Is your brand ready for recession?

This week saw confirmation that the UK is in recession, which is expected to be protracted. Coming hot on the heels of the pandemic, it can feel like the hurdles are unending, but now is the time for action and to use your brand’s assets and resources to the best effect.

Every situation will be unique, but here are a few pointers to help set a course through the stormy waters.

Maintain a long-term focus

First, a potential positive; if you can maintain your presence, have clear, focused messaging and be responsive to your customer needs, research repeatedly shows that you will gain on competing brands during a recession. You also can get more for your marketing spend because of the effect of competitors reducing their budgets.

It may take some realignment or refinement to remain relevant, but keeping a longer-term view will see you emerge stronger amongst the knee-jerk changes of direction and slashed marketing budgets.

Understand your customers

Before you do anything, understand your customers and any changing needs. If you grasp their challenges and the opportunities to address them, the more you have the potential to respond effectively and continue to do business with them.

Before you do anything, understand your customers and any changing needs.

Meeting customers’ requirements might require creativity when reconfiguring products and services to ease budget pressures or spending commitments. You may also need to focus your marketing efforts on core or necessity offerings.

Sharpen up your message and identity

To battle through the competitive landscape, you need to ensure that your messaging is crystal clear and that customers understand two things:

Everything that you can offer them – a surprisingly common situation, especially with B2B brands, is that customers will engage with your brand for a small percentage of what you offer and maybe need to learn the full extent of what you can provide.
Why they should buy from you, be consistent and persistent.

Again, consistency is critical when it comes to your brand identity, but importantly, this shouldn’t choke creativity. Just because everything looks the same doesn’t necessarily make it engaging or the best way to present your brand.

This may involve rebranding, it may involve repositioning your brand or it maybe just a case of some subtle tweaks to improve the clarity of your message.

Drop us a line if you want to chat about how to make sure your brand thrives over the coming turbulence.

Our first climate-positive year

September 2022 marks our first 12 months as a climate-positive agency, using Ecologi to offset our professional and personal impact through tree planting and investment in climate-positive projects.

In our first year, we have funded planting 488 trees in the UK and worldwide. We have also helped fund projects such as creating solar farms, using biomass to produce electricity and preventing deforestation.

Our carbon-reduction activity amounts to a carbon reduction of 32 tonnes, equivalent to 80,000 miles driven in a car or 25 long-haul flights.

Visit our profile to learn more.

On top of this, we also provide UK-based zero-carbon hosting; datacentres are also big carbon producers, and we have our studio in a high-tech, eco-friendly building packed with features such as:

Ground source heat pumps
Solar water heating
Natural air ventilation with PV-driven fans
Super insulation
Sun pipes to maximise natural daylight
Low energy, automatically activated lighting

Ecologi is a B-Corporation certified provider of carbon offsetting that we chose because of their transparency and easy access to evidence of the work taking place. Plus, the excellent dashboard and mapping of projects so that you can see precisely where your trees and projects are via Google Maps and what3words.

Visit their collective action tracker

Finding a job during the pandemic

Shaun began working for POP as a web developer in October 2020, approximately eight months after the ‘work at home’ directive during the Covid-19 pandemic. In this post, Shaun gives us his perspective on job-hunting and working as a profoundly deaf person during the pandemic.

The lockdown had a massive impact on me because people had to stay at home. To me, it felt similar to the experiences of people back during World War 2, where the government restricted people to where they could travel or go. People at that time were stuck at home with little to do, and I felt the same. Because I had no work, I decided to develop a website, which gave me something to do rather than sit around twiddling my thumbs.

I realised that if I didn’t do anything, it could affect my mental health. I realised that similarly, other people within the deaf community would also be feeling isolated and, in turn, could lead to issues with mental health and wellbeing. I always try to keep busy and did during the lockdown. I continued keeping fit, working on web development and having conversations with my friends. These were humorous as we pretended to have virtual parties and offer drinks to each other.

Before lockdown, I had never heard of Covid-19 and didn’t understand what it was. I thought, “what the f*cking hell is this?”

Before lockdown, I had never heard of Covid-19 and didn’t understand what it was. I thought, “what the f*cking hell is this?” During 2020, there were many broadcasts by Boris Johnson and other ministers and scientific advisors on television offering updates. Unfortunately, there was never a BSL interpreter explaining to the deaf community what was happening in sign language. Scotland and Wales did provide interpreters for their briefings, and because in England, this never happened, it had a massive impact on access to information for the deaf community.

Around May 2020, the government made it a rule that everyone had to wear masks when visiting shops or in enclosed public places. Mask wearing had an immediate effect on deaf people as we rely on lip patterns as well as sign language to communicate. Wearing masks made it impossible for deaf people to communicate as effectively.

I created a picture on my phone, which worked via Google Translate Live. This image allowed the hearing person to speak to my phone, and then Google would translate it into English to enable me to communicate with them successfully.

If I needed to communicate with a hearing person, I would type the words into my phone, and then the text would automatically convert to spoken words for them to hear.

During 2020, I had time to reflect on how the situation affected my mind. I knew that it was essential to have a positive mindset. I decided to write a book focussing on being positive, and I am halfway through the writing process. The book will be published and launched in 2022.

Writing my book keeps my mind thinking all the time; sometimes, a thought pops into my head during the night – I wake up, turn the light on and reach for my notebook to write it down before going back to sleep.

Early in 2020, my previous employer furloughed me. In July, my boss asked me to attend a virtual meeting to explain that business wasn’t doing so well and that the work coming in had reduced dramatically. She said she would let me know how things were going in August. In October, I received an email telling me they had made me redundant, which was a very unpleasant shock.

I began looking for work and, to be honest, I didn’t hold much hope in finding a job, but I applied many times and received replies offering me job interviews starting the first week of October. After the interviews concluded, I had four job offers, all sent to me on the same day, including one from POP. I thought about which one to accept and decided to choose POP.

People, when looking for work, sometimes give up too easily. I feel it’s important never to give up; you should always try to work as hard as possible to achieve success, especially when it comes to finding employment. I am the type of person who strives to do my best and achieve the things I start. If you aspire to do your best, then this leads to a healthy, positive mindset.

Being deaf and having problems with accessibility to information can lead to becoming negative. It can be easier to be negative than to have a positive mindset, but if I remain optimistic and have a positive outlook on life, it is more beneficial to me as a deaf person.

Since starting work at POP, I have yet to meet the team in person because of the lockdown. We have Zoom meetings, and it’s great to see Nick and the team, but I look forward to getting to the office one day and meeting everyone face-to-face.

In a ‘live’ environment, you can experience the office culture, banter, and other things that I enjoy in the workplace. You cannot do this on a virtual platform. I think that (because of the length of the lockdown) we should have a Christmas party in summer.

Working on a virtual platform, like Zoom, becomes very tiring. It can be challenging to process information as I rely on my interpreter’s accuracy, everything is two-dimensional, and some information might be missing.

In a face-to-face situation like the office, you receive extra information through body language; deaf people need to pick up this additional information. On virtual platforms, it is impossible to pick up on more minor nuances. They are easier to pick up on in real life, and it is easier to pick up someone’s emotions if you face them rather than them being at the end of a webcam.

There is a belief that hearing people think they share the same experiences as deaf people; this is not correct. Deaf peoples’ mental health issues are different from those of hearing people. This divide is especially relevant whilst the country has been in lockdown for such a long time. From the beginning of 2020 to the present day, we have not got back into the realms of reality.

After the first lockdown, we still had restrictions in place, and then the government put the country into another lockdown. During this period, we have had severely restricted contact with family and friends. As a deaf person, I can’t just pick up a phone and ring family or friends, and gaining access to external communication has been difficult. The deaf community has struggled more than some other people, which has caused more negativity and challenges in everyday life.

Shaun Fitzgerald was born profoundly Deaf and throughout his life has had to face barriers to learning. He has created his own business and is employed as a Web Developer at POP. He has presented TEDx talks and provides talks to groups of people around the UK, looking at Mental Health and Deafness and within that area, Suicide awareness and prevention.

Internal communications now, adverts later

As marketing budgets get slashed, and brands struggle to make sense of their new reality, most with vastly reduced income and resources, marketers and agencies plead with them to not go silent, not least because their income rests on them generating work. One area of comms that definitely shouldn’t be silent though is internal communications.

“If there isn’t demand, then no amount of advertising can boost sales.” — Archie Norman, Chairman, M&S

Brands that continue to market aggressively in a recession usually are in a stronger position afterwards is the message, but this isn’t a typical recession.

We all pray for the V-shaped post-lockdown economic revival, but there’s still much uncertainty about this happening amid the lay-offs, furloughing and hushed fears of a second wave.

A recession doesn’t usually come with entire sectors such as events and hospitality shuttering for months, or the restrictions on movement, face-to-face contact and reduced admission into physical locations. All of which further hobble business activity and recovery.

A typical recession also doesn’t come with the sheer amount of adaptation and diversification that the present crisis has demanded either. Many businesses have had to realise their formerly hazy, sometime-never flexible working plans almost overnight, and many non-digital brands have had to formulate a digital or distanced offering at a similar breakneck speed.

Even so, if demand for your brand’s offering is significantly down or restricted, perhaps to nearly (or even actually) zero, what do you do with the precious marketing resources you do have?

There is a strong argument for significantly reappropriating marketing spend to internal communications instead of using it all to fruitlessly ‘keeping your name out there’ and seeing your budget evaporate.

As always, your staff are the living embodiment of your brand. The clarity in your internal communications, now and as people return to work, will have a massive impact on what shape your brand is in, and what your customer experience is like when demand returns.

What form these internal communications take will depend on the brand and how it has been affected by the crisis, but likely themes will include:

What measures are we taking to ensure your safety?
What measures are we taking to ensure business continuity?
Open and frank company-wide discussions and strategy sessions to allow people to share their experiences and thoughts from the last few months
A state of the nation summary – where are we? What did we learn? What positives can we keep long-term? What change is needed to get back on track? What is your role in this?
Why were you furloughed when others weren’t? How do we regain your confidence that you are still valued?
How can we reintroduce furloughed and non-furloughed staff into the same workplace frictionlessly?
Has your role or working arrangements changed permanently? Why was this necessary?

The temptation is to hold off until it feels like the crisis is over to do your meaningful internal communications; the stuff that’s bigger than Zoom quizzes and sweetie hampers, as a sort of collective sigh of relief. But embracing the challenge now, even if you don’t have all the answers, will help ensure your brand’s internal integrity is as healthy as possible when the phone starts ringing again.

For examples of our internal communications work see our projects for Interflora and Vera Wang.

Image courtesy of Jon Tyson

Brand strategy: co-branding

Co-branding and brand partnerships, when done correctly, have the power to reinvigorate tired brands, open up new revenue streams and introduce brands to entirely new audiences.

By the same measure, co-branding exposes the participants to the risks associated with each brand’s actions and reputations; so the phrase “You’re known by the company you keep” is highly relevant.

Co-branding works best when the partners have a joint offering that benefits the customer and is, at least outwardly, seamless — one such example is the co-branding partnership between Apple and Nike. Based on the simple premise that people like to listen to music when working out, the Nike+iPod launched in 2006.

…the phrase “You’re known by the company you keep” is highly relevant

Nike+ users could listen to music on their iPods or iPhones while working out and at the same time receive workout data such as distance, pace and calories burned using the technology contained in a small transmitter and the Apple devices.

This strong relationship has continued through the more recent advances in technology and changing product ranges and now includes a series of co-branded Apple Watches. The relationship between the two brands continues to widely expose both brands to each other’s incredibly loyal customers.

Other successful examples of co-branding that make immediate sense were projects we were involved in the creation of (see above image). The partnerships between Interfora and both The Co-operative Funeralcare and Vera Wang, for funeral flowers and wedding flowers respectively, helped to create a new dynamic to the product ranges.

Interflora bringing their credibility in floristry to the funeral care market lent the combined offering an elevated sense of quality, while renowned fashion designer, Vera Wang, brought a feeling of exclusivity to her range of wedding flowers.

A further interesting example of note is (RED) which exists entirely to be a co-branding partner. The Global Fund created the brand to generate sustainable income to fight AIDS in Africa and has partners including Dell, Hallmark, Starbucks, GAP and Nike; each able to create their own (RED) products that contribute to the fund’s income.

Co-branding advantages

Reaching another brand’s ready-made audience and rapid market penetration
Elevating or improving the perceived credibility of a brand by association with a more exclusive or technically proficient partner
Creation of entirely new joint ventures
Extending operational reach through broader alliances such as Oneworld

Disadvantages

As mentioned in the introduction, brands, like people, are known by the company they keep, so the main disadvantage of co-branding is the risk of being tied to partner brand that either has a negative development arise or becomes less of an asset and more of a liability.

An excellent example of this is the long-standing relationship between Shell and Lego which dated back to the 1960s. Lego ended the relationship after a high-profile campaign by Greenpeace, who accused Shell of exploiting the Arctic recklessly to drill for oil. Lego could not risk association with a partner that was becoming more toxic as environmental concerns grow to an all-time high.

Nike was also quick to sever its ties with Lance Armstrong and his LiveStrong foundation after he confessed to doping.

If you are considering co-branding or have any questions about this area of brand strategy, drop us a line.

This is a marathon, not a sprint

New research* shows that most brands are yet to adopt a strategic approach to marketing more during the pandemic lockdown, just 7% are investing more in marketing, but double that figure think it’s too early even to know what their strategic response will be.

By far the most significant percentage of brands, some 50%, are making cuts in marketing intending to conserve finances enough to survive another day. 29% remain in a holding position of maintaining previous marketing spend.

These statistics paint a picture of brands, somewhat understandably, battling to survive with a short-term focus on holding on to cash or in a state of paralysis as to how to play it in the current situation — 10% of marketers believe their finance department would reject requests for marketing spend because it would be a waste of time and money.

It seems then that the approach of most brands is in some way to hope it blows over before their cash runs out and, hopefully, return to business something like usual.

Only 10% of consumers believe they will return to their usual pattern of behaviour once the lockdown eases.

Consumer research** shows the pandemic recovery is going to be more of a marathon than a sprint, however. That’s once the lockdown ends too and we still don’t have a timescale for that yet.

Only 10% of consumers believe they will return to their usual pattern of behaviour once the lockdown eases. A massive 77% of consumers say that they will be either a bit cautious or very cautious, and 13% intend to stay in some sort of lockdown situation. 28% of consumers also believe the experience will leave them with permanently changed shopping behaviour.

There’s an evident gulf between brand thinking and consumer thinking, in terms of the timescales this will play out at least.

The research indicates that customers are going to have to be coaxed back rather than flooding back uninvited as soon as the lockdown eases. When they do come back, they will also be coming back with reduced income.

If they are to survive or even thrive, brands need to find a way of bridging the gap and form a longer-term plan now to negotiate their current reality, the road to recovery is going to be a long one.

* Marketing Week and Econsultancy
** Retail Economics

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

Brand strategy: hybrid brands

In this, the third post in our brand strategy series looking at brand architecture, we look at the hybrid brand architecture model.

The hybrid model aims to incorporate elements of both the branded house and house of brands models to give each brand maximum advantage, either through endorsement or independence.

Hybrid brand architecture is often the result of acquisitions, whereby the parent brand decides on a case-by-case basis what the most beneficial brand strategy is when it acquires each new brand — either absorb it into the parent brand, retain some element of the existing brand but endorse it with the parent brand or to leave it intact.

Examples of the hybrid brand architecture model include Coca-Cola, Volkswagen and Amazon.

Examples of the hybrid brand architecture model include Coca-Cola, Volkswagen and Amazon. Amazon, in particular, has a host of brands that range from Amazon Prime and Amazon Echo that are very clearly visually signposted as part of the brand to brands such as IMDb and Twitch that have remained mostly intact post-acquisition.

Facebook is also making a transition from a single-platform brand to a hybrid brand that is both the social media platform and the parent company that endorses acquired platforms such as Whatsapp and Instagram. The ‘two facebooks’ having different identities to signify which you are interacting with — either parent or platform.

Hybrid brand strategy advantages

The hybrid architecture approach can present the best of all worlds. The awareness and rapid market penetration that a known brand can lend to either a new offshoot or a smaller acquisition can be very beneficial. But it also allows the flexibility for stand-alone brands where this would be an advantage.

Equally, if a brand that is either neglected or has other difficulties gets brought under the wing of a trusted parent brand, it can help to negate the negative image of the brand that is acquired.

In the case of platforms or services such as Twitch, the ability to make the transition in ownership seamless by leaving the brand intact also helps to retain the brand’s users.

Disadvantages

The additional costs and management time that the house of brands model generates can also apply to the hybrid model, together with some of the inflexibility and ‘risk by association’ of the branded house model.

The other significant disadvantage can be confusion, both from an external and an internal viewpoint. Customers and brand managers can just become lost in a morass of brands at various levels of association and disassociation with the parent brand, not all of which necessarily makes sense if the situation has arisen organically over time and goes without periodical review.

If you want to talk to us about your brand architecture, drop us a line.

Photo by Markus Lompa on Unsplash

Brand strategy: house of brands

Continuing our brand strategy series of posts addressing brand architecture, we take a look at the house of brands model. The house of brands is the principle alternative to the branded house model.

The house of brands model has the parent brand in the background, sometimes almost to the point of being unknown, and focuses brand-building efforts on individual service or product brands.

The visibility of the parent brand does vary within this as, strategically, it can sometimes be beneficial for it to be known; mainly as an endorsement of quality or heritage and sometimes it is more useful or relevant for it to take a back seat.

An example of a house of brands model is FMCG behemoth Unilever. The brands owned and operated by Unilever fall into various consumer goods categories and include house-hold name brands such as Walls, Persil, Hellmann’s and Ben & Jerry’s.

You can use Unilever-owned products several times a day in various categories and not be aware of the parent brand without scrutinising the packaging carefully.

House of brands brand strategy advantages

There are many advantages to the house of brands brand architecture model, the primary one being flexibility. Many FMCG goods brands favour it as it allows them to occupy more market share by having several brands in the same category.

It also allows for the operation of brands with different positioning in the same category, such as a budget brand and a mid-market or high-end brand. Alternatively, similar products could focus on different attributes or market segments.

If one of the brands takes a turn for the worse, the fallout has a better chance of being contained within that one brand

Another significant benefit of the house of brands model is that they have some protection from each other in the case of adverse situations. If one of the brands takes a turn for the worse, the fallout has a better chance of being contained within that one brand.

Nestlé, for example, has attracted some broad and incredibly strong criticism (at the time of writing, Why Nestle is one of the most hated companies in the world is high on the first page of Google search results for the company’s name), yet Smarties and Quality Street feel distant from the furore and remain fondly regarded.

Disadvantages

The House of brands brand strategy is resource-hungry. Each brand needs establishing in its own right and marketed more-or-less independently, which can be incredibly costly compared to the branded house model.

Related to this is also the risk of cannibalisation; launching and operating multiple brands in the same category can result in converting customers from an existing brand to your newly-launched brand. The overall market share of the parent brand, therefore, doesn’t increase, but it now has the additional liabilities of operating a new brand.

There is also just the sheer logistical workload of owning and operating multiple brands. If a company owns 400 product brands, there is some inevitability that they won’t all shine as brightly. Some will always get the lion’s share of attention and investment, which in turn becomes something of a self-fulfilling cycle as they continue to perform better.

While the limiting of potential negative overspill from one brand to another is an advantage, conversely it also restricts any possible positive association. The halo of one brand tends not to stretch around its stablemates.

If you want to talk to us about your brand architecture, drop us a line.

Photo by Alina Grubnyak on Unsplash

Brand strategy: the umbrella brand

When creating your brand strategy, an important aspect is brand architecture. There are several models that you can adopt and even hybrid models, so in our series of posts, we will look at each in turn.

It is worth mentioning that, particularly as businesses and brands grow in complexity and acquire other brands or launch new areas of activity, there exists an entire spectrum of hybrid models.

One widely used brand architecture model is the umbrella brand or branded house model. In essence, the umbrella brand or branded house uses an overarching brand as the main focal point, and the brand’s products or services are all contained within this.

Volvo is an example of an umbrella brand or branded house brand architecture model, as is Virgin. Whether you are ordering wine, booking a holiday or signing up for an intergalactic flight, you are in no doubt that you are dealing first and foremost with the Virgin brand and will see its familiar signature-style logo.

Umbrella brand strategy advantages

There are lots of advantages to the branded house architecture model, one of the main ones being sheer visibility. If you perform every interaction under one banner, then all efforts concentrate and support the one brand.

From a brand management viewpoint, it can be easier to manage a branded house. All areas of the brand share the same vision, the same identity (albeit with some specifics for sub-brands) and can seek to create the same or similar customer experience.

There are also ordinarily significant operational efficiencies to the branded house model.

There are also ordinarily significant operational efficiencies to the branded house model. Marketing efforts can often be shared, and public relations activities tend to benefit the whole ‘house’.

This approach can also give new areas of activity rapid market penetration. If the brand is well-known and already has a positive reputation in the marketplace, a new service or product will immediately benefit from being within the branded house, which is considerably easier than launching a new brand.

Disadvantages

One of the most potentially severe disadvantages of this brand strategy is that any negative association bleeds into all areas of the branded house. A disaster for one service or product has consequences for its siblings too.

There is also the issue of dilution. If a brand stretches too far, both its credibility in the marketplace (especially if it’s a new entrant), and what it stood for in the first place can become lost.

Another disadvantage is inflexibility; the whole branded house tends to own the brand positioning, so it can be hard to launch a new product or service that shares the brand but seeks to hold a different position in the market. An example of this is Toyota when launching an upmarket challenger to the German business-class brands. It had to create the luxury Lexus brand to earn a share of the luxury market convincingly.

Similarly, the areas of activity the brand enters into have to make sense to the brand’s audiences. Can what the brand is known for successfully translate? The public can be fickle, and if that’s combined with a leftfield brand extension, it can spell disaster — though there are doubts over its veracity, the infamous Colgate Lasagne illustrates how jarring some brand extensions have the potential to be.

If you want to talk to us about your brand architecture, drop us a line.

Photo by Adam Cai on Unsplash

How to ruin your brand identity

You’ve worked hard to grow your brand from concept to something with tangible value; you don’t just have customers, you have fans. The long nights and weekends working are finally paying off!

Wrapped around it all is your brand identity, it’s the conduit between your brand and it’s public. Here’s how to completely undermine it:

Use your identity inconsistently

Initially, you got a fantastic identity designed for your brand. It lent it a real feel of quality and stood out in the marketplace like a beacon of Apple-esque chic.

You didn’t get any brand guidelines produced though, so every time it’s been used since you’ve just supplied the last piece of collateral as a reference.

It now looks a bit like you’ve paid someone to bootleg your brand.

For some reason, your brand doesn’t look quite as refined as it used to. Bit by bit, it seems to have become removed from the original brand identity. It now looks a bit like you’ve paid someone to bootleg your brand.

Oh well, perhaps time for a branding refresh.

Change your brand identity regularly

Day in, day out you have to look at your brand identity, and you’re sure it’s starting to look a bit dated or has lost its sparkle, or maybe you’re just bored with it.

Despite the fact it’s only 18-months since your last rebrand, it must be time to rebrand again; your customers will be just excited as you by your new look. Perhaps you’ll even change your name this time. Agile!

One of your competitors has rebranded, and their new identity looks impressive, so do something like theirs.

Stretch it beyond relevance

Your quest for global domination means sub-brands and brand extensions a-plenty.

Just because you’re a recruiter, it doesn’t mean you can’t launch a range of athleisure wear or a restaurant chain. Your reputation for filling vacant IT positions will translate easily across countless products and services.

Make sure they all carry the same brand name too, so when one brand extension goes awry, it reflects poorly on them all.

Jump on the bandwagon

You want your brand out there, and a structured social responsibility programme is too restrictive. Instead, hitch your brand to every cause, movement, issue or sponsorship opportunity that comes along, big or small.

Don’t appoint one person or team to manage it

Brand management is a company-wide responsibility, so get everyone to use, deploy and manage your brand identity without anyone overseeing it or controlling quality.

Conclusion

By following these easy steps, you’ll achieve maximum cost and effort for minimum return. You’ll also be sure to confuse anyone that comes into contact with your brand, and maybe even yourself.

If you want to avoid these pitfalls, drop us a line and let’s talk about your brand.

Photo by explorenation # on Unsplash

A love letter to London 2012

Every piece of identity design to gain significant exposure leads to a familiar pattern of behaviour; some likes, some dislikes, some designers pointing out aesthetic flaws or where the project went wrong, a few (usually awful) attempts at alternatives.

This eruption is all usually spewed forth without the context of the original brief, the client’s input, what the goal was or any other of the countless factors that influence the outcome of a design.

One of the most extreme examples of this was the reaction to the London 2012 Olympic Games identity. It generated a reaction so strong it became a heated discussion far outside of the design industry. People felt so violently opposed to it that a petition to redesign it was quickly set up and gathered tens of thousands of signatures (this was before petitioning everything became a default reaction).

A raft of proposed alternatives surfaced, all pretty appalling, but most importantly, they almost all missed a key objective; create an identity that could be owned by the nation, not just London.

Every depiction of the London Eye, Houses of Parliament or Thames woven into the Olympic Rings missed the point — Britain is tiny, it needed everyone to support the Olympics; not just the capital.

The logo’s form was so wildly unconventional and dynamic that it could be filled with images, patterns and colours in almost any combination and remain just as recognisable.

The shape assisted widespread ownership by sponsors and suppliers up and down the country; they could create their own unique version of it — despite possibly disliking it, they still wanted the prestige of being a supplier or partner to the Olympics.

It was edgy, unexpected and risky — it could appeal to a young audience which was critical

Instead of the usual soft shapes and pleasant but forgettable colours, the identity was all diagonal lines, sharp corners and an eye-popping palette. It was edgy, unexpected and risky — it could appeal to a young audience which was critical as increasing youth participation in sport was a huge part of the intended legacy of the games and its infrastructure.

Overall the approach taken to create the identity and the final result was something befitting of a nation responsible for producing some of the world’s greatest creative and maverick minds.

The London 2012 logo is also likely to be the only Olympic logo you can recall without seeing it, which is an incredibly hard thing to achieve.

If more design work is approached in this way and more risks are taken, perhaps more brands would avoid one of the worst but most common of all design outcomes — nice, but forgettable.

Photo by Simon Connellan on Unsplash

From purpose to purchase

People want more from brands today; they want them to stand for something, they want them to have purpose. This isn’t a particularly new revelation, but it’s getting more and more important and research shows that brand purpose is more important to Generation Z and Millennials than it is to Generation X and Baby Boomers. Younger consumers want brands to roll up their sleeves and get involved.

…despite it being a polarising campaign and there being a very vocal backlash online, Nike reported a 31% increase in sales compared to the same period the previous year.

One of the most recent cases of a big brand taking a risk to back a cause was Nike’s Colin Kaepernick 30^th anniversary Just Do It campaign. The company had to weigh the risk of alienating the NFL against the opportunity to engage with a young, socially conscious market at a potentially decisive moment. The gamble paid off – despite it being a polarising campaign and there being a very vocal backlash online, Nike reported a 31% increase in sales compared to the same period the previous year.

But what matters to consumers most what it comes to brand purpose? According to research by Accenture, the following:

66% brand culture – delivering on promises
66% transparency – sourcing materials, treating employees, etc
65% treating employees well
62% improving the environment
62% having ethics or values and demonstrating them
62% being passionate about what it does
52% being bigger than just products or services, aligning with personal values
50% standing up for issues they believe in
50% supporting causes we have in common
38% creates a sense of community with like-minded connections
37% political stances close to my heart

There is, according to the same research, a difference in how important customers rate purpose depending on the category the brand is in i.e. Basic or utility products such as detergent, to a certain extent, fall back on more traditional differentiators such as price and quality – people appear less likely to want engagement from a bin liner.

So what does this mean in practice?

It means that to be more competitive, brands need to be more human and more transparent. They need to do what they say they will, but also find a calling that is bigger than just increasing sales. They need to engage with issues – even if an issue is divisive, taking a measured risk and giving voice to a cause with authenticity can be as commercially sound as it is ethically. This appears to be the path to creating an engaged community of loyal stakeholders, rather than a transient set of customers.

Photo by Charles on Unsplash

Sources:

Accenture Global Consumer Pulse Research 2018, [survey of 29,530 end-consumers from 35 countries]
Nike sales information via Eddison Trends

How to rebrand successfully

Making changes to your brand can be a risky business. Just look what happened when Coke attempted their image change in 1985, cue u-turn, and Royal Mail attempted to dress up in a sexier outfit and call themselves ‘Consignia’? – The result was that the attempt was *ahem* consigned to the cutting room floor. So why did these rebrands fail and what do you have to do to ensure that your rebrand is a success?

Do your research and create a rationale for your rebrand

One of the most important things you have to do when deciding whether or not to rebrand is to do your research. A re-brand should not be a kneejerk reaction to a competitor’s move (i.e. Coke’s 1985 disaster when they panicked about the Pepsi challenge) or an isolated internal decision that has not sought the opinion of all stakeholder groups (Royal Mail – Consignia case).

Don’t forget your existing customers. Who are they? What do they like about you? What do they feel you are doing well? What do they think you need to improve upon?

You must look at the marketplace you are operating in, where are you in terms of the competition? Where do you want to recruit new customers, how many are there, who are they, what do they want? Why do they want your product and service, what can you offer that others don’t? Really get to know them and what makes them tick.

Don’t forget your existing customers. Who are they? What do they like about you? What do they feel you are doing well? What do they think you need to improve upon?

If you’re introducing a new product or service what is the market potential? Are you being realistic about what it can do for your company as a whole

This will ensure that you are looking outwards and will help you to build a true picture of what you look like now and what you want to achieve, and may well throw up some surprises!

Shape your new brand

Once you have carried out your research and really understand the problems a rebrand needs to solve you can begin to shape what your new brand should do for and say to customers.

What characteristics or qualities do we want people to think of when they hear our name?
How do we want our customer to feel when they use our product/service?
Do our products/services live up to these ideas? If not, make changes at product/service level before you do anything else.
What do you want to retain from your existing brand-where is the real ‘heritage’, and where do we need to build new values and promises.

Develop your internal ambassadors

Do not even attempt to roll out a new brand without first training every staff member in the new brand. Why are you carrying out the rebrand? What does it mean? What changes do you want your staff members to make to ensure that their behaviour is ‘on brand’? If necessary incentivise these behaviours to make sure there is a longevity beyond the first 3 months after its launch. Get key influencers involved in the rebrand process- i.e. looking at ways they can make the roles that they carry out ‘on brand’. Get them bought into the new brand and involved in the process.

Be relentless in communicating your rebranding efforts

Once you launch your new brand be bold and relentless in its communication. Don’t water it down or ‘forget’ to use it. Make sure that all your internal and external touch points have been considered and changed to fit in with the new brand.

Expect a ‘response’ and be brave!

Hopefully, your new brand will be well received and will quickly help you to achieve your business goals. However, you will always have detractors who ’ liked it better before’ or to whom ‘it doesn’t make sense’. People fear change but be brave! You have done your research and you have rational, business-led decisions for conducting the rebrand. Give it time and let your bottom line do the talking!

Check out these examples of our branding and rebranding work.

Photo by Pablo García Saldaña on Unsplash

Three ‘R’s of hiring a creative agency

Annabel Gilbert, Partner from Impact Marketing, guides you through selecting a creative agency in the first of our series of guest blog posts from the world of design and marketing.

If you’re ready to embark on a new design project whether it’s new packaging, a logo re-design or a complete brand overhaul, you will be looking for a creative agency and there are a plethora of agencies out there to choose from, but which one? Here are 3 tips to help you find ‘the one’:

Research

Whether you have been contacted directly by an agency touting for your business, or you’re starting the process of looking for one yourself, do your research! Take a look at their website and client list and check you like what you see. Ask them if they have done work for clients in your industry or aimed at your target market. If they have already come up with design you like for other clients, the chances are they will for you too.

Recommendation

If a creative agency has received testimonials from happy clients you’ll find them on their website, on Twitter or Facebook. It’s also worth contacting their clients directly to find out if they were happy with the work they received. Talk to business associates and friends about agencies they have worked with and ask for their honest opinions, you’ll get some fantastic information that will help you narrow down your shortlist.

Rapport

Finally, go with your instinct on this – if you find them easy to talk to, enthusiastic and receptive to your questions, it’s a pretty good start. Any successful creative outcome is reliant on good communication between both parties, so before you make your decision ask for what the marketing world call a ‘chemistry meeting’, that’s an informal chat to the rest of us!

Any successful creative outcome is reliant on good communication between both parties

Use it as an opportunity to ask questions about how they work and be upfront about what you’re looking for in return; mention your timescales, budget, goals etc and use it as an opportunity to see if you can work with them. It goes without saying that you should like what you hear, but even if they seem to be saying all the right things, if it feels awkward or uncomfortable at this stage it doesn’t bode well for the future.

If you’ve found the right creative agency for your business the design process should be an enjoyable one, have confidence in your decision and get started!

Check out our projects

Photo by Samuel Zeller on Unsplash

Which CMS to choose and why

If you are commissioning a new website, you will need to choose which CMS (Content Management System) to use and are likely to be recommended one by your developer. It is worth discussing the options at this stage thouroughly though; the CMS will be a very significant part of the infrastructure of your website, so making the wrong choice can be costly.

Part of what we do at POP is maintaining websites that we didn’t build originally or making them work more effectively, so naturally, we have seen clients with systems that are a bad fit for what they are trying to achieve.

Here are some considerations when choosing your Content Management System:

Who else supports the Content Management System?

Some systems are high-quality, widely-supported and free (eg. Expression Engine, Magento and WordPress) or carry a licence or subscription fee (Craft, Shopify). However, some are less-well supported by the developer community and/or are lower-quality (CS Cart, Perch, Open Cart, Drupal, Joomla!).

A low level of support can mean difficulties expanding the functionality of your website in the future, or it being expensive to do so.

A low level of support can mean difficulties expanding the functionality of your website in the future, or it being expensive to do so. It could also mean a frustrating content management experience and limited options if you want to part ways with your current developer.

How individual are your needs really?

Are your needs really that individual? If so, by all means invest heavily in the bespoke system that your developer is going to create around your specific needs, but also realise that you may now be tied to that developer through thick and thin and the ongoing support costs may also be significant.

Will the CMS still be a good choice in a year or two?

Some of the entry-level systems such as Squarespace and Shopify can be a great way to get online or start selling quickly and cheaply, but are you able to scale your website up alongside the demands of your business? Do you have the flexibility to configure the architecture of your website for SEO? They may be a great first step, but will restrictions make them a false economy?

Conclusion

Before committing to CMS, ask yourself how long you expect the website to last and what you might want to do during that period in terms of expanding its functionality.

If you are having a bespoke system built (the actual Content Management System, not just design and templates), is the cost necessary and will it be technically capable of keeping pace with your requirements?

Also, consider how long you expect the relationship with your developer to last once the honeymoon period and launch is over – do you have the flexibility to change if you want to? Will another developer or agency be able to support the website?

Head over to our projects for examples of CMS-driven websites.

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash

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So what does this mean in practice?

How to rebrand successfully

Do your research and create a rationale for your rebrand

Shape your new brand

Develop your internal ambassadors

Be relentless in communicating your rebranding efforts

Expect a ‘response’ and be brave!

Three ‘R’s of hiring a creative agency

Research

Recommendation

Rapport

Which CMS to choose and why

Who else supports the Content Management System?

How individual are your needs really?

Will the CMS still be a good choice in a year or two?

Conclusion