About
An award-winning strategic brand agency working with complex, ambitious organisations to solve big communication challenges, rbl has a proven approach to strategic branding that saves time, reduces risk and improves outcomes.
Our Approach
We collaborate with you to discover, define, design and deliver the creative solutions you need to succeed in a brand-led world.
Discover
We start off by listening carefully to the views of your senior people, employees, customers and partners. Only when we fully understand where you are today, can we work with you to develop the brand.
Our services at this stage include:
- Customer and employee satisfaction
- Brand perception analysis
- Marketplace analysis
- Stakeholder engagement
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Define
We will work with you to debate, define and articulate a clear brand strategy for the future using a highly interactive workshop and our bespoke Brand VOICE model that articulates your Vision, Offer, Identity, Culture and Essence.
Our services at this stage include:
- Brand strategy
- Brand architecture
- Naming
- Core messaging
- Communications planning
- Culture and behaviours
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Design
Assessing creativity is too often managed subjectively. Using co-creation, testing and our insight-led design process we remove subjectivity to ensure real engagement and impact with your audiences.
Our services at this stage include:
- Core identity
- Brand look and feel
- Brand guidelines
- Core assets and templates
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Deliver
We believe that the key to delivering a truly omni-channel brand is to start with the right proposition, one that targets the ‘sweet spot’, where your objectives overlap with your audiences’ needs and wants.
Our services at this stage may:
- Launch a new brand, product or service
- Strengthen your employer brand
- Persuade your audience to buy, give, act or get involved
- Grow and support a community of brand advocates
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We produce award-winning brands for diverse public and private sector clients including FTSE 100 companies, public bodies, academic institutions, elite sports properties, social enterprises and entrepreneurial businesses.
Clients, past and present include
Sport
Birmingham 2022 Commonwealth Games
British Olympic Association
Centre for Sport and Human Rights
Commonwealth Games Federation
Laureus
Motorsport UK
Prodrive
UK Sport
World Triathlon
World Sailing
Education
Birmingham City University
Cranfield University
Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh
University of Bath
University of Greenwich
University of Hull
University of Warwick
University of West of England
Science and Innovation
Innovate UK
Ufi
HR Wallingford
UKRI
Utilities and Services
Balfour Beatty
London Waste and Recycling Board
Severn Trent
Suez
telent
Waterlogic
Not for profit
ZSL
Historic Buildings & Places
Historic Coventry Trust
Meningitis Now
ReLondon
WaterAid
WWF
West Midlands Growth Company
Corporate
Active Care Group
Amcor
AC Lloyd
Drop the Hammer
Huntercombe
Lockton
PXP
TTSP
Volkswagen
We are SDI
We collaborate with clients to co-create the brand they want to own. After all, it’s your brand not ours.
Origin
Back in 2004 Rebecca Battman saw the opportunity to establish an independent brand consultancy that would combine big agency thinking with small agency commitment.
With a background in Design and Brand Management following a Masters degree at the Royal College of Art, Rebecca knew that managing the creative process was as important as being creative in the first place. She wanted to provide clients with the perfect balance of strategy, creativity and delivery from an expert and agile team.
Rebecca had developed a methodical and structured approach to many of the complex communications challenges that clients were facing, aligning their business and brand strategies through a process of collaboration and co-creation.
This same fundamental Strategic Brand Planning process is in use by the agency today. It’s simple, logical and flexible, saving time, reducing risk and improving outcomes.
Our key stages: Discover, Define, Design, Deliver, cover everything an ambitious organisation could need for a strategic brand review from initial research to creative execution. This process flexes to meet the needs of all projects from full strategic branding programmes to distinct brand campaigns.
An essential element of Rebecca’s early approach was our Brand VOICE model that we still use today to articulate each organisation’s Vision, Offer, Image, Culture and Essence in a clear and compelling narrative. We have helped hundreds of different organisations to define their own unique voice to better engage employees, customers and partners.
Today our strategic branding agency is managed by a senior team who bring additional strength and depth to our offer: Adam Concar, Karen Newbold and Andrew Milton are in turn supported by a core team motivated by quality not quantity. Based in Leamington Spa, we support brands across the UK, from London to Edinburgh, and around the world from Madrid to Rio.
We remain independent in nature and independent in thought.
Ultimately, we create powerful brands to deliver bold ambitions.
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