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Science Corridor

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Science Corridor

In the 2015 spending review statement, Cheshire was awarded its first enterprise zone. Cheshire LEP needed a new identity for the zone. But they needed it quick.

The benefits to a business of locating to an enterprise zone are business rate discounts or enhanced capital allowances. But beyond these immediate financial incentives and the excellent quality of life Cheshire affords, it is the potential synergies and opportunities that are fostered between so many established and emerging science businesses, and the energy created by amassing a pool of such unique talent.

Sparks fly

The strategic challenge was to distil the ambition of the Cheshire Science Corridor Enterprise Zone into a simple statement that would ignite the brand design. Cheshire is full of smart, scientific people. The opportunity for these scientific entrepreneurs and wealth creators to connect with each other and a ready-to-go skilled workforce, is the power of the science corridor. And when bright people hook up, amazing things can happen. We articulated our compelling new idea as: ‘sparks fly when smart people get together.’

This helped drive the brand expression. Our spark logo was designed to be memorable and flexible across many mediums, but we also wanted the mark to create the basis for a campaign-able identity that would act as a vehicle to carry messaging. This would make it easier for people to pick up the identity and run with it even if they only had the bare minimum building blocks of a brand identity. We also created a brand toolkit to get people up and running.

Equally importantly, our core idea gave the enterprise zone a sharp focus on fostering collaboration between its occupants. Something that would drive the ultimate financial success of the zone.

BPP

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BPP

BPP Professional Education is one of Europe’s leading specialist providers of professional education. They asked us to help them create a new campaign direction and to bring their internal design and marketing resource into the process.

BPP Professional Education delivers a range of industry-leading professional qualifications, including those offered by the accountancy bodies ACCA and CIMA. But in 2015 ACCA and CIMA presented BPP many challenges and changes that would affect the traditional booking patterns they were accustomed to. A declining UK market was going to make it more difficult to recruit new students, so a greater focus was needed on retaining existing students and encouraging others to switch from competitors.

The benefits to a business of locating to an enterprise zone are business rate discounts or enhanced capital allowances. But beyond these immediate financial incentives and the excellent quality of life Cheshire affords, it is the potential synergies and opportunities that are fostered between so many established and emerging science businesses, and the energy created by amassing a pool of such unique talent.

Designing the approach
BPP had a well established internal design team that they wanted to deploy to create the visual side of the ACCA and CIMA campaigns, but they needed a clear direction. So rather than focus on typefaces, colours and tones we considered the substance and conviction that would give them a sense of direction, and allow them to explore the visual executions.

We created a living wall of ever-evolving, strategy, positioning, ideas and language to enable and inspire rather than to control. Through a series of strategic and creative sprints we quickly developed and shaped thoughts bringing the BPP team into the process.

Rather than agency reveals and magic ‘ta-da’ moments, the wall became the focal point for all discussion. This way, the BPP team could get involved in the entire thought process rather than being a bolt-on service at the end. This increased buy-in, understanding (from both sides) and healthy discussion. Our final output was a set of words that gave the campaign a voice and a personality, which made it easier for design and art direction to fall naturally out of the process.

The power of confidence
Although there are practical aspects to choosing a tuition provider, we gleaned that there is also a lot of emotion involved too. There are repercussions for students who fail, from having to fit in a resit to the cost of funding the exam and another programme. In some cases, failure can also lead to a job loss. There are many reasons for a student to lack confidence.

We noted that competitors communicated in a cold and corporate manner, and that there was the opportunity to fight feelings of doubt. Through our strategic idea: the power of confidence, we went about creating campaign messaging that would boost confidence in BPP. In doing so we set up a battle between the confident one (BPP) and the not so confident ones (their competitors).

Fully immersed and engaged with the idea, the BPP team where able to make clear creative judgement calls based on a rich understanding of the strategic idea and the voice we’d created.

We avoided listing features, as had been common across the entire sector, in favour of insightful messaging, showing an understanding of students and what mattered to them. It’s simple: empathy breeds confidence and confidence breeds success.

And that’s exactly what these ambitious students were looking for.

Fully immersed and engaged with the idea, the BPP team where able to make clear creative judgement calls based on a rich understanding of the strategic idea and the voice we’d created.

 

 

AstraZeneca

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AstraZeneca

AstraZeneca is one of the world’s leading pharmaceutical companies. Over the 15-year lifecycle of an AZ brand, it is essential that the global network responsible for its delivery is engaged and inspired. Their problem was that the information detailing their way of doing so was hidden away in relatively mundane slide presentations.

Our challenge was to turn 1000s of words – known internally as the narrative – and PowerPoint sides into an engaging format that people actually want to read, and therefore inspire and sustain a global culture.

A truly global idea
We leveraged the idea of a global brand journey to get everybody on board and travelling in the same direction. We created a printed brand book and an interactive eBook version, which used a large AZ on the front cover to give it an atlas-like feel, while reflecting the initials of the organisation.

 

Photography was chosen to demonstrate the diverse territories in which AZ operate. Images portrayed a multitude of different journeys with a subtle sense of positive movement from left to right.

In order to aid the flow of the journey we provided additional copywriting input to complement the narrative. A set of travel-inspired pictograms provided the final part of the visual language.

We incorporated the visual language into a number of digital projects and screen-based media, including the look for two major global Shar

Are you selling a brand or a product?

Brand, Brand Architecture, Brand Management, Brand Positioning, Culture, Identity, Insight, Purpose, Strategy, ,

 

Are you selling a brand or a product?

Whether to focus on promoting a product (or service) or the brand is a question that often comes up with clients. Is it better to focus on the attributes and benefits of the product? Or the ethos and values of the company behind it?

In many quarters, the latter approach has a bad reputation. It is often seen as lofty and idealistic; not rooted in commercial reality. Yet there are plenty of examples that prove otherwise.

In 2002, Honda launched a bold new approach to their advertising, starting with a television commercial entitled OK. This was followed by their Perfume and Banana press adverts. And then in 2003 came their Cog television advert. These talked of a company philosophy, not the features and benefits of Honda's cars. Yet by December 2003, less than two years later, annual sales had risen by 22%¹.

 

John Lewis have just launched a major new advertising campaign focusing on the partnership structure of their company. This strategy has served them well. Between 2012 and 2015, following the introduction of their now-famous Christmas television advertising, sales increased by 37%².

Focusing on the brand isn’t right for everyone and therefore people are right to question the commercial validity of this approach. Many have had their fingers burned. So when should you focus on the brand and when should you just get on with selling a product? Our work is often about finding the right question to answer. In this case, the question is: Is your brand anything more than your product or service?

To understand what I mean, let’s return to Honda. The agency team that worked on the campaigns said this: “We’d never encountered a corporate culture like it; maverick; feisty; inventive; still behaving as though their unpredictable engineering genius of a founder was stalking the corridors looking for engines to tweak. They were frustrated that this fantastic culture never found its way into the advertising. They really wanted a positive engagement with society. The Power of Dreams was true. It sprung directly out of their culture, not from a series of global focus groups, and that kind of human truth about a company was a powerful weapon.”²

When people try to promote their brand and fail, it is often because they lack authenticity. A purpose or why has been invented in a workshop, but it’s not a truth that permeates through every corner of the organisation. A wonderful image can be projected through communications, but if this doesn’t ring true when people deal with customer service or experience the product then it will quickly fall apart.

When Steve Jobs returned to Apple in 1997, it was on the brink of collapse. One of the first things he did was create an advertising campaign, which he launched internally, saying: “Our customers want to know who is Apple and what is it that we stand for. What we’re about isn’t making boxes for people to get their jobs done, although we do that well. Apple’s about something more. Its core value is that we believe people with passion can change the world for the better. What we’re going to do in our first brand marketing campaign for several years is to get back to that core value.”³ The campaign they launched was Here’s to the Crazy Ones. And it worked because it was true. It encapsulated the values Steve Jobs stood for. It was the vision he pushed through the business. And it was something every Apple customer knew to be true when they used one of the products.

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Patagonia are a more current example. They’ve recently launched a campaign called The Dam Truth4 about how damaging dams and reservoirs can be to nature and the environment. This is far from a token CSR initiative. Yvon Chouinard’s book, Let My People Go Surfing, details the lengths he goes to push his vision through the business. He details at length how they embedded their ethos and values through a series of philosophies: product design, production, distribution, marketing, finance, human resources, management and environment.

Promoting something bigger than a product or service can be immensely powerful. Honda, John Lewis, Patagonia and Apple prove this. But it has to be authentic. If it isn’t, then it’s far better to focus on the features and benefits of the product or service. But in the meantime, start work on building a vision internally. This will take time; it won’t deliver results overnight, but one day the company might just be able to advertise like these great brands, and experience the same commercial returns.

— RG