation what it is and determine a strategic course to support your brand.

But, and this is where it can get confusing…why is it that no matter who you go to, be it consultant or agency, each and every one puts forward a different approach? And it always comes complete with its own terminology and (buzz)words or, worse still, uses the same words in different ways.

Start with positioning

Getting clear on your positioning is fundamental to the success of any branding work that you undertake. If you’re thinking of turning to books for advice on positioning you may well find that a lot of it won’t feel relevant – that’s because this is a subject that’s often written about from an advertising and FMCG angle.

So, to redress the balance, this post outlines my approach – a very specific take on what clients coming to me can expect to receive from my brand strategy process.

It’s a process that, as you go through it, informs not only the creative expression and marketing activity of your brand, but also its operations and human resources. In fact, I believe that brand strategy should be as intertwined with the overall strategic plan of a business as it is with the creative expression of the brand identity, with each informing the other.

Brand strategy diagram

While most people think of positioning as a marketing concept, a shift in positioning feels more like a shift in business strategy. Every department inside the company is likely to be impacted over time.

April Dunford, Startup Executive

Focused direction for your organisation

My focus here is squarely on service-based organisations (primarily third sector, and the tech and creative sectors). These organisations look to build the awareness and reputation of their brands. They rarely have massive advertising or marketing budgets and, as such, look for brand-building advice that will serve them in the long-term. Any decisions they make need to be strongly evidence-based with actions being easily implementable.

The approach I detail will help you develop a strategy that is far more than just words on a deck. You’ll have direction, advice and recommendations that you can take forward and use across your teams as well as in your creative.

What is positioning and why is it useful to service-based organisations?

Brand positioning is essentially a compelling promise that organisations need to convey to win their audiences’ minds and hearts. You’ll sometimes hear ‘positioning’ described as a singular tagline like Apple’s ‘Think Different’. Just two words, but behind them is a well-researched and thoroughly documented strategy – you can’t just land on words without putting in the research and collaborative thinking.

In this post, when I refer to brand positioning, I’m referring to a brand positioning strategy, one that considers, ‘where you play’, ‘what your audience cares about’ and ‘what you care about’.

Foundational to this are what I call, positioning pillars – a single point or more commonly two to three points you want your audience to know and remember about you. These position points can be soft/emotional (heart) and hard/factual (head) but when combined they resonate and provoke action (hands), prompting people to reach for the phone, click a fundraising link, submit a job application or more likely, just take notice, building brand awareness so that when the time comes for a decision to be made, your brand is the one that’s front of mind for your audience.

Brand memories

For example, when I think of the Samaritans I think of someone always being available at the end of the phone 24/7, 365 days of the year, ready to help in a crisis – the last line of defence: that’s the ‘head’ positioning. I also think of non-judgemental listening – the ‘heart’. Those two flags have been planted in my mind, probably a very long time ago. That is the power of clear positioning. I don’t recall their brand positioning line or the strategy behind it but I believe most people will recall the same promises as I do; promises of access and empathy.

Plant your positioning flag

How will you know where to plant your flag?

Brand positioning is like staking a claim and planting a flag on a hill – it marks a clear spot in your audience’s mind (and heart), conveying why they should care about you and highlighting your unique value. Put simply, brand positioning helps your audience navigate choice.

There is genuine commercial danger in getting positioning wrong. Any consultants or agencies that you work with have to recognise that there’s an ethical dimension to any advice they give. In setting out my position on positioning and illustrating what I believe to be the best approach and in doing so am also demonstrating that there’s a right way and a lite way.

There are numerous elements involved in arriving at your brand positioning – planting that flag on a hill. I like to think of them as jigsaw pieces and, just like with a jigsaw puzzle, if you miss a piece, you end up with an incomplete picture – frustrating and underwhelming in equal measure.

Getting the full brand positioning picture

Of course it might be tempting to take some shortcuts but, particularly for service-based third sector and purpose-led organisations, I believe you need to be using all the pieces in the positioning jigsaw puzzle, interrogating each and every one of the areas and elements listed below.

No one answer, however rigorous the response might be, will get you to where you need to be – there are no shortcuts if you want to have the full brand positioning picture!

The brand positioning puzzle pieces’

The Leader

Can the founder or chief exec define your brand’s positioning?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? A senior leader defining your brand positioning throws up the issue of selective attention. All humans benefit, as well as suffer, from this. Selective attention may give the organisational leader the benefit of laser-sharp focus but it also comes with blind spots – they may not be able to see the wood for the trees. The other danger is that without team engagement, you get no team buy-in.

Of course, taking the senior leader’s viewpoint (their insights and hypotheses) into consideration is vital, in fact the whole brand positioning process may derail without it:

Positioning is a business strategy exercise – the person who owns the business strategy needs to fully support the positioning, or it’s unlikely to be adopted.

April Dunford, Startup Executive
However, it’s something that should be the first step, not your only step.


The Audience

Can you define your brand’s positioning from audience research?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? The problem of only using audience research to define your brand positioning is that brands don’t exist in a vacuum. True understanding of positioning comes from knowing the market, alternative providers, i.e. the competition, and the business objectives of your organisation.

You have to listen to your stakeholders, both internal and external, and wherever possible introduce research into the process as early as possible, but their insights should sit in the round with all the other pieces of the puzzle. And it’s also essential to remember that not everything they tell you will be relevant.


The Data

Can you define your brand’s positioning from data?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? Data alone won’t engage your audience. Brand positioning only becomes effective when audience heads and hearts are engaged. Take data into consideration but recognise that it can only ever be one piece of the puzzle.


The Team Workshop

Can you define your brand’s positioning from a team workshop?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? The problem of defining your brand positioning from a team workshop/series of workshops (even if you bring in an outside consultant) is that it will only give you the insiders’ perspective. Informative and essential, you’ll undoubtedly uncover some gems but you need to be doing more than just looking inward.


The Talent

Can you define your brand’s positioning by bringing in creative talent?

Surely, a creative is all you need – a brand writer or intuitive designer to look at what you’re currently saying and how you’re presenting yourself, do a little desk research and then come up with the brand positioning answer?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? A creative, working in isolation can only offer a very one-sided view. They’ll come up with something based on what they know. In the absence of their having an understanding of your world, its challenges and how you’re perceived, their biases, assumptions and preferences will inform their choices. You may get something clever and snappy but it won’t be a true reflection of your organisation.

Creative talent is important and will bring your positioning to life, but this part of the puzzle only comes into play once your brand strategy has been defined.


The Brainstorm

Can you define your brand’s positioning from a brainstorm?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? The problem with defining brand positioning from a brainstorming session is that the loudest, most confident people in the room end up asserting themselves which leads to an outcome that reflects only their views – a group-think mentality sets in.

You can incorporate brainstorms by all means, but these do need to be managed carefully. You need to make sure that the environment is a safe one, that everyone gets heard and that those who maybe aren’t able to respond as fast in this sort of session can input ideas at their own pace.


The Moodboard

Can you define your brand’s positioning from a moodboard?

The short answer is ‘no’.

Why? As it only presents what you and your team likes and dislikes, a moodboard is never going to be an adequate tool for a fully defined positioning. Moodboards can’t tell you what your audience cares about or what else is happening in your market or in the wider world.

A moodboard represents a jumping ahead in the process. You can incorporate moodboards and co-creation but they’re never a good place to start.


The Difference

Can you position your brand by looking and sounding different?

The short answer is ‘no’ – the longer answer is, ‘in part, yes’.

Why? Merely looking and sounding different is an ‘easy’ fix that, without the other pieces of the puzzle in play, can only ever offer a superficial positioning answer, creating a position that will be difficult to ‘defend’.

Researching your market category, considering whether you want to go for parity or difference (sometimes parity is stronger than difference) means that this piece is then able to add weight to the overall picture you’re putting together.


The Tagline

Can you express your positioning in a tagline – a single positioning line?

The short answer is ‘yes’. But the long answer is heavily caveated.

Why? The problem with defining your brand positioning with a tagline is that it won’t be useful to those working in the organisation: operations, human resources, front desk… It may be tempting to jump to a concise, clear brand message but your team/s need to understand the thinking behind the words. This is where a strategy document comes into its own as it includes not only brand statements like mission, vision and values but also provides your team with evidence, guidance and direction.


 

So what should a brand positioning process look like?

A brand positioning exercise is something that’s grounded in current reality but ambitious enough to explore and define future aspirations.

A well-rounded approach gives the people in your service-centred business, (people who work hard to serve their clients and customers) the space to be heard and to think, and adequate time to be creative.

In the words of Alina Wheeler – from her seminal book, Designing Brand Identity, “The best positioning builds on a deep understanding of customer needs and aspirations, the competition, the strengths and weaknesses of a brand, changes in demographics, technology, and trends.”

A process of scoping, gathering and defining will ensure that all bases are covered and no stone is left unturned. Effective brands are effective precisely because they listen to different perspectives and are able to look outwards as well as inwards and all around.

Brand positioning process

Putting your positioning into play

Once you’ve defined your points of difference and your brand promise, the work of establishing a belief about your brand in people’s minds begins – it’s time to bring it to life. Start to create your visual and verbal brand identity and your marketing strategy. And build your operations and talent around it.

Don’t take shortcuts, use every piece of the puzzle to present a whole-picture position for your brand, ensuring it is:


Relevant to your audience – focusing on something they care about


Specific – highlighting what you bring to the table and not falling back on lazy superlatives or vague generalisations


Impactful – solving the need or desire of your target audience


Credible – making a promise and proving you can keep it


Distinct and defendable – putting you in control of your niche with clear water between you and your competition


Spirited – sparking chemistry and connection


There are organizations that love the fun part of coming up with a beautiful, bold promise, but shy away from the dirty, difficult task of working out how exactly that’s going to be delivered, to whom, and how. There are also organizations that create intricate brand onions, wheels, bridges, or platforms, but are utterly bereft of a creative expression that people can actually care about and believe in.

Nick Liddell, Brand Strategist

Stay true to your brand positioning

Getting clear on your positioning is a superpower but only if, once you’ve settled on it, you stick to it. Don’t chop and change. Your audience won’t remember your brand if you say it or they see it only once. Consistency of approach is key as it builds memory and mental availability when the time comes for action.

And if you need further proof of how clear, easily-defendable positioning has the potential to break through in a noisy world where we’re all constantly being overwhelmed with choice – check out this post which runs through the very real business rewards of doubling down on your positioning.

And, in the words of and following the example of the great Dolly Parton…

Find out who you are and do it on purpose.

A recipe for harmony, collaboration and best practice

Recent years have seen increasing numbers of clients bringing their design execution in-house. This can mean anything, from large organisations building their own internal agencies of highly skilled team members, well versed in using industry standard software and overseen by a brand manager, to lone marketing managers using subscription software like Canva to produce their brand’s day-to-day marketing and comms. And it’s a trend that’s not going away any time soon.

A growing trend

Typically, the trend to build in-house resources goes in waves, driven by the state of the economy. When budgets are tight – resources, quite unsurprisingly, are brought in-house. As the economy bounces back, external agencies come back into play. But nowadays, with drag-and-drop online software and AI tools, that move in-house looks set to stick.

You could call it the democratisation of design. So much more can now be achieved with far less; for example, you don’t necessarily need knowledge around, say, typography or layout principles, something that used to be the sole preserve of designers, in order to create serviceable social media content templates.

Creative in-housing trend

Democracy is good, right?

As much as it creates opportunities, this sort of democracy also brings with it a number of challenges for both client and external agency. Needless to say, the quality of experiences and outputs will vary depending on an organisation’s attitude, structure, expertise and culture. To generalise…

Opportunities [on the client-side]:

Flexibility and immediate access to resources.

Insider-advantage – knowledge of the sector and competition as well as the internal machinations of the organisation.

Lower costs

Challenges

Overwhelm – too much work for too little resource. In-house teams are likely to be pulled in a number of different directions, carrying responsibility for skill sets other than design (such as marketing and copywriting).

Less authority – sadly, it’s a fact that an external specialist often garners more respect with senior leadership than a more junior internal team member.

Limited perspective – in-house teams, by their very nature and insider status, struggle with being able to effectively step back and see the wood for the trees.

Less expertise – external agencies tend to laser focus on their specialisms which means they have the advantage of staying up to speed with the latest innovations and trends in their particular area.

What an outsider brings to the table

The challenges listed above (by no means an exhaustive list) should confirm that in developing an in-house resource you should never close the door on bringing in outsiders, i.e. external agencies and specialists. An external perspective can complement and enhance in-house capabilities, meaning you’ll benefit from:

Experience of selling change in – specialists, in particular senior specialists, are experienced in providing evidence for change, articulating and defending a rationale, and responding to objections.

An objective viewpoint – an internal brand or marketing manager may have a hypothesis or gut feeling but will not have the time, nor access to the methods and tools, to test that theory in a truly objective manner.

A wider lens perspective – external advisers will have encountered similar patterns and trends from working on comparable client challenges. They can apply these experiences alongside their facility for having that ‘big picture’ whole-of-market view.

In short, they leverage their specialist expertise for strategic impact.

When is the best time to seek specialist help?

The obvious time to bring in specialists is to bridge skills gaps or to inject a creative spark into brand campaigns, rebrands and refreshes. But time is of the essence. If there’s change afoot – if you’re looking to evolve your positioning or fully reposition your brand – don’t get too far into the process before calling those specialists in.

I’d argue that the best time to bring external help in is when you have an unscientific hunch that things aren’t working. The outsider can propose the best method to objectively test your hypothesis – introducing rigorous research methods, moving away from those knee-jerk, solely emotional responses and casting a wider lens over the entire project. It’s one action that will, in the long run, save you time, money and unproductive brand soul-searching.

The importance of building ongoing relationships

For your brand to thrive and prosper, your facility for accessing external specialists shouldn’t be limited to crisis or special case scenarios. Building ongoing relationships means that both sides will be able to get the most out of their connection and the client will benefit from being able to address issues before they become problems.

That external perspective can be invaluable, for instance, when you find your brand going a little off-piste. This can sometimes be down to the people on your team changing. Having an external brand champion to call on means you’ll be able to right things by running a refresher on the whys and wherefores of your brand strategy, ensuring that the concept and thinking behind the brand doesn’t ‘leave the room’ when your staff move on.

 

Sue onboarding team – Brand Champion

You might also consider using an agency or individual to provide ongoing creative direction or mentoring. This approach will help you develop your skills, adding to your in-house capabilities, and ensuring you’re on the case, retaining and building that all-important brand salience (i.e. knowing when to pull in the reins when there’s an appetite to gallop off in a new direction!).

Embracing an open and collaborative mindset

From an agency perspective, the tide of in-housing creative and design resources isn’t going out again any time soon. In fact, according to the 2024 DBA report What Clients Think, 22% of clients without an in-house creative resource stated that their company was currently considering developing this capacity.

Nervous agencies can, and should, embrace this change because, on the other side of the coin, a whopping 80% of clients with in-house creative resources would like to see a greater level of collaboration with external agencies.

This should be music to agency ears. Designers, even when they have completed and signed off a project, care and carry on caring how the brand identity they’ve created, will fare ‘in the wild’. They’re seldom happy to just walk away from the project launch fanfare with some smart visuals and a case study for their own website. Call it control freakery, but what they fear most when they complete a rebrand or brand refresh and pass the brand assets over to the client’s in-house team to manage, is that their concept, the Big Idea will be diluted or damaged through poor execution.

And this, of course, is a valid concern but, it doesn’t have to be this way. In-house and external resources need to find ways to play to their strengths, create symbiotic loops between them, learn from each other and grow as a result.

The in-house team can share their industry insights and join the creative journey through points of co-creation. External specialists can share their knowledge of trends and skills as well as helping to build the in-house team’s capability and confidence for selling design and strategy into senior leadership and stakeholders.

The way a team plays as a whole determines its success. You may have the greatest bunch of individual stars in the world, but if they don’t play together, the club won’t be worth a dime.

Babe Ruth

Conclusion

Further evidence, should it be needed that, despite the rise of the in-house resource, design agencies are still very much valued comes from What Clients Think. Their findings reveal that 95% of clients with an in-house creative resource still see the value in using external agencies for particular challenges, typically for bigger, more strategic projects or where a fresh perspective is particularly called for.

Creative in-housing trend

It seems that we’ve reached a point where it’s not an either/or situation where in-housing and outsourcing come and go in cycles. The most impactful branding will be born from embracing the synergy between in-house and external specialists and ensuring we all become excellent collaborators.

Talkin’ bout an evolution

Sometimes the biggest favour you can do your brand is not to go all out for a complete overhaul, throwing out the old and rebranding. A brand refresh that reflects how your organisation has evolved can be just as transformational. How far you should go – rebrand or refresh – only becomes clear once you’ve undergone a thorough brand review and clarified your positioning and brand strategy (the discovery stage).

For the purposes of this post we’re assuming that your current brand identity has some more than salvageable good stuff. The following illustrates what can be achieved with a more nuanced approach with reference to two projects we’ve recently completed: travel company, Discover the World’s brand refresh and the journey of brand evolution we took with national addiction services and mental health charity, WithYou.

1. Build on the big idea

Hold onto the conceptual thinking from the original design that still holds true for the newly defined brand strategy and expand on the best bits.

In both WithYou and Discover the World, the existing brand concept still held sway but certain elements needed refining, polishing and drawing out.

WithYou – the original brand concept incorporated a subtle nod to the name and the core organisational values of working alongside their clients. We ran with this idea, incorporating it as part of the wider brand system and drawing more attention to this values-led concept.

WithYou ligature

 

WithYou’s wordmark had been designed to represent unity and connection. The concept worked well but needed to be further emphasised in its application. We did this by taking the ligature (or linking path) between the ‘h’ and the ‘y’ letters, and using it as a visual device to frame and add dynamism to WithYou’s communications. We named this evolution of the existing concept, ‘the WithYou Pathway’. It demonstrates how WithYou works with their clients and partners – side by side, on a pathway to recovery.

Discover the World – during a discovery workshop the founder of the travel company mentioned that the bird in their logo was an Arctic tern, chosen because it flies from the North to the South Pole. It reflects the company’s origins and how they started out offering trips to the Arctic and Antarctic. We ‘brought the bird to life’ by freeing it from the constraints of the logo and bringing in a trailing flight path device. This conveys dynamism and draws the viewer’s eye to focal points in photography.

Flight path

 

2. Take care of the details

Refine and improve the existing branding to better reflect the organisation’s present situation and future aspirations.

It’s always good to remind ourselves that brand identities help people navigate choices. As it takes time to build brand recognition – rebranding and rebadging is risky. If you change everything too fast (particularly with B2C brands) you risk losing that hard-earned brand equity. Sometimes a tweak is all that’s needed to reinvigorate and improve on the recognisable assets you already have.

Discover the World – our customer interviews highlighted an affection for the logomark (the ‘D’ motif): “the logo to me is very distinctive” “I love the Discover the World logo”. The original designers had cleverly used the Arctic tern in the logo to form the negative space in the ‘D’ letterform. We saw an opportunity to refine this idea, giving the bird a more dynamic look whilst making the link to the negative space in the ‘D’ more legible.

WithYou – we wanted to make it easier for the in-house design team to use the distinctive wordmark in sentences. They would have previously had to position the wordmark and then add type around it, something which proved difficult to get right and time-consuming so we took DM Sans (their off-the-shelf brand typeface) and customised it so that they could instantly create the wordmark and chosen typeface.

3. Re-evaluate colour and typography

Fashions change and trends come and go but some become embedded as the ‘new normal’. As brands become increasingly digital-first with less commitment to print, there are opportunities to be freer and zingier with colour.

Discover the world – the marketing team were naturally following the guidelines they’d been provided with but could see that their ‘new kids on the block’ competitors seemed to be bolder and more confident in their use of colour. We saw this as an opportunity to refresh the Discover the World palette and increase their appeal to a younger generation.

WithYou – during extensive brand perception research we found that people found the overall aesthetic of the brand to be cold – a far cry from the reality of their work and the hope, warmth and positivity they bring to the people they help. We warmed the palette subtly, introducing a buff colour to reduce the amount of white and introducing a more varied colour palette for use in illustrations.

Discover the World – the choice of a typeface says far more about a brand than we may consciously realise. The typefaces chosen in the original brand system were classic but static and we saw an opportunity to replace the primary typeface Melior with Buenos Aires whose round letterforms and quirky serifs give the identity a friendlier, more contemporary feel.

 

Typography update

 

Their given body copy typeface was utilitarian so we replaced it with a more editorial face, a contemporary serif face: Span.

 

Typography update

 

 

4. Reimagine use of photography and imagery

As they say, a picture is worth a thousand words, and both photography and imagery are powerful ways of communicating meaning and brand essence. Once you find or determine a style or set of parameters when commissioning photography and choosing images for your brand, it’s important that everyone sticks to it, to ensure brand consistency.

WithYou – the original brand identity incorporated line drawings and gave free reign to the national offices to commission their own illustrations. The result was a smörgåsbord of styles, with no way of recognising these as illustrations from the same brand, something which weakened brand recognition. We created a library of illustrations, primarily for their social media activity.

 

WithYou – using real photography of WithYou’s clients had been actively avoided, meaning the brand had ended up with a somewhat faceless and cold identity. Recognising that there is so much power in the human stories and lived experiences of their clients and team members, we took time to define and test how people felt about different styles of photography, and provided clear guidance on commissioning and selecting such photographs.

5. Rearticulate your tone of voice and messaging

A brand identity is never just visual; how you speak, what you say and how consistent you are, are critical elements too.

Discover the World – so that it could truly reflect the values, mission and vision the brand was founded on and lives by, we ran a comprehensive research and discovery stage that saw the teams getting more specific about what makes Discover the World special. Through this we identified and articulated the tagline, Always exploring. These stages also helped us tease out the company values and develop tone of voice guidance that better reflected the brand’s playful spirit of adventure. A series of Values in Action workshops for all 80 members of the Discover the World team helped ensure these were embedded across the business.

Discover the World brand refresh

WithYou – the warmth and sense of familiarity we’d harnessed through refining the brand’s visual elements were further enhanced by capturing WithYou’s brand essence in their new messaging. This focuses on how WithYou is: ‘On a journey, side by side: with their clients, supporters, colleagues and commissioners’. A distillation of their mission, purpose and vision, it serves as a guiding concept, underpinning how WithYou uses the brand and intends for it to be experienced.

WithYou tagline

Summary

Although a brand refresh may seem less wholesale in the first instance, the subtlety and nuance that can be brought to bear is no less transformational. Far from being an ‘easy’ option it requires just as much commitment and digging deep.

Start with a comprehensive brand review and set your strategy in the discovery stage to see if it might be the right path for your brand. If you home in on the five elements identified, you’ll have all the brand touchpoint bases covered and a powerful new brand identity that will support your business or organisation going forward.

Branding tips for small charities

Somerset Community Foundation rebrand – merchandise

When Somerset Community Foundation* approached us to review their brand identity, we knew we could help. They recognised that their existing branding was no longer fit for purpose and wanted us to recommend a way forward. They wanted their brand to be front and centre in their mission of inspiring philanthropy and enabling social action in the county.

*Community foundations are charitable organisations that support defined geographical areas, generating and directing funds to the causes and places that need them most through their work with local charities, community groups and social enterprises.

An imaginative approach

Somerset Community Foundation were already well aware that a strong brand identity could help build their profile, increase funding and enable them to do more good work. But, in common with other small charitable organisations, they were concerned about budgets, knowing that any form of rebranding exercise represents a significant investment in time and money. Although the funds community foundations regularly disburse are often large amounts, they’re restricted in how much they can use for non-grant giving activities such as marketing and communications. Rather than cut corners, we were going to have to be creative in how we approached the task so that we could achieve the best outcome for the budget available.

This post outlines some of the ways smaller charities can work with a branding agency to get the best results. Needless to say, there are useful tips here that will work just as well for larger charities too.

Branding tips for smaller charities

Engage the collaboration gear

Everything about the rebranding exercise will go better if you get the chief exec and trustees involved from the get-go. From writing and agreeing the RFP, to including a small cohort in a core steering group, this approach, although it might seem counter-intuitive at first, will help you avoid the dreaded ‘design by committee’ headaches that might crop up later on.

An engaged group that has followed the process from start to finish will, in my experience, be more inclined to push for the best and most strategic solution, and resist the urge to dilute through small changes – otherwise known as death by a thousand cuts!

Sell the need for change

Some staff and trustees may think that rebranding is purely a superficial, cosmetic exercise, one that distracts from the importance of delivering the charity’s mission. This is one of the reasons why it’s important to take the time to communicate why rebranding matters. Help people to understand that building a brand is not just about brand colours and the shape of the logo but that it goes much deeper than that – to a level of values, behaviours, vision and strategy. Use examples and case studies of past charity rebrands with stats and testimonials to show the positive all-round impact a refreshed brand identity can have.

“This was a significant investment for our organisation, both financially and in terms of the time involved as a small team. It was crucial for us to get our Trustees, Senior Leadership Team and wider staff team on board with the process from an early stage. While it was clear to all of us that the way we looked was outdated, we also really had to help everyone understand what brand means beyond the visuals. We had to show them how this work would help us better understand our stakeholders, grow the funds we raise for our communities and, ultimately, better deliver our mission.” – Laura Blake, Philanthropy Director, Somerset Community Foundation

Build on firm foundations

Spend time on setting out the strategic direction for the brand before jumping into the creative element of the work. It might be tempting to ‘DIY’ at this stage – only briefing the branding agency once you’ve defined your positioning, vision, mission and values yourself. But this is, after all, their area of expertise. Skipping their involvement and supposedly saving yourself time and money at this stage is a false economy – any short-term savings will be far outweighed by opportunities lost. You can ask them to review and rearticulate what you define but, in a perfect world, you’ll get them to lead from these research stages.

Share the load

Assuming you need to save costs, ask your consultant or agency about what you can do to share some of the research tasks. You need to acquire a full understanding of what your audience cares about and what resonates with them. One really great way to do that is to gather insights from your stakeholders by running short brand perception interviews. In a perfect world, these would be carried out by a professional consultant, ideally an independent or someone from your chosen branding agency. Having these carried out by a neutral, third person means that the interviewees are likely to be more open and unguarded in their responses. But, where budgets are tight, getting your brand design consultant to conduct a handful of interviews and then arranging for someone in the charity to run the rest is a good solution. In this case, ask your consultant to share the questions they’re asking so that you’re both able to follow the same format.

Engage in active listening: As a rule of thumb, if you’re talking more than 20% of the time, you’re probably talking too much! Take care not to ask leading questions or introduce bias through commenting. Use transcription software like Otter.ai and share the full transcript with your consultant. Don’t be tempted to hand over an abridged version as they’ll spot things in the full text that you might not have realised are important.

“Whilst we do an annual survey of key stakeholders, we’d never done stakeholder interviews and they were so revealing. We gained such a wealth of insight and deepened our understanding of our value proposition. We could see the trust our donors have in us and the credibility we’ve built and that gave us a huge confidence boost as a team, as well as encouraging us to be ambitious about growing our income and impact in the future.” – Laura Blake, Philanthropy Director, Somerset Community Foundation

If budgets are too tight for 1:1 interviews – run surveys. By making use of free tools like Google Forms, they’re a relatively cheap way to gather insights which, if not quite as valuable as those from interviews, will still be useful.

Include all voices

As well as taking in the views of your direct stakeholders, staff, trustees and donors, you need to consider how your beneficiaries will respond to a refreshed brand identity. Naturally, inclusivity is likely to be a key ethos within your organisation, so evidence-gathering and consultation stages with beneficiaries is a step that should ideally not be skipped.

Run a single or a series of focus groups, inviting several beneficiaries in a room or online (if they’re comfortable with digital workshop software, such as Miro or Mural). Offer an incentive and provide space for people to share their stories, make new connections by, for example, working in pairs, and get your brand design consultant to facilitate group discussions with exercises.

Although you may only be at the strategy stage at this point, this is a great opportunity to test and even challenge assumptions. Ask your agency or consultant to provide tone of voice exercises and creative moodboards in the focus group. It will be a way of gathering evidence for the direction you choose to go in which will, in turn, help you to sell the final creative solution to the board.

Somerset Community Foundation brand discovery workshops

Allow enough time

It takes time to build a recognisable brand and a brand identity is something that needs to last. One thing you can’t afford to do is to chop and change identities – either financially or in terms of building recognition through consistency. A brand identity built in a hurry will likely need fixing later (ask any founder of a startup – they’ll almost certainly have rushed getting to market, consequently needing to redo their branding not too far down the line). Don’t rush the process. Let the agency agree deadlines with you and then stick to them. Keeping to your milestones as regards, say, providing feedback, is as important as the agency’s schedule. They’re likely to be working on more than one project and so being able to plan resources is crucial to their business model.

Evaluate the final concept

How many opportunities can you build in for evaluating the design? If budgets and timescales allow, will you be able to test the final solution? I’ve written in-depth about this in an earlier blog post. Remember, not everyone you test the concepts on will have a full understanding of the strategic objectives or have your background knowledge so always ask yourself: what don’t they know and why are we testing this? Too many opinions can create indecision, so any evaluation step needs to be carefully managed.

Commission good quality documentation and templates

Don’t be tempted to scrimp on brand guidelines. A four-page PDF won’t cut it if you want your team and creative partners to stay on-brand. You’ll need to come up with detailed guidance that should typically, but not exclusively, include:

  • Logo usage, variants and positioning
  • Co-branding guidance
  • Sub brands advice
  • Colour, including proportional use and accessibility rules
  • Typography
  • Photography
  • Placement and use of graphic devices/illustrations in the brand system
  • Application examples

“We have to save money where we can and know that we need to use trusted freelance graphic designers to deliver our day-to-day comms. But we also didn’t want to hamstring their creativity or lose the consistency and essence of our new brand story – so clear and thorough guidelines were essential to us” – Sue Wheeler, Marketing Manager, Somerset Community Foundation

Commissioning the branding agency to produce a set of editable templates for internal use, not only maintains professional standards but also means the marcomms team don’t have to spend time making design decisions and can focus on the content.

Encourage a culture of collaboration

A rebranding project will almost certainly result in a new or refreshed website. Very rarely do branding agencies know as much about UX, technical accessibility, functionality and SEO as a specialist digital agency or developer. It makes total sense to work with more than one delivery partner. Connect them together – make sure they’re happy to be open and collaborate with each other.

If both the branding agency and the digital agency run a discovery phase, ask them if they can coordinate this stage. Typically, the branding agency will be ‘up first’ so encourage them to share their interview and survey questions. In this way the digital agency can ask them to include their questions if appropriate (meaning the exercise only needs to be done once).

“We worked with a separate agency for web and made sure from the start they were happy to work collaboratively to ensure they had a strong sense of our brand and kept true to the that during the build. Both Sue and our web agency Cognique worked brilliantly together.” – Laura Blake, Philanthropy Director, Somerset Community Foundation

Ask the branding agency and the digital partner to set time aside for a handover. This will give the brand consultant the opportunity to talk through their strategy, highlighting why their creative choices are important and answering any questions. Don’t just rely on handing over a brand guidelines document, expecting your partners to run with it.

Similarly, when the digital agency presents their first draft page designs, bring the branding specialists back in to the review process. The essence of what the new branding says about your organisation can get lost or misinterpreted however extensive your brand guidelines and thorough your plans and this is the perfect opportunity to keep things on track.

With bigger budgets, you’d expect the brand consultant to stay on board in a creative director role throughout the process, but by involving them at key milestones (as outlined above), you can ensure you have a cost-effective ‘light touch’ version of that.

Manage the trustee sign-off process

Project governance is something that you will have already carefully thought through. You and your agency partner will have agreed the number of steps in the reporting process to the senior leadership and board. Managing that final trustee sign-off and preventing a last-minute derailment is key to the success of the project.

If you choose to offer the trustees a choice of options – never put forward anything you couldn’t live with – it might get chosen. My personal preference, and how we worked with Somerset Community Foundation, was to refine and agree one concept and present that. Everyone doesn’t have to like it, but they do have to reach a consensus. Bring your creative partner into the meeting to be on hand to either present or respond to questions and concerns.

“I wanted Sue in the room, she has years of experience fielding objections and opinions. As it is, we didn’t have any issues, together we were able to demonstrate that the final solution was the right one, based on research and strategic decisions.” – Laura Blake, Philanthropy Director, Somerset Community Foundation

Embed and inspire

A successful rebrand is not something that’s cosmetic, touching only the surface of an organisation. The early stages of the project will have seen you going deep and defining your brand values. These can take time to bed in with staff so do consider running internal workshops to get people to think about what each value means to them individually, as a team and for your audience. Consider ways that you can bring your values into new staff onboarding processes (induction manuals) and performance reviews.

“The Co-Foundry provided us with a workshop framework so we could run this ourselves. It wasn’t perfect but it worked for us. You have to make tough choices when you’re working to a strict budget. I guess my advice would be to find a consultant or agency who are open to sharing and looking for ways to support you.” – Laura Blake, Philanthropy Director, Somerset Community Foundation

In summary

If you’re only going to take one thing from the tips listed, make it the following:

  • Focus on being open and inclusive.

It might be tempting to keep any sort of branding exercise to a small group within the charity but if there’s one single thing you absolutely must do, it’s to involve people across the organisation and beyond. Keeping them informed will not only make the whole branding process run much more smoothly, it’ll also help achieve that all-important buy-in for your new branding.

“We want our team and trustees to be proud of our new identity. Taking everyone on the journey means they become true advocates for the brand” – Justin Sargent, Chief Executive, Somerset Community Foundation

View the full Somerset Community Foundation case study here

Dream clients

Niche positioning

POV: I’ve just come off a Zoom call with a client where I talked them through their co-created brand strategy. I’m thinking how much I love my job and how they’re a dream client. There was so much positivity and mutual respect in the (virtual) room.

Dream clients – not just a ‘nice to have’

Having dream clients is not just pie in the sky. Giving you and your team permission to define your dream client is a crucial element of nailing your brand positioning. When you take that leap into niching, you not only build your proposition around the value you add to specific clients but you give yourself a razor sharp new business strategy.

Saying who you’re for (and so, by definition, who you’re not for) gets you halfway there. Once you’ve established that, everything else starts to fall into place. Not just in how you market your brand but also in how you work. You’re able to hone your expertise because your processes, ideas and solutions flow from a deeper focus and you can take advantage of, and build on the patterns and themes you encounter time and again.

Of course positioning isn’t just about what you do and who you do it for, but these are an essential part of the wider equation that encompasses the thoughts and feelings people associate with your brand. These other positions are ‘softer’ (but still essential) associations around brand personality, story, values and promise. For the purposes of this post however, I want to focus on the what and in particular, the who.

Feel the fear but do it anyway

When I discuss this with my clients there’s often a reticence, a fear of so tightly (and even loosely, in some cases) defining the ‘who’. This can take the form of, “Surely if we say we work with X we’ll miss out on working with Y (and all the other letters in the alphabet)’. But defining a strategy is all about making choices – it’s the reason I share this Michael Porter quote in every workshop I do:

Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different.

By allowing yourself to become selective, you become sought after. You become known for a specific and readily identifiable value proposition expressed with a clarity that’s integral to attractive positioning.

Where the F do you start?

Once you’ve defined your perfect client you can qualify opportunities as they arise – YOU can choose as well as be chosen.

niche-positioning-2

Sadly it isn’t as simple as simply qualifying a prospect by the 3 Fs: Fun (your team will enjoy the work), Fame (they’ll make a great case study or PR) and Fortune (they’ll pay the bills, and then some). These are definitely worth considering but a highly prescriptive client definition, and being clear on your non-negotiables, will give you far more, including being able to justify whether a prospect is the right fit for your organisation.

How to define your perfect client

Get clear on WHAT you do (best)

People came to my last agency wanting a range of services. We offered brand identity, web design and development, retained graphic design, illustrated books, pretty much anything other than packaging. Over time, I realised that I wasn’t enjoying the work as much as I should have been, and that I wanted to focus on brand identity and strategy more. I had to make some tough choices, one of which was to drop a whole revenue stream of web development work. When I came to reposition my agency I started with what we did or rather, what we wanted to do more of. And that meant dropping a few things. By going ‘niche’ you can go deep, extend your knowledge, build a specialism and develop expertise that is appealing as well as effective. It also changes who might be looking for those services.

Get clear on your WHY

Work is a big chunk of your day. It’s said that the average person spends 90,000 hours at work, so knowing what gets you up in the morning and understanding why you’re driven to help a certain group of people is hugely important. The Co-Foundry’s ‘why’ or purpose is to help organisations that strive, to build brands that thrive. Knowing that, means knowing who I want to help – the strivers, the purpose-led people.

Get clear on WHO you work best with

One of the most powerful and immediate ways of defining a position is by picking a sector. This isn’t always easy. It might even mean dropping an area you’ve done a fair bit of work in, something that can feel risky. However, the benefits of niching down to a particular sector are many. Not only will you gain a deeper understanding of the problems and desires that run through the sector but you’ll build marketplace intelligence and become known by, for example, attending specialist conferences and being active on industry-specific media. Your new business strategy may benefit too, as people moving organisations will take you with them.

Another way of selecting a client type is by focusing on their issues, needs or traits. I took the decision to focus on creative and tech founder-led brands as I already had a lot of experience and knowledge in that space. As well as working with these clients, I’d personally experienced a lot of the pains and gains of creative and tech founders for myself so had a natural affinity with them.

Charities and not-for-profits soon became a natural extension of this focus. Along with founders, they share a genuine desire to make an impact and are similarly emotionally invested in what they do. Both groups care about their people, something that works well with another fundamental aspect of my proposition – co-creation which sees teams involved in decisions throughout the process.

Follow the energy

It sounds so obvious when you read it but, and this is fundamental – find people who energise you.

The late great Milton Glaser (in his talk entitled ‘Ten things I have Learned’) put it perfectly, exhorting us to avoid the people we find toxic:

You have spent some time with this person, either you have a drink or go for dinner or you go to a ball game. It doesn’t matter very much but at the end of that time you observe whether you are more energized or less energized. Whether you are tired or whether you are exhilarated. If you are more tired, then you have been poisoned. If you have more energy, you have been nourished. The test is almost infallible and I suggest that you use it for the rest of your life.

The Co-Foundry’s qualification checklist

In my case a qualification criteria might look like this, my dream client has to tick these boxes:

What they want:
Co-created brand strategy and brand identity design

Who:
Purpose-driven creative, tech, cultural and third sector organisations
✅ Traits: Open minded, open to involving key members of their team
✅ Lifestage: Been in business for a few years. Their brands have gotten a little ‘leggy’, with some brand architecture conundrums that need sorting.
✅ Goal: Looking to widen reach, diversify, reposition, scale their impact
✅ Where: Anywhere English-speaking
✅ Size: SMEs and small, medium and large third sector organisations
✅ Ownership: Independent or charity

Why:
At crossroads. Struggling to position themselves, in need of a brand evolution or full rebrand.

Budget:
Ready to make an investment

And some no-nos:
No to ‘pile ‘em high’ and ‘build to sell’ – making you rich doesn’t interest me, helping you and your team make a positive impact does.
No access to the leadership team
No appetite for research and discovery – just want cosmetic branding

Making the change

Although the word ‘dream’ is liberally sprinkled throughout this post, there is nothing airy fairy about how you go about identifying, approaching and working with the sort of clients that tick all your boxes.

Nothing should be left to chance. In the same way that you will have interrogated your brand closely when defining what you’re looking for in your dream client, testing your various hypotheses is key: For example, looking back over your income and client profitability, reviewing your marketplace and testing whether there’s a market for the people and businesses you’re looking to serve – too big and you’ll be one of many fish, too small and there may not be enough opportunities. And don’t forget, of course, listening to your gut!

In my case, as I was niching my entire offering (not just who I did it for), I needed to find partners to help me deliver the things I wanted to drop. In practice this took the form of building a trusted network of digital agencies and freelancers.

All of these changes – shifting the focus to concentrate on brand strategy and identity for tech-based and creative founders, and third sector organisations, and building a network of collaborators – needed to be reflected and communicated in my own brand. This meant a new brand name, a full rebrand and marketing tailored to the new positioning and business model.

Leading with ‘no’

Getting comfortable with saying ‘no’ is fundamental to making this approach work. Ideally, you don’t want anything to derail you from the sort of ‘dream client’ strategy that will lead you to doing your best work and make you happy.

I’ll leave the last words to author, speaker and advisor, David C Baker. His 2017 book, The Business of Expertise is seen as a blueprint for entrepreneurial experts who want to make better business decisions. He identifies ‘smart positioning’ as the foundation stone of becoming known as an expert:

Positioning is a deeply wasteful exercise. It’s driven by saying “no” more than saying “yes” as you decide how to proceed with courage.

If you carve out an expertise business that fits who you are, takes advantage of your strengths, and minimizes your weaknesses, it’s more sustainable. That’s good for you, for obvious reasons, but it’s good for your clients, too, because you’ll be around to help them over a longer period of time, getting better at it as time passes.

Why I love working with founders

Founder-led brands

Almost three years ago I did something to my own business that is usually reserved for my clients. I repositioned, renamed and rebranded my offering – going from being an agency business to a brand consultancy, supported by a team of freelance specialist collaborators.

Sitting on the ‘other side’ of the table proved to be both interesting and a little daunting. It was definitely a good thing to do because I now have some idea of how it feels to be my client! One of the most important things I did during this process was define my market – who I was a good fit for. In The Co-Foundry’s case, it’s mission-led organisations – founder-led, privately-owned tech and creative businesses, and third sector organisations.

And the first lesson I learnt? As I wrote back in the summer of 2021, defining the ‘who’ makes you much better able to articulate your ‘why’ because both you and your ideal clients care about the same things.

Positioning post

 

An entrepreneurial heritage

Looking back, I can also see that the connection with founders goes deeper than the discovery stage of my own rebrand. Although I’d never really connected the dots before, I come from an entrepreneurial family, from a grandfather who was a tomato-grower on Guernsey to a father who started his own business in his 40s, not to mention the years I spent running my design agency. I guess you could say that I get it – that need to establish and run a business to your own special recipe.

I can’t deny that working directly with founders offers some significant and immediate advantages – you get to sit shoulder to shoulder with the decision-makers, you can be pretty sure that your creative won’t be subject to the dreaded design by committee revisions and, because you already know they’re not averse to risk, a bold design approach, when appropriate, is more likely to be embraced.

But more than that, their having ‘skin in the game’ and being so focused on the longer-term means there’s something very special about working with founders. Perhaps it’s similar to the difference an architect or designer encounters when they work with someone who’s after creating their dream home rather than just an investment vehicle.

They love what they do

I love what I do. For me, it’s not just work but a driving passion and so it’s no wonder that I relate to others who love and care for their businesses too. These are people who want to get it right, who recognise they can’t do it all themselves and so build a team and a culture, and through that a future that demonstrates these wider ambitions.

The mission-led businesses I work with embody their founders’ singular vision. They’ve developed something that meets a need or solves a problem in a way that delights their customers. It’s something they keep top of mind but may have trouble articulating and reflecting in their branding. But of course, that’s where a good brand consultant comes in…

They’re creative (even if they don’t always know it)

Design is easily identified as being part of the creative economy but, to my mind, entrepreneurship and being a founder is (no matter what field you’re in) a profoundly creative act.

As Bernie Goldhirsh, founder of Inc magazine said, creating a business from nothing is ‘a kind of artistry…based on an ability to see what everyone else is missing.’ He also believed that entrepreneurial management required far more creativity from a founder than the grounding in rational skills that traditional management courses teach.

Founder-led brands

 

There’s a buzz

I found that reading Bo Burlingham’s book, Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great instead of Big really chimed with my thinking. In the same way that I see the founder-led companies I’m lucky enough to work with, Burlingham identified the ‘small giants’ in his book, as working to more than just financial objectives, ‘They were also interested in being great at what they did, creating a great place to work, providing great service to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they lived and worked in, and finding great ways to lead their lives.’

All of this drive, enthusiasm and purpose means founder-led companies have a buzz about them, something that the book refers to as a state of being ‘totally in sync with [your] market, with the world around [you] and with each other.’ Getting your branding and values aligned is vital in maintaining this consistent emotional connection with your customers, team and community. It’s why our Values in Action workshops are so popular with the founders and third sector organisations we work with. The workshops ensure that branding is more than skin-deep – it becomes a code of conduct that’s embedded and lived by.

They understand that things take time

It seems that founders have quite a few things in common with branding consultants: They understand the importance of having a perspective or point of view on their market and a value proposition they believe in.

As Danny Meyer of now, not so ‘small giant’, Union Square Hospitality Group, points out, ‘At first, [your value proposition] is a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation. Like breaking in a baseball glove. You can’t will a baseball glove to be broken in; you have to use it. Well, you have to use a new business, too. You have to break it in. If you move on to the next thing too quickly, it will never develop its soul.’

They may be driven to succeed, but founders understand that brands take time to bed in – that brand-building is a long-term strategy – because they’re in it for the long term too. This makes working with them hugely rewarding, not least when you see how a rebrand revitalises a business or helps take it in a new direction.

How The Co-Foundry helps founder-led businesses

Our collaborative approach to working with our clients is in our name. As The Co-Foundry we work closely alongside our clients because we believe that branding is never something that is imposed or done ‘to you’. Our process is comprehensive and thorough and, as we’re reliably informed, time and again, great fun – with the workshop stages offering a chance for teams to bond and remind themselves of why they do what they do.

Over to the founders…

The clients we’ve worked with put it much better than I ever could (or should!):

Our new branding and messaging communicated that providing an ongoing, long-term relationship was central to how we work and this made what we offer different to what he’d get from another recruitment company. And that is exactly what we’d wanted to portray. I feel confident we’ll get a tenfold return on our investment over three years and, in addition it’ll stop us losing business.

Alan Furley, ISL Talent

We have true standout now. Before, we looked and sounded like any other web dev company – we needed to be bold, express our opinion and demonstrate our personality. we’ve got that now and it’s really getting us traction.

Simon Best, CEO, BaseKit

Together we were able to bring some much-needed clarity to our positioning and identity. I’m thrilled with the results and can’t wait to continue growing the business from the solid base they have helped us build.

Harry Cobbold, Unfold (digital agency)

You can’t be for everybody

As the saying goes, you can’t be all things to all people. Finding ‘my people’ – the clients I most enjoyed working with, that I could bring the most value to, has been the most liberating of the changes I made when I went from design agency to brand consultant.

Niching down and targeting founders (as well as mission-led third sector organisations) has not only increased my job satisfaction, it’s also helped me refine my processes and make more of my voice in the industry. And for those who might think that working with the same type of people is repetitive…?

Every client is different and so requires a carefully tailored approach. What your clients do all get to benefit from, when you niche down, is someone who truly understands their concerns and issues, and the values that are important to them. The patterns I see emerging add greater depth and meaning to the work we’re able to do with our clients, and so make for better branding all round.

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