How to drive and sustain brand momentum.
(And still be home in time for tea.)
Do you know anyone who finds building a brand a doddle? We don’t. Or, they shouldn’t. Now, we expect you’re thinking, “These guys purport to be a brand agency, surely they shouldn’t find it hard?” But the truth is, it ain’t easy. It can be dead hard. And that’s the point. Wrestling with a brand platform — call it what you want: purpose, vision, brand strategy — can be tricky enough. But keeping that idea alive is super tough. But that’s the only way it can work. Successful brands orientate everything they say and do around a distinct point of view. They stand apart from competitors and have a magnetic appeal to customers and employees. So, if your brand stands for something, every word and action should show it. And you need to do it again and again to keep up momentum. We’re a crack commando unit for leaders, a squad. With backgrounds in design, advertising and brand consultancy, we have the skills and experience to build your platform and drive your brand forward. If we’re honest, few design businesses can execute top-class advertising. And while some superstar ad agencies are making a better fist of leaning into design, most agencies can’t pull off identity and packaging. And where that leaves purely strategic consultancies as a partner to build your brand, you can only imagine what we think. Our curiosity allows us to work across design and communication. And that will make it easier. We know how to flex our approach, thinking and execution. Anyone familiar with us will know that we talk a lot about Combustion — our method for plugging creativity into the heart of a brand’s strategy. And in the past, we’ve focused a lot on the first stage of this process, the Platform. But that’s just part of the story. We’ve not shared as much about the Propulsion stage — driving and maintaining a brand’s momentum. In this edition of our newspaper, we redress the balance. Hopefully, you’ll spot something that will spark ideas for what you could do with your brand. So, here’s issue seven drawing on our last decade’s work. It’s a complete picture of how creating a coherent brand across communications, experience, culture and branding unleashes a powerful momentum that powers growth, value, and new futures.
To get in touch contact Rob Gray rob@squad.co 0161 228 2283
Lighting a fire The core of your brand’s offer could be a pack, an experience, a service or a cause. Your brand might have a niche audience, requiring focused communications. Or perhaps it is for everyone, so you need to broadcast. Our creative output is diverse because every brand is different. And while the mediums that build brands vary, the approach that sits behind their creation is surprisingly similar. We believe the strongest brands are built from the inside out. Most of our big brand projects start and gather momentum with the penning of a manifesto. It means our clients can grab hold of something richer and more tangible. And for our team, it gives us something more colourful and nuanced than a strategy deck to drive through the brand’s creative outputs. Often, these manifestos become films used to communicate the vision internally or launch it externally.
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1. Westmorland Family film 2. Pot Kettle Black manifesto 3. Open Partners film 4. Vestey Holdings film 5. JW Lees film 6. JW Lees conference 7. Vestey Foods film 8. Palatine film
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Getting physical It is in our communications work that the link between the brand platform and our outputs is most evident. A combination of messages and images express the idea clearly and holistically. But when it comes to physical experiences and spaces, it can be subtle and nuanced, where a feeling and atmosphere take president, not forgetting functionality.
At the centre of our experiential work for JW Lees was capturing a sense of the modern traditional pub company with a brewery at its heart. But we took great care to brand the pub without turning it into a bland chain experience. Smartening up the pub experience started with our designs for their external signage — in housing terms, curb appeal. The pub sign is an iconic part of British culture and must be treated with one part reverence, one part adventure. A strict two-colour approach provided a modern edge but with respect for tradition and a strong pictorial (pub signs originally had pictures on them because drinkers were often illiterate).
Inside, the bar became an altar, and we elevated the serve through our bespoke glassware. When combined with bar runners, beer mats, and promotional merchandise, the drinker enters an experience rather than just ordering a drink.
Working with the Westmorland Family on Tebay and Gloucester Services, they asked us to create a stronger brand without looking like “the branding people had been in”. It was a bold move to depart from the core brand scheme we’d created. Still, when designing the signage for the different parts of the offer, we captured the spirit of the identity rather than the ruthless use of the core brand elements. Unlike faux-artisanal high street offers, our work was genuine, tasteful and embedded into the walls using unfired clays mixed with minerals and pigments. We returned to our core brand identity for directional signage. But by using only the symbols, we created signs that entertained and communicated, linking with the minimalist coffee cup sleeves that had become iconic.
Talking to the designers of the hospitality venue Oddfellows, we could see their incredible vision, but we could sense that keeping the scheme creatively on track was proving frustrating. Founded by a team of interior designers, you’d think designing their brand experience would be a breeze. But it was becoming an opportunity to release a lifetime of pent-up creativity. And that was taking the project in some weird directions. We provided focus through a simple phrase: Welcomingly Odd. We put some meat on the bones of this phrase, and our client was able to sharpen their focus, creating a standout venue.
The Alberton is the flagship of Bruntwood’s Pioneer office development programme — a modern reimagining of Manchester’s Victorian cotton mills, with world-leading amenities within its walls. The building will embed physical and mental well-being into daily working lives, featuring the UK’s highest workspace pool. We captured the building’s platform as the workplace revolutionised and created an identity embodying the architecture and materials palette of the building scheme. The mark, quite literally, reflects the building’s situation on the banks of the River Irwell. But the building’s brand position delivered through a powerful story, beyond one of bricks and mortar, can push the building and brand forward in a way that pounds per square metre messages alone can’t.
Brand as pack When a brand is a product, not an experience, the packaging becomes crucial. When we first met Batisite Dry Shampoo, their products were languishing on the bottom shelves of convenience stores. But by establishing a more thoughtful and slicker design look, with some very definite ground rules around the placement of their redrawn logo face, we created a more attractive product with a great shelf standout. And while it’s true that other firms have subsequently tweaked the design, what’s impressive is how well our design cues are preserved. As they say, good design lasts. And it’s darned good value, too.
Talk of rules can sound dry in the world of creativity. But in the right hands, a framework can prove guiding and liberating at the same time. For JW Lees, their family of beers looked disconnected. But there was something in each beer having its personality. So, our design approach linked and pushed apart each of the beers, using a feeling and a philosophy over complex rules. Avoiding the curse of homogeneity, we used a different set of typefaces for each beer, linked only by the phrase: Display typefaces with an industrial heritage and plenty of muscle.
Branding causes Brands are just as crucial to places, causes and public information campaigns as commercial enterprises. In 2017, with the arrival of the GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation) looming, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) approached Squad with a brief to tackle the public information campaign for the new regulation. We developed ‘your data matters’ as the strapline for the campaign, and we designed a logo inspired by the familiar ‘on/off’ toggle switches, commonly used on digital interfaces, to represent giving people greater control over their data. For the communications campaign, ‘fingerprint-head’ characters provided the perfect vehicle for acting out how data matters in the modern world. We developed a full suite of off-the-shelf communications materials for organisations, including video, advertising, social content and literature. For those wanting to communicate the GDPR rights to their customers, the assets eased the burden of creating their own materials. And it ensured that a coherent message of ‘your data matters’ was communicated to the public. Propulsion works best when it is easy. And consistent.
The power of people People influence customer perceptions in all kinds of brands, but none more so than professional services where they are the brand’s heart. Professional services firms have realised the power of brand and speaking to an internal and external audience. Rather than merely presenting yourself brighter and more coherently through a strong brand identity, professional services firms are missing a trick if they don’t use the brand as a platform for action. So, messaging becomes crucial to rebranding firms like Palatine Private Equity. Anchored in the idea of doing the right thing, the expression of ‘positive equity’ drove the messaging and the new brand mark and look. The most positive of colours, yellow, created an eye-catching thread.
Starting with a digital (performance) media focus, Open Partners has broadened their offer into traditional media, becoming a full-service communications agency. But they’re anything but traditional. As a relatively young business, Open Partners appeal to the challengers, not the large slow-moving clients wedded to the established media agencies. Their clients are willing to take a chance on a different kind of agency. Enter the ‘agency of next’ — a phrase to live by and be known for. These words guided the fast-paced hype reel we made for the website we designed. The lark became our visual shorthand — a small songbird; the lark rises before first light; they move quickly and have adapted to singing in flight. Building the brand from the inside out, we put branded merchandise in the hands of Open Partners’ people, helping them absorb and feel part of the new brand.
Most people in the real world aren’t that bothered about brands. They’re too busy doing what interests them. To quote legendary ad man Howard Gossage: “Nobody reads advertising. People read what interests them, and sometimes it’s an ad.” And it can be said of design, too. It’s a sobering thought. We must unearth ways of being part of what people find genuinely interesting. The most interesting brands spark to life from the edges. At the intersections of: strategy + creativity position + personality intellect + intuition thinking + doing substance + surface physical + emotional high art + low art order + chaos visual + verbal what you say + how you say it something from here + something from over there. Traditionally, working practices separate what you say and how you say it. But we fuse the strategic and creative stages. How we work brings forward and accelerates the magic from the myriad of decisions made during creative execution. Students of the profession may recognise this approach from the Honda Book of Dreams — Google it. It’s interesting.
It created a way for strategic and creative people to collaborate on strategic and executional decisions before doing the actual work. Decisions about fonts, colours and vocabulary became part of the upfront strategic conversation, creating a visceral understanding of a brand voice, not just what you say but how you say it. We love that. It’s a working method that collects quotes, images, poems, lyrics and doodles. It’s all stuck on the wall, and we work out what feels like the brand and what doesn’t. Care is taken not to narrow things down — not to try and create a singular style or tone but a ton of different approaches which all feel like the brand. Then you make it into a book. Or, as we sometimes do, a film. Sounds easy? Nope. It means you need to be interested in everything. As Russell Davies, the planner on Honda at the time, says: “It’s not about making yourself interesting. It’s about making the world interesting. And that means developing skills and habits around ideas, creativity and communication.” As Russell’s book Do Interesting states on its cover: Notice. Collect. Share.
It means it’s a richer way of thinking and doing for us. Curating the most interesting and relevant stuff takes a sharp mind and eye. And then we join the dots. Or we whack it in the equivalent of a creative Large Hadron Collider. That’s when it gets interesting. We work with our clients to build the most interesting brands by doing the most interesting work of our lives, working in the most interesting manner possible. That doesn’t necessarily mean we need to work with rock star brands; interesting can be found anywhere and applied to anything. So we have a particular way of going about it. Boring is our sworn enemy. Interesting always takes a position. Interesting has a personality. Interesting can find a good idea anywhere. Interesting keeps its eyes open and doesn’t fall asleep in the car. Interesting has continuity, not mind-numbing, ruthless consistency. Interesting might be even more important than different. You may have noticed that the headline on this page is a song title borrowed from the Pet Shop Boys.
It is developing your skills of memory and recall.
In the track’s stylish black and white video, directed by fashion photographer Bruce Weber, is the handscrawled quote: She was never bored because she was never boring.
Or how to use a Pritt Stick and a scrapbook.
We think that’s interesting.
It’s about having your radar up at all times.
Always be collecting. And it’s useless if you don’t pass it on.
Showroom selling Creating an experience reflective of your brand is hard, but it’s even more challenging when you don’t control the retail or showroom environment. For Heritage Bathrooms, we created a platform rooted in the idea of making a heritage product more relevant to an audience distracted by something more modern. At the heart of this were the key bathroom looks we created. Print certainly isn’t dead when it comes to inspiring customers looking to make a big home-improvement purchase. They need time to pore over beautiful imagery and stimulus.
We wrote and shot editorial content for our Design with Heritage magalogue — part magazine, part product specification guide. And we also used this content to redesign and populate their website. So, when the suitably excited customers arrived at the showroom, what did they find? The same room designs make it easier for customers to walk in and say, “I’ll have that one.”
Driving footfall A great brand experience is nothing if people don’t know about it. And the way brands tell the world about themselves needs to be as reflective of what they stand for as everything else. We help Martin Moore kitchens drive people to their showrooms through weekly advertising in the Sunday supplements and monthly home-interest titles. As a luxury brand, we need a less is more approach, where style and atmosphere take president over words and rallying cries. We designed a high-end printed brochure to act as a showroom driver or take-home for the coffee table. Having redesigned Martin Moore’s brand identity, we maintain its integrity across showroom facias and signage, showroom tent cards, video loops, and all sorts of printed materials.
One place we have used a copy-heavy approach is, unusually, their showroom windows. Often the spot to find the most concise messages, we broke with convention and celebrated their story of reaching forty. It is, perhaps, the most commented-upon piece of work we’ve done for them. And Martin Moore loved the tree ring graphic so much that they’ve kept it ever since. And you guessed it, we add another ring each year.
Creating fame Despite all the suggestions of its demise, TV advertising remains a powerful medium to build a brand and drive fame. Skincare brand Super Facialist approached us with aspirations to wipe the smile off the big brands’ faces. Success depended on driving sales growth in Boots, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose and Morrisons, and Super Facialist’s website. But their budget was only a fraction of L’Oreal, Nivea, Garnier, Olay or No7’s. We needed a different approach. So we created stories of flawed heroes, ditching the sterile science labs and the unobtainable flawless beauty of typical skin care advertising. Instead, we took a comedic look at the often chaotic routines of women as they juggle work, family, social life and more — all while trying to look after their skin.
Two TV spots formed the focal point of the launch campaign, airing exclusively across Channel 4’s portfolio. Our broader campaign included the intelligent application of data and format innovations in social and digital platforms, along with retailer point of sale.
Great Northern Contemporary Craft Fair wanted to grow visitor numbers and average spending by broadening the fair’s audience appeal. For some, the word craft still evokes the thought of corn dollies rather than products designed and manufactured by nationally acclaimed artists. Our simple visual idea featured craft objects as statement pieces, quite literally. The Craft Says Something strapline guided their press releases, catalogue and programme introductions. And it was the glue that pulled together outdoor advertising campaigns and event opening speeches. Say no more.
For some businesses, fame is not the whole story. Eurocamp is a brand that people get nostalgic about. Parents have memories of their childhood holidays spent under canvas on the continent. But the market has moved on since the 1980s, with most people staying in comfortable lodges. Beyond lodges, what makes Eurocamp great is the diversity it offers. Yet its communications portrayed a very one-dimensional image of pools and slides. To celebrate their diverse offer, we used the word ‘possibilities’.
Possibilities needed a vehicle, so we made a series of mini-docs to tell the story of possibilities through different families with different holiday ideas. We figured the best way to capture a wealth of content in a limited timeframe was to shoot run-and-gun with a small production team. Leaning into this loose energy, we made films that put the families and their stories centre stage. And so our TV ad acted like the trailer for these films.
The vast array of digital and social communications needed to support television advertising became child’s play. By chopping the footage into every shape, size and format, the content allowed Eurocamp to energise its social channels.
It’s not just commercial brands that need fame. Causes, concerns, clubs and more need it too. Our flood awareness work for the Environment Agency uses neat animation and photo retouching to dramatise the message. But the simplest components proved the most compelling, valuable and useable: a blue flood-line graphic. This blue line provided the central glue for the scheme. The simplicity of the idea meant it was easy and cost-effective for local flood groups to use. To help them, we produced a toolkit containing designs and assets for various communications materials, including advertising, digital media, literature and ambient activity.
Wythenshawe Amateurs FC asked us to make a short film to enter a competition to win £100k — a much-needed financial boost to develop their ground. We figured that all the other entrants already had a ground. Wythenshawe didn’t have a permanent home. So, we created the story of a homeless football club. Our 2-minute film proved so compelling the local TV news played it, and countless football stars from Manchester United and Manchester City and Manchester-born pop stars shared it. It was this momentum that won them the big prize.
Innovation is oxygen Fame is great as long as you’re not a one-hit wonder. Innovation is crucial to staying relevant and maintaining momentum. Our JW Lees brand platform unlocked incredible energy and focus within the business, and previously shelved innovations, like their microbrewery, were dusted off and brought back to life. It was the story we wrote about the microbrewery’s home that captured people’s attention. We told the story of what was behind an old green door in a quiet corner of the brewery yard — a story about the old boiler house. So, we named the microbrewery the Boilerhouse. We avoided becoming a young upstart craft brewery — the Boilerhouse is part of a 200-year-old brewery but with a spirit of modern innovation. The Boilerhouse innovation helped JW Lees take their offer to a broader audience, including those interested in the newer, more experimental craft beers, without losing their soul.
With the proper fuel, long-established brands can be more futurefacing. Our work gave JW Lees the licence to break boundaries and try new things. Such was their confidence they made the audacious move to brew fifty-two beers in a year — that’s one each week.
And innovation can help fledging businesses expand faster. We’d helped coffee, brunch and breakfast restaurant Pot Kettle Black kickstart their expansion plans. It gave the business new impetus and catalysed new sites and innovation, resulting in the birth of a sibling business.
But when you launch an upstart sister business, don’t expect it to come without some sibling rivalry. Our name and branding for their new bakehouse, Half Dozen Other, captured that although siblings often see the world differently, there are some things they undeniably have in common: a sunny disposition and a love of Antipodean coffee culture with a northern accent. You see, their differences weren’t that great at all. It was more a case of six of one, half a dozen of the other. Or perhaps that’s six and a half of one, half a baker’s dozen of the other?
Beyond the many executional and tactical nuances, a brand’s most crucial job is making people feel a part of something bigger than themselves. We help determine what that is and how to better connect your brand with and in that culture. It takes a combination of conviction, substance, style and feeling. And perhaps that’s an apt place to wrap things up. By thinking beyond the old stages of strategy and execution and fusing the two, we do more than create strategy documents that gather dust on the shelf. And we’re also not spewing out random pieces of creative output. It all knits together. We take care to express the strategy through execution. But taking care, as they say, to make sure your strategy’s not showing. We call the fusion of strategy and creativity Combustion. But it is perhaps the day-to-day maniacal execution that delivers difference, distinctiveness, and, above all, a brand’s propulsion. As we said, it can be tricky. But it’s like anything: the more you practice, the luckier you get. We don’t believe that execution trumps strategy, but it’s only in the execution that it makes a real difference. It’s like the old Japanese proverb says: Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare.
We aim to inspire, educate and support people thinking about developing their brand. So, we’ve produced a series of tools and publications to kickstart your Combustion process. They’ll give you insight into our thoughts and methods and suggest how partnering with us can drive your brand’s momentum. The tools include our Calculator, a self-assessment product designed to measure the effectiveness of a brand’s Platform and Propulsion and guide future development. To access the Calculator and other tools, visit: squad.co/combustion/tools For all our new content, subscribe to Squad at: squad.co/subscribe
Squad is a creative partner for leaders Unit G3.1 Waulk Mill 51 Bengal Street Manchester M4 6LN 0161 228 2283 www.squad.co