Find your brand VOICE

An explanation of our strategic branding process.

We help brands find their unique voice by understanding what it is they want to say and how they want to say it. We then provide them with the distinctive visual and verbal language to shape more dynamic conversations with employees, customers and partners.

The brand narrative we craft is the essential brand story you want to share with all stakeholders. The brand identity system we design is the visual framework that will enable that story to come to life. The brand content, brand campaigns and brand communications we deliver enable our clients to turn up the volume and amplify their message to a wider audience.

At the heart of our approach to strategic branding is our unique Brand VOICE model which has been proven on over 100 live assignments for clients as diverse as Commonwealth Sport and Severn Trent.

The Brand VOICE brings together a clear articulation of:

Vision

Where are we going and why?

Offer

What do we have to offer?

Image

How do we want to come across?

Culture

How do we do things around here?

Essence

What defines us?

Through a structured process of creative collaboration, we work with your leadership team and your key stakeholders to discover, debate and define the answers to these essential questions.

Each stage of our brand review process builds on the next as we provide the insight, ideas and impact you need to create your new powerful brand VOICE.

Insight

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 expert team of senior brand strategists conduct confidential 1:1 interviews with key individuals to understand current experiences, perceptions and future ambitions. It’s amazing how open people will be with us and how much they get out of sharing their views and ideas in these strategic conversations.

We facilitate small group workshops to encourage debate amongst colleagues and develop the essential insights we need. This also gives us the opportunity to help people think more openly about the role and value of the brand to them as individuals and to the organisation as a whole.

Often, this is the first time that many organisations have done the diligent job of asking people what they really think and actively listening to their opinions. It’s fundamental brand research with a focus on insight.

We design and conduct staff and customer brand perception surveys to ensure we have statistical data from larger samples so we are confident in our understanding.

We will also conduct competitor brand audits and share of voice audits to benchmark your brand performance against a small group of carefully chosen competitors and peers.

All of this is written up into a detailed insight report to share with the leadership team and ensure everyone is on the same page.

Ideas

The Brand VOICE Workshop is at the heart of our approach to strategic branding. Typically, 8-10 key decisions makers (often the leadership team) will attend in person for half a day.

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.

It’s the quality of the debate that really matters. Our core skill is in drawing out from everyone in the room the input and ideas we need to then articulate your essential Brand VOICE. It’s a very dynamic, creative and collaborative experience.

Where we can’t meet in person, we can develop stimulus that enables participants on Zoom or Teams to be able to contribute effectively.

Following the Brand VOICE workshop we then write up the outputs and return to share a full draft, providing a further opportunity for refinement.

Impact

The final Brand VOICE document is a comprehensive creative brief for the development of an impactful brand identity system. Our creative team will use this to develop initial concepts as everything that they need to know about the brand’s ambition is clearly explained.

Used in conjunction with the final brand identity system, the Brand VOICE is a detailed messaging platform that provides the basis for a whole host of communications requirements from core website content, induction materials, corporate literature, conference and video scripts, credentials presentations and sales materials.

We express your brand digitally so it can inform, engage and inspire all key audiences. We do this by optimising your content for use on digital channels and organising your essential digital platforms so that they are ready for you to accelerate your marketing performance with both internal and external audiences.

Through subsequent campaigns, we can then activate your brand to help you achieve specific marketing objectives.