The goal of an agency is to demonstrate how design translates strategy into an emotive experience that connects businesses with their customers.
There are design partners, and there are strategic design partners. We pride ourselves on being in the second category, which means we focus on creating high-impact brand experiences that help our clients achieve their goals.
Over the last 24 years, this has led to us working with some of the biggest B2B brands in the world alongside trusted Third Sector clients and ambitious start-ups. We are both champions and guardians of the brands we work with. We help them achieve cut-through in the busiest of sectors, using strategy and design to boost their relevance and visibility and hone their competitive edge.
What does being a strategic design partner involve?
Being a strategic design partner means we use research and insight to gather a deep understanding of the world in which our clients’ businesses operate. Building a picture of who their customers are and what their competitors do. Shaping the overall message, content and design journey so our clients can reach their target audience and differentiate their proposition.
Whether we are developing or curating brands or simply delivering day-to-day activations, it’s important for us to:
- Know what our clients want to achieve and how it fits into the ‘bigger picture’
- Understand the landscape in which our clients operate
- Identify who their target audience is – and what they want their audience to feel, think and do
- Draw upon our experience to share insights from other industries and offer alternative ways of doing things
Design is much more than a nice-to-have in the good times. It is a valuable tool that lets a company communicate its strategy effectively by giving it the means to “live its business.
Raymond Turner
https://www.dba.org.uk/sharpening-the-focus-design/
Getting to the inspirational brief
All forms of brand communication, whether sales-focussed or brand-led, have a function.
The role of the brief is to capture the strategic intent of the business, project a vision for what the project wants to achieve and harness the values and purpose of the brand. If all these ingredients are in place, the likely outcome is a highly effective, creative response.
Thorough briefs spark thought-provoking outputs, and as an agency, we’re conscious that success is underpinned by more than ideas that look and sound great, they must also deliver on multiple levels in the real world.
From brief to creative excellence
Our insight-gathering and briefing phases form part of a six-step brand activation process. Whether working on a campaign, event, rebrand or new visual identity, the exercise enables us to work with our clients to create the perfect brief. Crucially, it also allows us to understand how it serves their growth goals and how we will measure success. It guides content creation and design direction, giving us the tools to measure their effectiveness from concept through to final assessment of market traction.
By implementing a robust strategic design process, we’re helping our clients achieve maximum benefit from their marketing budget.
While no two projects are the same and no process is entirely fixed, our approach can broadly be captured in the following steps, where we show some key thinking in how we move from business strategy to creative brief and market impact:
1. Planning and discovery
What are the challenges you are facing today?
Where are you trying to get to?
2. Research & audit
What are the opportunities and challenges within your industry?
How do you compare to your competitors?
Where is your brand today in the eyes of your employees and customers?
3. Strategy development
Who are you as an organisation? What do you stand for?
What is your vision of success and how do you show up for your team and customers?
What is your core value proposition?
How will you compete?
4. Creative response
How do we best express your strategy tangibly to the people who matter?
How can we effectively demonstrate your value and difference?
What is the single core idea that is unique to you and how will it help drive your internal and external brand communications?
5. Brand flagships
Where are you seen? What are your customer touchpoints? How can we connect the experiences so that your brand promise is reinforced with every interaction? Which channels should we embrace to maintain relevance and demonstrate leadership within your sector?
6. Activation
How do we reach your target audience, drive engagement, increase brand awareness, and use your channels to maximum effect?
We’ve used our brand process to help countless clients achieve meaningful growth and make an impact in the market and on their bottom line.
A case in point…
We believe that beautifully crafted brand experiences, when linked to corporate strategy, are a key tool in delivering value to your customers, your team and ultimately your investors.
It’s one of the reasons our clients choose us and continue to work with us time and again.
Do you want to leverage the power of design to stand out from your competitors, position yourself for growth, navigate change and more?