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

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

ACCA

The Association of Chartered Certified Accountants (ACCA) is the world’s leading professional accountancy body, supporting 170,000 members and 436,000 students in 180 markets. With such diverse operations, it was becoming increasingly challenging to maintain a consistent message and build a coherent image across the globe.

We conducted an in-depth discovery process, including auditing current activity, reviewing existing research, conducting interviews with stakeholders around the world and facilitating workshops with the core team. This process uncovered that all the competitors had a niche focus, be it a specific region, customer set or profession. ACCA on the other hand had more breadth to their offering. They catered for a wider range of students, offered a wider range of courses and covered more countries around the world. The opportunity was to make a virtue of their breadth versus their narrower competitors.

More is more
Our strategic and creative teams worked hand-in-hand to translate this observation into a compelling story to build the brand around. We observed that everyone has a different view of what success looks like, and that everyone takes a different path to get there. Because the ACCA has a greater breadth than competitors, they are able to offer a wider range of routes to success. The brand idea off which everything would hang became ‘we offer more paths to success than anyone else’.

Draw your future
This new positioning would need to be communicated across a wide range of markets, using many different channels. A launch campaign was needed, but it needed to be flexible enough to adapt to the ACCA’s global challenges. Our creative idea was to show students drawing their own vision of what success was to them. It was universally understood and easily re-executed to talk to different markets.