A compendium of tales about how we work, advise and just get things done
It may sound simplistic but that’s often the request we receive; our immediate response being, why do you need a website and what is its purpose?
Design plays a crucial role when creating an information memorandum (IM)
Well, back in the day the commercial team in retail would shout
Design plays a crucial role when creating an information memorandum (IM)
Well, back in the day the commercial team in retail would shout
It took a while for the penny to drop last year but, suddenly, it was there as plain as day. Hermes had metamorphosed into Evri.
Great brands are built over time through a combination of factors, including consistent quality, emotional connection, and strategic marketing.
Establishing a brand from scratch, or reinventing an existing one, should follow the same process, which will always deliver a result.
We have worked with quite a few startups recently and they all seem to have a number of things in common. Unbelievable amounts of energy, huge self-belief and the ability to make decisions that make regular businesses look positively pedestrian. This level of vibrancy and JFDI is fantastic but does it necessarily mean that everything is as efficient as it could be.
Get the thinking done early.
There are certain things such as a brand essence and brand identity that should have a little more time taken over them so that companies don’t act in haste and repent at leisure.
Developing a new brand and identity need not cost a fortune or take months to complete but a little time spent at the birth of a business can save so much pain later on. A brand identity is something that you have to live with for a long time so it’s worth sweating over the detail at the beginning.
Maybe the word brand has been overdone and everyone thinks a brand comes with a huge price tag and a whole bunch of consultancy bingo into the bargain.
The truth is somewhat different. The constituent parts of a brand are already known to the brand owners.The skill of an agency is to tease them out of the individuals through using workshops and interviews.
It’s always worth taking the views of all interested parties, not just the loud ones, to get under the skin of a business to find out what makes it different.
Words matter. Passionate…really! The most overused word in a brand’s make-up.
Everyone says they are passionate, but how many brands do you engage with on a day-to-day basis that are truly passionate? Certainly, on the day to day commute it’s hard to find.
Avis got it right, “We try harder”. They knew they weren’t the best years ago but at least they tried hard to deliver great service.
The process of generating a brand is one that works and should be trusted to deliver a brand triangle, onion or lozenge, or whatever shape takes your fancy.
Determining the emotional and functional benefits, business values and brand personality is great fun and always produces some surprises. In my own experience, it’s always the reluctant participant who gets the most out of a workshop, often getting incredibly animated over a single word.
Once the key elements of a brand are established then the essence can be determined and a strapline developed. A strapline is not the essence, the essence is inward-facing and a strapline is what the customer sees. Tesco’s essence of, attaining and winning a customer’s lifetime loyalty, is expressed by the far snappier, “Every Little Helps”.
Spending time at the launch of a business to get the brand right is a really useful exercise that puts a business on a single footing about what it stands for, enabling all comms to be directed by the brand essence.
It would seem inconceivable to write a set of brand guidelines without a brand essence, but we have been asked to do this. The result is always a subjective debate with no clear view.
Whether a startup or existing business, spending time on a brand’s workings is so valuable: it helps refresh or confirm the key elements that make up a brand.
If a brand is to be lived and believed, it is important that the brand essence permeates through the business and becomes its raison d’être; the values are lived and the essence delivered.
Most brands could do with a refresher of what they stand from from time to time….
In the words of the mighty Nike, Just do it!
It may sound simple but that’s often the request we receive; our immediate response being, why do you need a website and what is its purpose?
Is it:
– transactional
– informational
– brand positioning
– creds
– vanity
– lead generation
Nearly every business has a website, so why do some work better than others and how can a website be made to be effective?
As with most creative projects, it all starts with a brief, key objectives and following a process. Typically a website brief should identify the following:
– background to the business, what does the business do, what makes it unique.
– brand guidelines, do they exist, if not then maybe that’s another conversation. Knowing how a brand behaves is important to being able to translate a brand essence into a how a website behaves, what are the rules around imagery, language, tone of voice, colours and fonts
– timeless, what’s the intended go live date, what are the project milestones
– project team, who is in it, who is responsible, accountable, a consult and inform
– commercial objective of the site. Is it to build brand awareness, generate leads or to be a straight forward transnational site that need s
– content
-what has the website got to convey, what’s the tone of voice and and access to all imagery and video.
– preferred platform, we tend to use the industry standards of Wordpress and Shopify, we have built bespoke sites in the past but realise that the platforms available are a great starting point: we can always tailor our design to fit accordingly
– audience, who is the website aimed at, age, socio-economic group, what are they going to be influenced by – animation, video content, links, information, accessibility, ease-of-use?
– research – competitors, what does “good” look like? Websites are constantly changing, from a carousel to a parallax; who is doing it well and why.
– hosting and maintenance – a great website is only that as long as it is maintained constantly, plug-ins updated and monitored. What’s the back up if the server goes down?
– SEO, how is search engine optimisation going to work for the site and how will this link into other social channels. SEO is a specialised subject. Here we work with third parties who help to maximise traffic to a site.
Once we know what the website’s objectives are, and who fits in where, we follow a process that we know works. We flex it depending upon the size of the project.
Experience is useful, it enables us to ask some of the questions that we know will fully explain the scope of the project.
This process has worked for simple informational sites through to immensely-complicated multidisciplinary business sites – it’s straightforward and effective.
Why do so many sales decks look the same and why do businesses ask us to make theirs look, well, better?
Without wanting to sound too simplistic, it’s largely down to the fact that the tools we use are far more effective than PowerPoint, which is what clients tend to use.
PowerPoint is a great tool for knocking out presentations that will be projected but it is not a tool designed to create design for print, or more often, design for screen. So PowerPoint does have its uses, but this should not be confused with being a professional design tool.
Our purpose in life is to create stimulating, impactful and effective communication. Agencies employ creatives; banks, venture capitalists and consultancies employ analysts and deep thinkers. We have a skill that turns the ordinary into something far more visually-stimulating, taking a standard PowerPoint presentation and making it look far more impactful, legible and interesting.
We always try to look at a sales deck, presentation or information memorandum from the perspective of the person who is going to receive it: they don’t know what’s in it and will not have spent hours developing the content.
So, we think about pace, giving an idea of what’s coming up, providing visual punctuation as well as literal pauses. Give the page enough room to breathe. White space is our friend, not an opportunity to cram more data in!
And then there’s colour. Why, if a company has a set brand guidelines, do so many presentations rely on blue, black and white?
As creatives our role is to stimulate, excite and expand our clients imaginations. We always start with a set of brand guidelines and use these to dictate how a presentation may look. It’s not about using every colour of the rainbow and a myriad of clever devices but about using key elements of a brand identity to help make points more impactful.
Typically we design a number of options that explore how a deck may look focussing upon:
– fonts
– colour
– imagery
– charts, graphs and tables
– infographics
– illustrations
– video
It’s really useful to present the creative stage to all stakeholders. Often this may be a varied set of advisors, bank, venture capitalist, private equity and the client team, all with strong opinions, hence the need for a set of brand guidelines.
Quite often it is the person who expresses doubt about using a creative team who gets the most excited. Once these options have been presented and discussed we will distil the feedback into a definitive solution that is rolled out across a whole document. Depending upon the project this can be a simple task or a lengthy process.
With information memoranda we will often design a teaser, followed by the memoranda itself and a management presentation. With a sales deck, the process is much quicker but no less intense.
Design is better – using the tools already available to a brand we simply create a look and feel for a presentation that is visually impactful.
Or as the brief often states “Can you make this look good please?”
Establishing a brand can be a daunting task for any business owner, especially in today’s highly competitive markets. However, it is essential to have a strong brand identity to differentiate yourself from your competitors and establish a loyal customer base.
In this blog post, we will explore the basics of creating a strong brand identity and how creative workshops and establishing your brand essence can help bring your vision to life.
1 Brand identity
To begin with, a brand identity is a combination of visual and verbal elements that represent your business. These elements include the logo, colour palette, typography, tone of voice, and overall brand personality. Your brand identity should be consistent across all platforms, including your website, social media, packaging and advertising. This consistency helps to establish trust with your audience and creates a strong brand image.
2 Creative workshops
One of the most effective ways to establish your brand identity is through creative workshops. These workshops bring together your team, including product managers, marketers, human resources and other stakeholders to brainstorm ideas and develop a cohesive brand strategy. Creative workshops can be tailored to your specific needs, whether it’s developing a new brand or rebranding an existing one.
3 Establishing a brand essence
During these workshops, it is essential to establish your brand essence. Your brand essence is the sum of core values and personality traits that define your brand. It is what sets you apart from your competitors and resonates with your target audience. Your brand essence should be consistent across all platforms and should be reflected in your visual and verbal elements.
4 Developing visual and verbal elements
Once your brand essence has been established, you can begin to develop your visual and verbal elements. Your logo should be simple, memorable, and reflect your brand essence. Your colour palette should be consistent and evoke the emotions and personality traits of your brand. Your typography should be easy to read and reflect the tone of voice of your brand.
5 Establishing a brand: tone of voice
Your tone of voice is also an essential element of your brand identity. It should reflect the personality traits of your brand and be consistent across all platforms. Whether it’s social media, advertising, or customer service, your tone of voice should be recognisable and resonate with your audience.
Branding takes effort, time, and money. This reality may make you question whether you should invest in developing your business’s brand, like an online shop. You should. Branding is critical to online marketing.Here are some benefits of strong branding.
6 Branding builds customer loyalty
We like to meet people with which we identify. The same principle holds for companies. If people identify with your brand, they are more likely to become recurring clients. They may believe in a cause your business fights for, for example.
7 Establishing a brand builds a sense of purpose
Branding also helps board members and employees. It makes it easier for them to understand your company’s values and aims and stay focused on an agreed corporate strategy. They will be motivated to help your business reach its objectives if these align with theirs.
8 Strong branding helps recruitment
Establishing a brand also helps you recruit people who are a good cultural match for your organisation. Finding people with the same values and sympathetic to your corporate culture becomes easier if your company has a strong identity.
9 Effective branding makes you stand out
The world becomes more competitive daily. A generic brand creating bland products is doomed to fade into obscurity. You have to stand out. Establishing a solid brand ensures your business and its products catch people’s attention.
10 Establishing a strong brand leads to increased sales
All these activities lead to more sales. When you create quality products or services and associate them with a memorable brand, you will see a boost in your revenue and the bottom line. It is called brand equity.
FAQ1: Should I do research before starting a branding process?
You should know your company’s standing before trying to improve it. Conduct as much research as you can afford to understand why people buy your products. Learn what they believe to be your business’s strengths and why they stood out to them.
FAQ2: How far do I need to carry branding through?
Your business’s visuals and verbal output must match the brand you’re trying to portray. For example, if you want to brand a marketing agency as disruptive, creative and innovative, investing in a branding programme with vibrant colours and bold copy is a good policy.
FAQ3: How should I involve my staff?
Your whole team represents your company at all levels. So, familiarise them with the process you have gone through and the brand guidelines you have produced. For example, to create an elegant, upmarket restaurant, you must prepare your team to dress and behave in a way that represents its brand values.
FAQ4: What about social media?
Using social media successfully in branding needs an understanding of how cultural branding works, a big subject. But, certainly, all workshops and branding processes should consider how branding assets can be used digitally and how the basic requirements of relevant social media platforms can be leveraged. Video is a key element of instant communication, friendly to search engines and should also be given due consideration.
In conclusion, establishing a brand can be an intimidating process, but it doesn’t have to be. By using an experienced agency to facilitate creative workshops and helping to establish your brand essence, you can develop a strong brand identity that resonates with your target audience. Remember to keep your brand identity consistent across all platforms, including your visual and verbal elements. With a strong brand identity, you can differentiate yourself from your competitors and establish a loyal customer base.
Design plays a crucial role when creating an information memorandum (IM), also known as a business prospectus or offering memorandum. An IM is a document used to present key information about a business or investment opportunity to potential investors or stakeholders. More than often an IM is created in Powerpoint, to use the term design and PPT is somewhat of an oxymoron, ppt has its uses but it cannot be titled a design tool, hence why design agencies don’t use it (unless under extreme duress!)
We usually take the powerpoint produced by a client and put this through the lens of the brand that is being marketed to create a document that brings the brand to life and communicates critical information in a clear fashion. To further demonstrate the importance of the creative process, here’s why design matters in the context of an IM:
In summary, design in an information memorandum is not just about aesthetics but also about improving readability, conveying information effectively, representing the brand, highlighting key points, supporting storytelling, and differentiating from competitors. A well-designed IM can significantly enhance the overall impact and effectiveness of the document in attracting and engaging potential investors or stakeholders.
Corr-Blimey have been designing IM’s for years, and have helped Hello Finch raise funds for early stage businesses in excess of £3m – we’ve gone from print to digital, but the principles remain the same, helping the reader and interpreting the brand remain crucial, along with lethal deadlines and long hours…..
Well, back in the day the commercial team in retail would shout at marketing that they needed to shift the over purchase of tomatoes or garden furniture and up would go masses of cardboard offering a combination of percentage off, buy one get one free, offer ends this week etc and the over supply issue was solved. There was nothing sophisticated about it and in truth you couldn’t really see the offer for the offer, often the next issue was forth coming from the commercial team and more cardboard was piled on more cardboard.
It was often argued that POS did nothing but create noise until Tesco did some clever research on POS above the tills and found that it had a significant impact on take up of Tesco Bank products – mind you, there are some cynics out there who would point retailers asking their research agnecies to prove a particular;lar point, surely not! Having said which, we once attended a feed back session where a participant was asked why they didn’t go down a certain aisle (with a camera on their head!) and they said there had, ah customer behaviour is a mine field.
POS does work and now with the digital age we are privy to so much more information, we can study shoppers buying patterns, price regionally, change offers to reflect the weather and even have displays in down time selling the dream. Loyalty schemes, hello Tesco and The Co-op with the oldest loyalty scheme around, can use data allied to POS to help drive sales and customer satisfaction.
There is definitely an argument to say less is more, in truth most retailers should review their point of sale regime regularly and have a good clear out of redundant messaging. POS should be part of the comms mix and not work in isolation, when it works well the POS should reflect the current campaign a brand is running and replace previous campaigns so that above the line fits in with social and the in store experience. When POS works well it drives sales and helps store performance, when it doesn’t it is merely wallpaper and just adds confusion to the customer journey.
What makes POS effective?
When executed well, on-shelf POS can increase product visibility, attract customer attention, and potentially lead to increased sales. It serves as a reminder or incentive for customers to consider specific products or take advantage of special offers while they are actively browsing or making purchasing decisions. Key is it should be well designed, have a clear call to action and an obvious offer – the minute you start writing an essay then you’re doomed!
In a retail environment customers are busy, shopping in a supermarket is generally not a leisure activity, whereas in mainstream retail the consumer often wants to browse, feel comfortable and be given the right message at the right time. We know from research that many customers are shy and reticent to ask questions, so POS should do that job for them – clear, to the point and sales enhancing.
The effectiveness of on-shelf POS is influenced by factors such as competition from other promotional materials or displays, the overall shopping environment, and the preferences and behaviors of individual shoppers. As the demand for retail space to work harder grows, POS should be considered as part of the overall experience and not slapped in any old how, retailers should put themselves in their customers shoes, think like a customer and talk to them in their language. If you have a idle moment, next time you’re out shopping, have a look at what’s hanging from the ceiling and put on shelf and ask yourself, have I been influenced by the messaging – if you haven’t then the truth is, that cardboard may as well be in the bin!
I was fascinated to read Mary Portas’ open letter to John Lewis a few months back and this piece has been simmering away ever since. I’m sure JLP must have asked themselves “why did MP write it?” Let’s face it it’s the easiest thing in the world to kick someone when they’re down but it’s more useful to offer them a hand up isn’t it – I didn’t notice MP offering any particular advice or great insight, it struck me as more of a self publicity campaign from MP inc.
So for what it’s worth here are a few thoughts on the subject, generated from my own knowledge and experience and not AI.
John Lewis is an institution, having worked with the behemoth years ago it’s certainly fair to say they were more British Library than Amazon in their speed of thought and deed, maybe it’s due to the partnership model but boy were they slow compared to the normal retail model, my own experience being with Tesco. B&Q and Superdrug – speed was of the essence with those retailers. The lack of speed certainly seems to have translated into lack of sales and market share over the recent period, and it will take time to turn the super tanker around… hopefully not too much heed is paid to the consultants who are driven by spreadsheets rather than experience, it feels to me, JLP need more experienced hands on action than another pretty looking powerpoint deck.
Was it a brave move to appoint Sharon White? how many times have I heard “She’s not a retailer you know!” Well in my view, happy days, hopefully SW can apply some lateral thinking to the issue; becoming a property business is good to see and will yield some short term £ but if JLP aims to be a retailer then surely some basic things should be applied. You don’t have to be a retailer to do the simple things right, range, service, price, availability and loving your customers isn’t a bad place to start. Does the board of JLP and its retinue of smart consultants visit the shop floor every weekend, do they conduct their own mystery shopping, ask members of staff to find them odd items? I doubt it somehow.
So, I did my own random bit of market research, I still love JLP but as the mighty Tim Mason said years ago, a retailer losers its customer credits twice as quickly as it earns them, wise words from the legend. And I would suggest JLP’s customer credit has practically disappeared. So, off I trotted to my local JLP Home Store to test my hypothesis by trying to find 2 x 4 Litre kilner jars – I have bought these here before. As usual there was very little in the way of signage because the staff have always been brilliant at helping. Problem no1, no member of staff on the sales floor. Eventually I located a 2 legged point of sale operative and asked her if they had any kilner jars, hmmm she said I’ll have to look that up on my electronic device (her phone) – oo no, we don’t sell those. Ha ha thinks I, time for dialogue, alternative solutions, try next door, what are you using them for – sadly not, conversation closed. As I left empty handed I walked past the opening summer display, replete with two, yes two, plastic 4 litre drinks dispensers – oh my giddy aunt, but the computer had said no, well, in fairness, they weren’t kilner jars were they. You get my point…
I’m not a one woman publicity machine, I don’t have the of the Telegraph features editor or the TV commissioning departments on my phone, what I do have is 25 years plus experience of knowing what customers want, not driven by cookie cutting consultancy but by understanding what customers want. It can’t be that hard, look at M&S, they were going south for years and have turned the ship around. They listen to their customers, give them what they want, with service, price, range, and availability on point (they can’t get a property deal over the line however….let’s not get political though).
I would gladly meet with Sharon White, walk a store or two unannounced, we’ve all seen the CEO store visits in the past, they’re like a royal visit, why does everywhere always smell of new paint? The hairy arsed retailers, for the best part now laid to rest, did have one thing right, they visited stores morning noon and night and saw what customers saw, not what we from the creative side of life had just created but real retail.
Customers have an awful habit of being right, even if research is somewhat leading by its nature (surely not) – If JLP want to reverse their downward trajectory, it’s simple, listen to the customer and give them what they want. Yes we’re in the digital age, yes we all want things tomorrow, yes tomorrow not next week, however, if you want to compete with Amazon then compete with them, don’t offer a weak alternative. Omni channel is rammed down our throats, JLP have a good operation, but it needs to be fine tuned. Treat your stores as fabulous show rooms, encourage customers to browse and have Partners on hand to chat through options. And then deliver their goods to them at home.
And finally, if you have paid your team handsomely in the past, treated them as Partners, long service leave, jollies to company owned retreats, then how can you blame them for giving poor service when all of that starts being removed and the famous bonus has gone south – it’s not their fault, it’s poor leadership.
My door Dame Sharon remains open, we could trundle off on some store visits, be the customer and it could be the beginning of a fantastic new partnership….
