Chichester District 
Council

Chichester District Council (CDC), with funding from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund (UKSPF), wished to support the growth of some local, scaling businesses. As part of the levelling up agenda, their goal was to support individual founders or small teams in upskilling and learning how to better articulate their business proposition.

To do this, they would need support to clarify their brand by working out their ‘why’.

Melanie Burgoyne, Economic Development Manager at Chichester District Council, who was leading the initiative, knew an expert would be needed who could offer them a framework and the required tools to enable each business to apply any learnings into meaningful action. 

For Flintlock, there were several challenges and considerations:

• How to bring 12 disparate businesses from the health, food, drink, fashion, AI, hospitality and entertainment sectors together and provide a workshop that would be relevant, useful and valuable for all
• What to deliver to build a workshop that would be interactive with directional content that would empower each business to arrive at a clear result for them and could be taken away to step into action
• Which parts of their 30 years of brand marketing experience and Sparking approach, a usually in-depth and highly collaborative process involving Boards, leadership teams, clients, customers and stakeholders, to transpose into a digestible, easy-to-follow format
• And the ‘whys’ behind brand strategy fundamentals

A collective “Build Your Brand In A Day” workshop was co-designed. It would involve six businesses each day following the macro steps Flintlock uses, resulting in each participant finishing the workshop day with their own fully expressed brand pyramid. To add further value, a 1:1 hour-long follow-up review would also be provided to answer any questions and discuss any evolutions.

The aim was to create a collaborative, interactive, and inspiring workshop. So, the format was cut into manageable time chunks dedicated to each step of the brand-building process. Each company was asked to work in pairs or, if attending individually, to pair up with another participant, on the principle that two minds are better than one. Overall, to get the most out of each participant’s concentration, creativity, and engagement.

The workshop began with a scene-setting exercise on “The Importance of Brand” to explore why brand strategy matters, how it helps a business stand out, and how it affects commercial outcomes, customer experience, and team engagement.

Then, the work began on “How to build your brand strategy’ following a step-by-step case study from a recent Flintlock project with a scaling business client. This brought the process to life, and a live brand strategy to follow, enabling Flintlock to tell the story and reasons behind the decisions made at each phase. Plus, to inspire ideas and stimulate thinking.

The first step towards building the brand pyramid started with the discovery phase. Here, each pair was asked to reflect, discuss, and share their observations and thoughts on their brand and business – what was working well and what needed improving.

At each step, there was a re-group with the whole group. This collective feedback was influential throughout, with everyone’s fresh eyes contributing to how each participant would build their brand pyramid from the available insights.

The second step then reviewed the competition and identified points of difference, providing an overall set of input from which to start focusing and honing their strategy.

Next, things got a little harder for everybody – how to articulate their ‘why’.

The challenge was to create a crystal clear expression for the brand, including:

• A bold ambition –  what they wanted the brand to be / go
• A clear purpose – the reason why they existed to do this
• A single-minded essence – a rallying cry, idea, summing them up in one short phrase

They all made a real strategic leap in their thinking, producing some inspired ideas. The group encouraged them to think big and embrace their creativity.

Lastly, each pair spent time on developing their brand personality, tone-of-voice and a set of brand values. These were a lot of fun to create, but also important in how each brand would communicate itself – visually, verbally, customer experience and team behaviours.

“We just wanted to thank you again for your time and expertise, we really enjoyed the workshop and it’s really focussed our attention” Laura, Director, Bespoke Living.

At the end of the workshop, each business went home with a cohesive brand strategy and all elements of their brand pyramid filled in. Homework was set for the follow-up review with Flintlock, and each business was able to utilise their expertise to further refine the strategy and move forward with communicating their brand and proposition with confidence.