STRATEGY & RESEARCH
A brand doesn’t start with a colour. It starts with a decision.
Nothing to draw until there’s something to say. We find out who your customers really are, what your competitors already claim, and where the gap is. What’s left is a position you can defend. Plus a list of what you stop doing.
How it works
Five steps. The hardest is the fourth: cutting.
01
We talk to your customers. Not just to you.
A handful of real conversations beats a survey with two hundred answers. We ask why they chose you, and what nearly stopped them. The second answer is usually the useful one.
02
We line up the competition.
Not to see who looks best. To see which words are taken. If four firms in your town say they’re personal and committed, that’s not a position any more. It’s wallpaper.
03
We name the gap.
What do you deliver that the rest don’t? Rarely a new idea. Usually something you already do and never wrote down, because to you it was obvious.
04
We cut. That’s the real work.
A position gets sharp from what falls away. So you also get a forbidden list: claims you stop making, jobs you stop taking, images that no longer fit. It’s the uncomfortable part. It’s also the part that works.
05
We test it on real work.
A strategy that only lives in a document is untested. We write the first copy with it straight away. If the copy doesn’t flow, the strategy isn’t right. Then we go back, not on.
The Culture Trail · positioning
Culture isn’t a mood. It’s a decision.
Mission and vision on one page of the brand book. Every line after it gets tested against that page.
SEE THE CASEThree questions. Then you know where we’d start.
Being here answers the first one: it starts with the thinking. The rest takes twenty seconds. You get advice you can retell.