Put Some Spark Into Your Brand Strategy
Decathlon, Nisa, Tech Nation Top 33 upscale Vitaccess, plus StoryStream, Guardian Angel Carers and Woo Woo are all feeling sparked. Why?
They’ve utilised our Flintlock Spark* Workshop to get their brand strategy straight, improve their proposition, and reassess how to get their businesses growing beyond 2021.
If you think your business or brand positioning could use a fresh pair of strategic eyes too, we can move at pace, get laser-sharp and work with you to deliver a pinpoint strategy that works.
Who are you to say that?
Flintlock Marketing has led brand, marketing and communications strategy for multiple household names such as Bailey’s, Boots, The Co-Op, Dulux and Denplan with proven results. For 30 years, we’ve worked in the tricky, competitive retail and FMCG brand world, mastering the art of cross-functional working and get the best results through co-invention.
We have the ability, and capability, to cut-through. You can expect us to listen closely and make accurate strategic brand judgements. To use a well known brand phrase ‘we reach the parts’ other branding agencies (usually coming from a design-led background) do not.
We ‘get’ business, teams, and customers. Entrepreneurial in spirit, we are always delighted to support smaller companies with big ambitions on their brand strategy too, like Bywater, The Royal and Candida Stevens.
For us, brands of all sizes share the same route and get the same benefits from our, “outside-in” perspective, that helps hone thinking, offer clarity and create a brand strategy that can work hard for you.
If you’ve got here (thank you), and you’d like to know more already, do contact us for a complimentary 30-minute consultation to discover if our insight can produce results for you.
Or, if you’d like a little bit more to go on, we’ve written a cup-of-coffee read on what strategic branding and our Spark* Workshop can do.
Why Does Brand Strategy Matter?
At Flintlock, we always say a brand can’t be built on shifting sands. In other words, you have to get strongly rooted. And those roots are going to be inherent to your brand strength with your customer and for your future growth.
Understanding just what’s at your root will help you see where and how to connect with your audience. And how you, your service, your products, your people (all your touchpoints) can form and create that ‘brand’, wherever your consumer meets you.
It has a big job to do. So, it’s best to understand how to ‘land’ your brand in the right place, with the right people, saying the right things.
This is where brand strategy counts.
Long and short
Brands and businesses are usually very good at what we call the ‘short’ – sales and immediate business concerns, but not so good at building ‘the long’ – or the ‘Brand Love’ (brand equity) for what the brand means to someone, and the emotion they feel for it.
It’s best to be actively doing both, because short term sales don’t deliver long-term growth and long term lenses can miss the opportunity of right now.
What am I aiming for?
Simplicity.
- a clear purpose behind why you’re doing what you’re doing
- establishing the essence/roots of what you’re about – you in a nutshell
- supporting brand pillars with your ‘reasons to believe’
How will that help me?
Your brand strategy is the foundation that informs your marketing and messaging plus drives long-term brand salience and successful short term sales.
Sounds good. How did you get to that?
Taking time out and getting honest. Our Spark* Workshop investigates all the aspects of your brand/business so that we can get your brand strategy and market positioning clear for:
- your customer
- your stakeholders
- your direction
They are also hugely engaging for a business and can be run across several workshops to engage your people, and help them feel vested in the process.
We adapt these accordingly, but in brief we would look to cover:
- Brand diagnostics – to understand what’s working, what’s not, and your competition
- Proposition – to dig down to see why, what and how you’re solving your customer’s problems
Okay, but I already know that
Yes, but you may not have ‘leapt’. And that’s our strength.
In short, through 30 years of experience and insight in the most challenging sectors, we’ve learnt how to bring that all together, distill and get the best out of people and business.
Using all the good information we’ve gathered from the Spark* Workshop, we can spot patterns and identify themes. We push our thinking to take a creative and strategic leap to get you to a renewed positioning for your brand that in a few careful words, and supporting evidence, gives you a clear, hardworking brand strategy that forms:
- brand purpose
- brand essence
- differentiated proposition
What do I do with that?
Strategy becomes action. You use these to filter through into all your marketing activities, communications, and behaviours. Plus keep focussed on both your long and your short.
We can also help you to get your marketing sparked. Working with your team or filling skill-gaps where you need, our expert associates can roll-up their sleeves, and put into practice what we preach.
Our goal is to help you meet yours and cut-through to your customer to drive growth.
Does it make a difference?
We’d say yes, wouldn’t we. So instead, we invite you to take a look at what our clients have to say. They’ll be the best judges of that – to see this, and some of our work you can hop across here.
If you’d rather stay with this thread, see what Vitaccess, had to say this February. They’ve recently won Innovate UK backing and been identified by Tech Nation as one of the UK’s top 33 scale ups to watch. When it came to looking for a brand partner, this is what they said:
“Flintlock emerged as the ones who got us thinking the most. Moments of ‘oh! THAT’s our challenge! Why haven’t we asked ourselves the that question before?’. They convinced us that they would get the best out of us. Carrying out Spark* Workshops across the company, they drilled down to the essence of our culture, our people, and our offering in an impressively compact time frame. We’ve moved quickly and decisively through the project milestones, thanks to their understanding, their expert, intuitive way of presenting pathways and the calibre of the brand positioning and creative artwork. It’s bold, it’s really exciting and it’s really us. Hands down this has been my personal favourite project to date.”
– Helen Williams, COO, Vitaccess
I like what I see, but what’s it going to cost?
We are aware that every business has a variable budget, so aim to keep our costs relative to your organisational needs, and required team involvement.
But, it’s not as scary as you might think.
It is an investment, but we expect to give you a good return by positively impacting growth.
You can also take us up on the chance to have a complimentary 30-minute talk with Flintlock founders, and reputed branding bright sparks, Tasha Gladman (07801 146104) or Graham Appleyard (07590 809113) to get some insight and initial thoughts on where we can add some spark for you.
