strategy

The key constituent to any successful campaign is a clear strategy packaged up in a clear understandable and concise brief. So, for us, the aim of any strategic process is not only the insight that can be fed back into the business strategy, staff communications, and general marketing effort, it's most crucially the output of a 'creative brief'. With this to hand, we can start work in earnest.

If a project is more straightforward, our account management and creative team will work with the client to document the strategy and creative brief, and where there are complex issues or multiple stakeholders involved, our brand planners will conduct workshops and interviews with management, staff, and clients.

The calibre of our planning and creative teams, and the speed that we turn work around, has attracted some significant consumer and business brands. Call us for help with anything from a complete brand positioning exercise or just to identify messaging for an individual project.

Our strategic services include:

A full brand strategy project would follow these steps:

Target Proposition 

• Identification of the key characteristics that define the industry and mapping in which direction it is heading.
• This will enable classification of the company's key competitors and analysis of their individual positions in the market.
• Investigate and examine the industry's perception of the company's position in the market and evaluate whether this is the correct positioning or whether some adjustment is necessary to achieve a higher profile and sustainable growth. 

Branding 

• Analysis of client's unique qualities and values and recommendation of how they should be used to achieve the recommended market place positioning.
• This would include a review of the existing brand (if one exists), to see if it currently reflects the right message/image, or whether tweaks are necessary in look and feel as well as in tone and phrasing.
• Examination of whether a strapline would help to underline the brand values to prospective and existing clients, to enable a greater understanding of the business philosophy.

Target Audience 

• Clarifying the proposition and to whom it could or should be offered.
• Analysis, prioritisation and segmentation of buyers and decision makers of each service, their positions and roles, and the triggers that engage each of them with the brand, leading to a purchase.
• Definition of the considerations in a decision to switch and/or change working practices to use the company's services.

Customer Acquisition 

• Using the above conclusions; formulation of a clear and targeted message that describes a precise picture of the services the company offers and the benefits of engaging them.
• Definition of the key marketing channels that should be used to draw-in new clients or convert existing leads (some analysis of the leads database will be required).
• How each medium e.g. direct mail, web, advertising, email, viral marketing, promotion etc., should be used independently and collectively to achieve maximum return on marketing investment. 

Customer Retention 

• Develop a programme to build and nurture relationships on an ongoing basis to resell and cross sell services, (again some examination of the database will be required).
• Definition of the key messages that should be used to achieve repeat and cross sales from existing clients, including feasibility of using subtle but established methods to identify cross selling opportunities once a client has engaged with their customer.
• Recommendation of specific marketing initiatives to strengthen and increase profitability of client relationships. 

Implementation 

• After agreement of strategy, prioritisation of recommended campaigns and marketing initiatives, concepts for each communication can then be formulated.
• Develop strong headlines, imagery and ideas. Deliver to the right target audience at the right time. Campaign to be handled in a slick and professional manner, involving client only at predefined stages for key sign-offs, unless otherwise requested. 

In our opinion this is an extremely robust approach that will give a client the impetus to enhance year on year growth. This work will clarify exactly which elements are important to communicate, to achieve success in the market. It will focus efforts on the Client's core values in order to generate revenue.