Trust...

It’s the ‘thing’ that the best relationships are built on. As a small Norfolk business, it’s essential for us to maintain healthy relationships with all our clients, however, what does this actually look like and mean??

Working with a creative agency can be something of a leap of faith. As designers we can often be producing work that although is underpinned and steered by strategic direction and thinking, we are creating a look and feel that can be often very subjective and sometimes bold or brave.

As with all relationships in life it is a journey of discovery, it’s meant to be exciting and interesting, not demanding or controlling, we need to treat each other with respect and understanding. The best relationships work with very open and honest communication, there’s no guidelines and framework, it’s building something natural, something intangible, but it’s a situation that breeds confidence and joy.

We’re lucky as designers that we can create the ‘WOW’, the feeling of when you’ve mailed that brief, but as mentioned earlier without the leg work put in at the start design can end up being superficial, same, even a bit boring. Our job in positioning companies is to get that visual tone of voice spot on.?

One of the best examples of this recently is a brand refresh we have worked on for PDC, a civil engineering company who have recently shifted their base from Attleborough to Snetterton.

We have worked with PDC (formerly Plandescil) in the past, but they came to us with a very specific challenge. Generating new business wasn’t the challenge, but recruiting engineering talent was. We needed to shift from resembling other civil engineers to becoming the kind of organisation that attracts young engineering talent. One that could help develop and nurture their careers.

This wasn’t an about giving you a job, it was about taking you on a journey. PDC is a very people focused organisation, it’s owned by the staff not by a couple of shareholders. From the instant we met up, through to the initial workshop findings we could tell there was an energy and buzz. Now it was our job to translate that into words and images that would tell the PDC story.

We wanted to be brave and create an excitement that we felt with the initial meetings, not only did we want to refresh the logo, but we wanted to tell a story of a journey – your career journey. Instead of presenting just clever brand identity designs, we pitched with a brand video, and accompanying music. It told a story, and the words used in the story could then be cut up into headline statements. The music was original and distinctive and set a tone. The logo, based around the ellipsis ‘…’ alluded to a journey, to moving on to the next.?

This was a brave move, and one where we needed the trust of a client who could’ve easily told us to refine, but because we had done the groundwork (sorry about the pun) we could demonstrate why our thinking and positioning worked.

This is just one of those examples of how trusting your agency to create makes something magical and ‘WOW’, that in turn gives you the confidence and belief to present to your customers.

See for yourself… ?