By defining the purpose of your organisation and involving your people in the process, you will build an authentic brand and reap the rewards of a united, driven workforce.
Lucy Richards and Joanna McCreadie (Chief Executive of Seamab) will demonstrate the power of this approach by example – sharing the insights and outcomes of their collaboration to create a dynamic and enduring brand for Seamab.
[5 min read]
A great brand will add a huge amount of value to your organisation. It can help unite your team, differentiate you from the competition, attract new audiences and customers, shape the way you plan your future, and change the way people feel about you.
Feel.
That’s the most important part. Your brand’s job isn’t to summarise every service or product you provide. It’s to shape the way people feel about you. What’s in their gut when they hear your name? Great brands are relevant, compelling, memorable, unexpected. They spark something in people.
Here are our five top tips to do just that…
1. Think more about your reputation. Less about your logo.
Your brand is what other people think of you – your reputation. Strong reputations are built up over time and come from a tight link between what you do (your products, services, culture, facilities, experience), what you say (marketing messages and campaigns), and how you say it (visual identity and tone of voice). Good brand planning and a strong idea can get all of that pushing in the right direction.
2. Build from the inside out.
Your brand should reflect what people love about your organisation. The easiest way to do that is to involve people in its creation. Speak to people at all levels of the organisation, stakeholders inside and out – and your audience. Brand development is the perfect chance for people to have their say. Don’t paper over the cracks. Be honest and get hopes, fears, issues and strong opinions out in the open early. These are great fuel and often trigger original and authentic ideas. And if your chairman’s favourite colour is red, don’t let that dominate, listen to everybody and make sure personal preference doesn’t overrule sound judgement.
3. Be brave.
Every great brand has a hook. A memorable idea that resonates emotionally. Don’t be tempted to settle for something generic – it won’t get over the challenges that have led you to a rebrand. It won’t attract new customers or audiences. If it makes you a little bit nervous and excited then you’re onto something good. Most people are naturally averse to change but if you’re not aiming to change perceptions why are you rebranding?
4. Don’t stop there.
Set some budget aside for a great creative roll out. This should be much more than just a logo, font or colours applied to things. It’s a chance to bring your brand idea to life in a way people will notice and engage with. Keep an open mind – your brand and audience might suit one kind of media more than another. Fill your brief with outcomes (eg. more customers in the 30-45 market) not outputs (eg. leaflets or advert).
5. Avoid the free fall.
Don’t ask agencies to compete for your rebrand by pitching free creative ideas. You won’t get quality, effective work – you’ll get guesswork. Great results come from collaborative relationships – conversations, understanding, research, development, thought and exploration. Creative pitches are one-sided – undermining the value of your own knowledge and experience, and undervaluing the skills of your agency. Meet up with two or three agencies, share your problems, ask how they would solve them, see what relevant experience they have, and check if the chemistry ‘clicks’. Then trust them to do what they do best.
Our Creative Director and Founder, Lucy will be co-hosting a free event ‘Building your brand from the inside out’ at the SCVO Gathering on 21 February 2019 at SEC Glasgow. Sign up now to book your space.
[2 min read]
I recently shared an article with our team about how sweet treats (biscuits/cakes) in the workplace are a danger to our health.
I was surprised that everyone responded with their thoughts – although that maybe says more about what I usually share. But they all agreed that it’s really difficult to avoid them.
It made me question how responsible we’re being by having biscuits in meetings and rewarding ourselves with G&Ts on a Friday. It’s all a matter of choice, but with obesity rates soaring, too many of us are making the wrong choices, and workplaces definitely aren’t helping. I heard a nurse on the radio highlight the challenge suggesting that the NHS was neglecting its duty of care allowing boxes of biscuits and chocolate ‘thank yous’ on the ward as the norm.
Our Why
We’ve been on a mission to find our Why… Why do we get out of bed in the morning? What makes us tick? What do we really enjoy and dislike? And, critically, does this even matter to our clients and their customers?
We help organisations unearth their Why, but doing it for ourselves proved really difficult. We’ve finally got somewhere that we all believe in and can rally behind.
So, what is our Why?
We leap out of bed in the morning to make people’s everyday experiences better. That’s what we’ve always done. From our early work creating distractions around Aberdeen Children’s Hospital, to our recent work creating emotive visitor experiences for Volvo and National Trust for Scotland, to our pioneering work setting new standards for symbols to help people living with dementia find their way around.
By always focusing on the people, we can stir emotions, encourage participation and change behaviours to make a positive difference. Raise a smile. Win hearts and minds. That’s the aim of every brand, every campaign, and every experience we create.
Living our brand
With that mantra in mind, we shouldn’t go too far wrong:
For Society, we do our bit for local charities volunteering on the Care Van to help feed Edinburgh’s homeless people, and helping The Spartans Community Football Academy, Seamab School and participating in the Social Bite Sleep in the Park.
So, that just leaves me with a Bigger Question than Why …
“Should we ban sweet treats?”
Thoughts welcome.
– Andy
[4 minute read]
I’m fresh out of the Social Enterprise World Forum, SEWF2018. This annual, three-day-event brings Social Entrepreneurs from all over the globe together in one place to share ideas that are changing the world for good. You’ll struggle to find a more inspiring event…
What is a social enterprise?
A Social Enterprise is an organisation, or a person, changing the world for the better. Like most businesses they aim to make a profit, but the key is that they reinvest the majority of their profit to create positive social change. This allows them to tackle social problems, improve people’s life chances, support communities and help the environment.
Government statistics identify around 100,000 social enterprises of all sizes in the UK, contributing £60 billion to the economy and employing nearly two million people.*
Here’s a quick illustration of the range of organisations active in this movement:
How can we make a difference?
Imagine a world where Social Enterprise is part of the curriculum in every primary school. It’s a main subject choice in every secondary school, and it’s a culture that’s embedded in every workplace. We all know that the best ideas come from people working together, free from prejudice, financial constraints and fear of failure.
With our Society offer at StudioLR we walk the talk about improving people’s everyday – that’s our purpose and the reason we come to work each day. We collaborate on ideas that make a difference to people from all walks of life. We listen and improve until we get it right for the people that need it – they’re the experts. We make sure it’s sustainable and for good. And when it’s embedded we measure the impact.
I urge you to think about what you care about and use that as a starting point to make a difference. There are huge challenges for people all over the world that need our creativity, motivation and determination to solve. Do you care about loneliness, obesity, inequality, or the ageing population?
And if you need inspiration, this is a good place to start.
Lucy Richards
Founder of StudioLR
* Social Enterprise UK, State of Social Enterprise Survey 2017
We created a site personality for the brand new Playful Garden – rolling it out across interpretation, experiential design in the café and retail spaces, merchandise, packaging and signage.
As a family day out the key ingredient was fun. How do we use the Brodie family heritage to put a smile on people’s faces?
A list of adjectives could never capture the diverse personalities that make up the Brodie family. But luckily we had a secret weapon… Daffodils!
When Ian Brodie had to name and register the 414 different daffodils he developed at the Castle, he left behind a goldmine… daffodil breeds with names like Cheerio, Pomp, Fortune’s Beauty, King of the North, and Laughing Water.
We allocated a number to each daffodil in the Brodie ‘family’ and used their unusual names as a springboard for playful interventions, interpretive stories, marketing and merchandise. With a cast of over 400 unique characters, there’s plenty to be playful with…
Project Team
Architecture: Hoskins Architects
Landscape Architecture: ERZ
Interactive Garden Design: Paragon Creative
Visitor Strategy & Planning: Scott Sherrard
Why chocolate letters?
We wanted a way to keep in touch with our clients, partners and friends throughout the year.
A personal way to say thank you, to say hello or to put a wee smile on their faces.
Nobody sends personal letters anymore… and everyone loves chocolate.
The launch introduced the world to the R100E – celebrating the expertise and hard work that went into making it. And building relationships to help sell it around the world.
The new hauler has no unexpected features… because Volvo has been listening to customers and developing products based on what they want. The R100E was loaded with the customers’ experience as much as Volvo’s.
We developed the theme ‘Made by you. Built by Volvo’ and all creative for the event – including the unveil of the new hauler and a tour guiding delegates around a factory filled with 2D and 3D graphics, interactive displays and videos.
What Volvo had to say:
“The launch event, which was recognised across the Volvo CE Group, was a major success. As well as launching the new rigid hauler to the world, it helped celebrate and inspire the whole team.
The team at StudioLR presented an exciting concept, something different and brave. We hoped the event would help us make trucks disappear but we didn’t expect to do that literally! ‘Made by You. Built by Volvo’ resonated with our ethos and all the expertise that went into creating Volvo’s first rigid hauler.
Even months on, our company, dealers and customers are still talking about the event. Together we created a unique experience – one our customers and colleagues will never forget.”
Jacqueline Reid
Interim Director – External Communications, Volvo CE
A wee thanks to a few those who helped us make it happen:
The rebrand aimed to move perceptions on from ‘just a military museum’, to help keep the stories alive among a younger generation.
Our Associate, brand strategist Scott Sherrard worked with everyone from veterans to volunteers, and councillors to students, to find out what the D-Day Story meant to them.
“It’s about real people who acted heroically not heroes”, “it’s not a military story” and “it’s not about remembrance”. These were all defining messages that came out of early sessions with stakeholders.
The resulting brand identity is built on juxtaposition – the epic operation, the personal experiences, the darkness of war, the light relief. The new name, the logo, the colours and the copywriting all play on that juxtaposition. Never losing their focus on the human side of the story.
At first glance, the logo looks like a bullet hole, a rip in a uniform, a barbed wire tear, but if you look closely you’ll spot the coastlines of England and France, with distressing around the areas most boats left from and arrived at.
The copywriting opens with something expected and then offers a second perspective that sheds new light on the story. The aim was to be relatable and thought provoking – what would you feel like if you were involved?
The poster series brings new life to archive imagery, with colour and text layouts that reinforce the juxtaposition. Which helps The D-Day Story stand out as a vibrant, modern visitor experience.
A far-off land is a book of photography by Hannah Devereux poems by Alec Finlay exploring place-names and their meanings – commissioned for the new Macmillan Cancer Support Day Unit in Arbroath.
The photography remembers childhood illness, where bedding becomes an imaginative landscape – with scenes suggestive of the glens of Angus.
The book is based on the thought that the memory of the landscape remains fond and healing, even when it cannot easily be accessed, whether through illness or people coming to the end of life.
[3 min read]
StudioLR: top tips from an award-winning campaign
Just over a month ago at the Star Awards, StudioLR took home Gold in the Design category for their work at Inverewe with the National Trust for Scotland. Inverewe’s personality is unique. And as it’s been brought to life over the last two years, it has reaped rewards – family visits are up 28% and overall footfall is up 110%.
Here, StudioLR share their three top tips from the project:
1. If you want to attract a new audience, you need to get out of your comfort zone
Taking obscure plant names and turning them into Roald Dahl-inspired phrases and rhymes will make some botanists anxious. Printing a family’s favourite recipe on their historic kitchen ceiling will make some conservationists anxious. But this kind of approach gets families excited by plants and history. It’s not easy but it works.
2. If you’re going to do something brave, build from the inside out
When you’re breaking rules, or doing something new, it’s important that people internally see why. Otherwise they’ll feel anxious and see no value. Bringing the conservationists, historians, gardeners, and volunteers in on the creative process meant our ideas were much richer, more unique, and easier to make happen.
3. Creativity isn’t just for ‘creatives’
Kevin Frediani, the property manager at Inverewe has taken the seed of an idea and made it flourish. From ongoing marketing to events programming… even setting up an artists-in-residence programme – the idea has flowed through everything. Getting a wide NTS team involved in the creative stage helped build pride and ownership – we were one team. Ideas are poor value if they just belong to agencies… good ideas are for everyone to use.
