"I don't believe in team motivation. I believe in getting a team prepared so it knows it will have the necessary confidence when it steps on a field and be prepared to play a good game." --Tom Landry
For the last few months, here at Access we have been managing an exciting branding project for a long standing global client of ours - Hydratight.
At the start of the financial year, the client shared ambitious business growth objectives with us. Through our knowledge of their capabilities and expertise as a company, analysis of internal and external research, and by conducting a full review of their markets and competitor activity, we recognised that in order to meet their commercial goals, there was a strong case to reposition their brand; redefining what they stood for as a business.
The client was fully on board with our strategic proposal, was excited by our strapline and the idea of creating stand out amongst competitors through a new creative approach. It was time to change how they communicated themselves to their existing customers and addressed how they are seen by potential customers. Most importantly, we hoped to change how the internal teams perceived the company’s strengths and differentiators within the markets in which they operate. This in turn should affect how they conduct and pursue business in future. The repositioning campaign aimed to provide the necessary vehicle to market, to support a companywide goal to expand and increase opportunities through a more end-to-end service led approach.
Understanding the Vision
As much as the thought of a revamped website and newly designed advertising campaign was exciting, we were keen to stress the importance of making sure that steps were taken ahead of any external brand launch to ensure the internal teams understood the long term vision, embraced the new mind-set and were fully behind the shift in attitude. It was crucial they were motivated by the thinking behind the realigned brand messages and were given the necessary proof points to believe in the new way they should sell their services and expertise. The new campaign was all about getting the attention of staff members and instilling belief and confidence at all levels - as we all know it is this which will inevitably be the driving force behind any commercial success.
Thankfully our client recognised the value of making the staff feel an important part of the journey and bought into our idea to communicate the thinking behind the brand repositioning in video/animation form - which we wrote, designed and fully animated here in house. It was crucial that this message didn’t get lost in the raft of emails or PowerPoint presentations already happening weekly within the company.
The Result/End Goal
A link to the video was shared with the whole of the company globally via an email directly from the company President himself, who also chose to provide the voice over for the video. It is already having the desired impact. It reached all corners of the company with many viewing it on mobile devices. The landing page where the video was hosted, introduced the company vision and encouraged viewers to submit feedback by email and ‘Like’ the video which was fundamental in conveying the value of staff inclusion and also for us and the marketing team to be able to measure a level of engagement.
It was a radically different approach to an internal update for this company, it was new and exciting for all involved not just for the recipients. It evoked passion for success and got attention. Time and money had clearly been invested and the staff felt important. Extremely positive feedback was received from a wide variety of departments across the business which is reassuring that the tone and message was right and was a strong indication that a change in brand direction was welcomed internally. We’re now looking forward to working on driving the message out to customers and making sure we do what we can to help maintain the momentum of the campaign internally to ensure this really is the start of a companywide cultural shift which helps grow the business in the coming years.
