Let's make progress.

Strengthening the integrity of an integrated service provider.

Team output

Brand strategy

Naming

Brand identity

Brand guidelines

Personal contributions

Brand strategy

Naming

Tagline

Value proposition

Verbal identity

Situation.

One of the UK's largest debt collection and enforcement agencies for local authorities and private businesses made a series of strategic acquisitions to grow into urban planning, environmental monitoring and data services.

The integrated service provider sought a new brand identity, not only to straighten the service shopping spree story for clients and investors, but to break out of long-amassed reputational baggage around its sector and revenue model.

Insight.

The ugly truth is, without enforcement services, society can't function. Obeying traffic laws and paying for parking or utility bills is necessary for councils, private businesses and other providers to get the revenue they need to maintain, improve and innovate the infrastructure keeping cities running. No fun without function.

Confronting this truth and making many diverse audiences recognise the importance of enforcement is no easy feat. Despite the firm's great efforts to advance the ethical image of their sector, cultural biases remained strong.

We learnt their clients wanted the firm to be more consultative, holistic and focused on their greater goals. This unlocked another key insight that decision-makers, whether public or private, want to do a great job and that the outcome matters more than the means of getting there.

Strategy.

I created a value proposition to frame how the firm should aspire to serve its clients by setting up outcome first and process second:

we integrate so you can be great.

And this eventually unlocked a tagline I originated: Let's make progress. A rallying cry to deliver great work that moves everyone onwards and upwards.

This helped advance a key objective of creating favourable perceptions of the business and its goals.

Next came architecture. One looming question was do we make everything a monolith (one name, image, story) or split into two brand clusters, with one cluster to front-face all the reputational risk? Which acquisition to which side?

With plenty of direction from the firm, we reached a decision to convert one acquired brand (with an enviably B2C-friendly name and established domain presence) into a B2C-focused brand. This brand would transform operationally into a visible catch-all destination for debtors and payees while everything else de-brands to become service lines under one B2B monolith.

With strategy locked down, our team commenced an extensive naming journey, narrowing down options from hundreds to a handful of candidates from which the executive board put forward their faves for trademarking.

Creative.

I developed more of the messaging and verbal identity (including mission/vision/purpose statements and tighter-defined group brand values).

I defined a way of structuring the brand's logic like a before/after split – or initiatives/impact – which acted as a device for presenting the breadth of services and the societal value the firm delivers.

This translated into the visual identity, which used a doubled image rule to express the initiatives/impact idea. A graphic symbol of a split-level shape reflected this idea too.

Outcome.

Trust earned. It's not unfair to say that initial conversations challenged assumptions about their sector and what their audiences care about regarding their offering. By delivering strong conceptual hypotheses for its positioning, the client warmed to more radical strategic directions.
Scope exploded. The decision to rearchitecture the business by singling out the B2C brand inspired a second brand and website project development. What's more, this client agreed to extend the original scope to include a revamped website for the group.
Plug pulled. Putting it euphemistically, some major voluntary and involuntary career moves from their board meant the project got put on ice for a long time. Our great work helped act as the foundation for the new blood's own contacts to pick up the project instead. Can't win them all.