Investigate

Authentic brands are based on truth and insight. That’s where we always begin. Peeling back the layers of identity, culture and strategy, we seek to understand you from the inside out, exploring where you are now, and where you want to be. We explore the possibilities that the bigger picture holds around you, your purpose and the potential of your impact.

Only by taking a step back, and delving beneath the surface, will the journey ahead reveal itself.

Listen & involve

Brands are about human connections and the stories that forge them. So, finding what matters most to people is an essential part of our exploration. Listening deeply to diverse voices and understand needs and experiences enriches the picture and helps to map the way. What’s more, inviting stakeholders to be part of the journey means they’ll feel much more committed to the destination.

We get to the heart of what matters to people by asking ‘why?’ and ‘what’s underneath?’.

Resolve

Really hearing people demands both a curious and courageous ear. However challenging the process of organisational change at any scale, getting to the bottom of internal barriers results in more meaningful identities, resilient strategies and sustainable communications.

Focusing on ‘being’ rather than ‘doing’ will ensure the right foundation for a lasting identity.

Reflect

Bringing together inside and outside views, our analysis holds up a mirror to what’s there and what could be. It shines a light on the key problems to solve, themes to explore and gaps to address. As well as building a picture of evidence, this work can provide a case for support.

Only by understanding where you are, can you get to where you want to be.

Discover

Through collaborative workshops around people and purpose, we answer the big questions of who you are and the deeper needs you’re here to serve. By extracting, connecting and refining ideas from our research, we invite different ways of looking at the problem and your place in solving it. 

The aim isn’t to craft solutions by committee, but to allow them to emerge.

Define

This is where ideas become identity, or the foundation of it. Ideas that enable you to define or redefine your purpose, direction and the principles that support it. Naming this, and crafting a narrative around it, can provide the clarity to move forward and spark a shift in thinking that will shape all you do.

Finding what really matters, and saying it in a way that will matter to others.

Visualise

To bring your identity to life, we translate the thinking into a creative, symbolic vision that will invite people on your journey. Here the narrative work develops into a visual and verbal language that embodies the relationship you want to have with the world.

At the heart of it, we craft a meaningful story that captures your unique purpose and perspective.

Develop & apply

It’s in the development and application that we really understand how your brand can work for you. 

Bringing your identity to life involves getting to work on real content ‘in situ’, from which we can create standard-setting examples. This enables us to test the parameters and devise even more useful guidelines, tools and training to equip your team. 

Live

To keep people at the heart of your brand, you must give them a role to play in living it. How will you turn beliefs into behaviours, ideas into action, purpose into participation? Internally, how will you encourage collective ownership of embedding your brand into everything you do and say? 

Making sure your identity is the story you live, not just the story you tell.

Evolve

How is your identity helping you to fulfil your purpose and achieve your ambitions? For your organisation to grow in the right direction, your brand must evolve through testing, learning and evaluation. Monitoring useful indicators, along with objectives set earlier in the process, can help to make sure it serves you well.

Well-formed identities needn’t be reinvented.