Core positioning, brand voice and content editing

Zelfio is a new self-development coaching app designed to help individuals realise their full potential through daily plans that are a curated collection of the best self-development tools and techniques from across history.

I worked with the team behind the app to develop the core positioning of Zelfio, reaching the final iteration by developing three alternative brand stories that were tested online.

A second significant element of the project was creating an appropriate brand voice for the 20+ coaching plans. I developed two alternative styles before we landed on one which was more evocative of a real life coach than a digital one and reassured users they were in a safe and private place where their information was secure.

I applied this brand voice to the editing of plans, which covered multiple subjects including self-limiting beliefs, stepping out of your comfort zone, life and time management, managing obstacles and enhancing your sleep. Complex concepts needed to simply explained, self-reflection needed to be encouraged and daily tasks needed to motivate people to complete them.

As well as being launched to consumers, Zelfio is being deployed into organisations as an engagement tool, to enable employees to understand their ambitions and motivations, what holds them back, and how they can realise their potential. One plans also focuses on helping people to become an effective coach of others.

Co-Creation of company story, core behaviours and All Hands launch

Thakeham is an infrastructure-led house builder and community creator operating in the South East of England. In partnership with social housing providers and working independently, the company delivers high quality homes and amazing places to live with sustainability, biodiversity, human connection and wellbeing at their heart.

While many developers make strong claims about their commitments to sustainability and placemaking, Thakeham can provide many dozens  of reasons to believe in its holistically ethical, sustainable and profitable approach to house building, strategic land promotion and community creation. The challenge the CEO recognised, was making sure this approach remains as the business grows, when practically he could no longer be in the driving seat of all areas of activity.

Extensive internal engagement work was undertaken to determine what makes Thakeham, Thakeham. The findings needed to be distilled into impactful cultural principles that would inform and motivate new recruits and existing talent alike. Importantly, leaders within the business needed to take ownership of the cultural definition produced, to ensure company-wide engagement in the calls to action for all employees.

A Co-Creation Team was established with Thakeham and over a period of three months we produced the Thakeham Story and Core Behaviours, as well as the agenda, campaign work and speeches for the upcoming launch at the company All Hands. We also captured over 100 reasons to believe in Thakeham and its rightful claim to be leading the construction industry in addressing climate change, building more homes, adopting modern methods of construction, and creating communities that thrive and last.

Working with Ian E Wood

Creating a new set of values to capture the spirit and bright future of a heritage brand

Chubb is one of the world’s leading providers of fire safety and security solutions for businesses of all sizes and sectors. For more than 200 years the company has been making the world a safer place, protecting people, property and assets with essential systems, equipment, and services.

Following Chubb’s acquisition by the US-based APi Group and subsequent arrival of a new CEO, Chubb was ready to refresh its brand values. They asked for these to build on Chubb’s strengths as a well-known and trusted brand that’s been  in business for over 200 years, while also setting the company up for success for a successful and dynamic future.

Employees across Chubb’s major markets were consulted on the company’s key features, differentiating characteristics and what makes the company a great place to work. Interviews also took place with senior stakeholders within Chubb and APi to understanding the ambitions, challenges and fresh strategies being employed by the business.

The new set of values was developed in close collaboration with Chubb HR, internal communications and external communications teams, with constant focus on making sure the values and their definitions aligned with APi Group’s core purpose and translated effectively to each international market.

Mission and vision statements were also produced to provide Chubb with a complete brand platform for enhancing motivation amongst existing employees, attracting new talent, and  communicating Why Chubb? to customers and partners.

and creating more opportunities for growth.

Working with MGA Ideas

Defining a hybrid service aligned with Industry 5.0

InnoGlobal was formed to bring together diverse skillsets and services from within the Innopharma group of companies.

Expertise includes the development of technology to support advanced manufacturing in the pharma, medtech and foodtech industries; leading successful collaboration between industry, government, funders and education institutions; delivering accredited education programmes in advanced manufacturing; and the assessment and road-mapping of sustainability progress and digital transformation.

InnoGlobal team members were highly involved at a European level in the vision-setting and debate around Industry 5.0, a philosophical approach to industrial revolution that says digital transformation alone should not take place. Equal impetus should be given to achieving carbon net zero, and people should be taken on the journey of digital transformation and sustainability, never overlooked. 

The requirement for a new website drove discussion about InnoGlobal’s core purpose and how to communicate in a simple way its ability to drive a people-centric twin transition to a green and digital next generation economy. We developed a business model that showed the close alignment and vital outcomes of delivering future skills, driving innovation and industry performance, and realising digitalisation and sustainability. This led to the core purpose of transforming business, sectors and lives, and website copywriting that drove home the level of integrated thinking and delivery InnoGlobal can provide.

Working with Likely Heroes and Inneall

Transitioning the value proposition from a consultancy to a platform-based service

Orbidal is a bid management technology that offers bid consulting and business proposal templates. It enables learning and collaboration by sales and business development teams, helping them to produce consistently high scores and winning bids in the competitive tendering process.

Originally a consultancy-led service, Orbidal’s knowledge bank and toolkit stems from the founder’s involvement in hundreds of competitive procurements for buyers and vendors, in the public and private sectors and across multiple industries.

With ambitions to scale its service to a far higher number of customers in Ireland and internationally, Orbidal developed a digital platform to guide sales and business development teams through the eleven steps to Request for Proposal (RFP) success, enhanced with a comprehensive set of knowledge-sharing and collaboration tools.

With a visual identity already in place, Orbidal asked for an updated brand narrative and redesigned, contemporary website that would successfully transition them from the original consultancy offering to a platform-based service, whilst still retaining some of the human touch.

The focus for the new website IA, design and copywriting was conveying the depth of insight embedded within Orbidal’s platform, convincing audiences about the legitimacy of Orbidal’s RFP methods, and conveying the ultimate benefits to be gained from using the Orbidal service – successful bids on repeat and essential business growth.

Working with Likely Heroes and emmg Lab

Research and creation of The Experience Consultancy brand

Clarasys is a management consultancy with a different way of doing things that produces engaging, smart-working and efficient experiences for employees, customers, partners and citizens. It works with clients in diverse sectors, including financial services, retail, health and the justice sector.

The business wanted a rebrand that captured the full scope and impact of the team’s work. The positioning need to differentiate Clarasys from the growing number of management consultancies in the marketplace, as well as the big three.

The Experience Consultancy positioning captured three things: the outcomes Clarasys delivers, how the consultancy engages with its clients, and the distinctive culture of the consultancy.

Working with Philosophy Design

Brand positioning for a different kind of retirement experience

Riverstone offers a new kind of retirement living that’s unlike anything else available in London. It was established by experienced alternative sector developers and hospitality experts in 2017 with the backing of Goldman Sachs.

Building on Riverstone’s substantial research into people’s hopes and expectations of retirement versus the reality, a purpose statement and strapline were created that conveyed in simple terms why retirement living with Riverstone is different.

Three building blocks for the purpose statement were independence, individuality and choice which culminated in the strapline: “The life you want to live”. Brand strategy and positioning work led to copywriting of several high-end marketing brochures, website components and service guides, as well as advertising and direct marketing.

Working with Identity Design

New positioning and name to align with an evolved investment strategy

Work began with Ecora in 2020 when the company was still known as Anglo Pacific Group. The company name changed in 2022 as a final marker of how this streaming and royalties business had transformed its portfolio to focus on 21st century commodities – minerals that are essential for a decarbonised, sustainable future.

In-depth C-suite and advisor interviews led to a three-stage strategy for changing the company positioning and name, which involved awareness-raising of the portfolio strategy, communication of a transformational deal and ultimately the change in name. The new positioning established the brief for the naming consultant to work with, as well as the rationale for the investor communications and legal teams.

Final stages of work included announcement statements on the name change, content editing of a new website and the development of a naming rationale for brand guidelines.

Working with Boone Studio and Julian Gorham

Establishing new brand values and the creative strategy for a refreshed customer-facing brand

Grainger is the UK’s largest professional residential landlord with nearly 10,000 homes to rent in many different styles up and down the country. As well as operating purpose-built rental homes, Grainger designs and builds them, creating places that suit the needs of modern renters, professionals, sharers and families.

With a growing customer-base, expanding service team and drive to maximise the customer experience, Grainger needed a new set of values that captured the professionalism and warmth of the organisation, as well as its ambitions and service standards. The values also needed to reflect the company purpose of Renting Homes, Enriching Lives.

The values project led to several strands of brand strategy and communication work, including developing the creative strategy for a refreshed customer-facing brand, updating customer communications, developing graduate recruitment literature and contributing to customer experience concepts and service style communications.

Working with Grainger marketing and customer experience teams and Philosophy Design

Explaining alternative career pathways and 100 technician roles to parents and young people

Gatsby Education is part of the Gatsby Charitable Foundation established by businessman and donor Lord Sainsbury. It developed the Benchmarks for Good Career Guidance for all schools and colleges across England and works in collaboration with education providers, advisors and government to help young people, with their parents, find the right education, training and career pathway for them.

With the launch of the new T-level qualification, Gatsby Education embarked on a large-scale awareness and engagement campaign to promote the advantages of T-levels and other career pathway options from 16+. YWC was involved in content planning and copywriting of an updated Talking Futures website, including an animation and an interactive decision-making tool.

A further copywriting project included the creation of 100 technician profiles to support a campaign and Science Museum exhibition highlighting how technicians do interesting and important jobs in almost every part of the economy. The focus was bringing to life why each technician’s role matters and what day-to-day working life involves, to encourage more young people into these vital roles.

‎‎

Working with Gatsby Education and Kindred

Rebranding a long-standing data business

Tiger’s software provides rich insights into data, voice, video and collaboration activities, enabling enterprises to make choices about their network infrastructure, user adoption, human resources, cost allocation, and employee wellbeing.

The business wanted a confident repositioning to attract new enterprise customers, while also raising awareness of Tiger’s full set of services amongst existing customers.

A new purpose statement captured Tiger’s role in transforming how enterprises work, collaborate and perform. Launch materials included brand guidelines, a new website and brand spirit guide.

Working with Philosophy Design

Creating a unifying offer for three distinct audiences

Origin Hope Media was established as a cost-effective solution for time, resource and cash scarce newsrooms under pressure to generate news and content 24-7-365. The business also partners with corporates and influencers who need to behave like newsrooms with content and news strategies of their own.

The goal of the brand positioning and visual rebrand was conveying the problem-solving offer of Origin Hope’s journalism, content and creative capabilities. All of which can be delivered at speed, to a very high standard, at a competitive price for all customer types, using a network of skilled content creators around the world.

The positioning and website focused on the simple concept of “newsroom freedom” i.e., the ability to do more and focus your resources effectively if Origin Hope is involved.

Working with Likely Heroes on design and Skim on digital delivery

Refreshing the brand for a long-established firm of solicitors

Lodders is an award-winning, multi-service law firm with a 200+ year history. Its skilled team of solicitors helps clients to grow businesses, sell a family one, resolve disputes, complete deals on land and property, and to address changes in personal or family life.

The firm recognised there was a disconnect between its visual and verbal brand and everything the firm is today, as well as its growth ambitions. A rebrand was required to capture the range and quality of services offered, the culture and experience of the firm, and what the next generation of talent expect from a modern, successful firm.

The new positioning conveyed the essential legal clarity provided by Lodders, plus the team’s human understanding. This spoke to the individual entrepreneurs and generations of families the firm had a long history of working with, as well as corporates seeking close partnerships and those requiring expertise in family law.

Working with Philosophy Design