We often think of marketing services as being the bridge between the business and the consumer, however a business’s internal customers – its employees – are just as important. In the industry this is known as ‘employer branding’, and one case where this has particularly rung true is from our work with Thrive Group.
The brief
This was a unique brief in that we were starting the journey with them. At the time our client, a fast-growing regional recruitment specialist had adopted a business strategy of growth through mergers and acquisitions of top talented recruitment businesses across the UK. Curzon Marketing were approached for support in realising their ambition to create a distinctive national identity and presence for the new business and lay the foundations for the business growth and acquisitions.
The challenge
Due to the company’s M&A strategy, we had to widen our scope in terms of the stakeholders we were communicating with and focus attention on our internal stakeholders: Thrive’s new employees. As a service-based business, these stakeholders are a hugely important part of company performance as they are the face of the company to clients, candidates, and any new business acquisitions.
The challenge in communicating with our employees was that they were part of the acquisition so were going through a process of transition from being an employee of their existing company, some of which had existed for over 20 years, to now becoming a Thrive employee. As with any M&A, this can come with feelings of hesitation and confusion if not handled well.
Our approach
Brand first and bottom up! We started with the development of brand vision and values, summarised in a brand articulation that would unify current and future businesses operating under the group umbrella. It needed to capture the best of what the businesses currently were but also provide a framework to shape new businesses that were acquired.
The process and thinking behind our branding strategy can be summarised as 5 ‘C’s:
1. Credibility
Whether external or internal stakeholder, when building a brand, you need to find the core truths that will make people believe in what you stand for, or that you stand for anything at all!
Brand articulation was the first and most important step in our process, after research and discussion with the businesses owners we placed the group’s established credentials in essential services and blue-collar sectors at its heart. Brought to life with the brand idea ‘There’s work to be done’, every touchpoint was considered and refreshed to reflect the new positioning.
2. Character
It’s not all just pretty pictures and big words – an effective brand style creates an identity that your stakeholders can identify with. In this case we had to come up with both a name and a logo for this new business.
Working with leading design agency COOKCHICK, we created a visual identity that represented all the work we had done in brand articulation and landed on ‘Thrive’: a powerful expression of both the businesses’ goals to grow and develop nationally, and our attitude towards our customers who we wanted to help thrive in their own careers.
Being proudly people centric, the logo with a slightly raised ‘i’ is simple but powerful in allowing the individual to ‘rise up’ and would become an important part of representing who Thrive was.
3. Clarity
M&A is a long, complex, and easily confusing process, marketing can help with communication to improve clarity of information for your stakeholders. For Thrive this involved a huge array of visual assets from presentations to leaflets, business cards and even a brand video to explain the new brand and what it stood for.
Enormous effort went into a company-wide programme of brand communication to ready the team for the changes to come, and to enable them to take ownership of the new brand. The new Thrive offices were branded up with signage, mugs, notebooks, and pens to make the Thrive identity part of their every day.
4. Consistency
Ensuring that there is some level of consistency is integral to any period of change. When introducing a new brand and new way of working, it is important that new business owners are consistent in what they are telling their stakeholders.
Marketing can help to visually represent a consistent look and feel to the brand throughout all touchpoints with the consumer and provide copywriting that speaks in a consistent brand voice. This can help new employees to feel comfortable in the transition to this new identity and helps clients and candidates recognise the brand identity at every step.
5. Culture
Every company has a culture, this can be defined as the attitudes and behaviours of a company and its employees rooted in a shared company ethos. This is the end goal to which all the hard work above should contribute to, the idea is that if everyone is on board with the brand identity and values then this is the engine that powers the work that they do day to day.
There are of course ways that you can nurture company culture, and one of the ways we have done so with Thrive is through companywide event planning (nicknamed ‘Thrive Live’) both online and in person, which aim to keep people up to date with business news and provide an opportunity to group together as a community rather than being considered as individual offices.
We have also highlighted the importance of each office’s input in our marketing strategy by establishing ‘Marketing Champions’ who ask as spokespeople in each office. We meet with them monthly to discuss what’s going on in the business and generate ideas for the topics and content they think is most important in the world of recruitment.
In summary, when any business goes through change either as dramatically as Thrive, or a more subtle adjustment in operations, marketing can help to keep your internal stakeholders on board and engaged with the business.
Are you about to embark on a change in your business? Could you do with some support on how to communicate this to your stakeholders? Get in touch, we would love to discuss it with you and offer ways in which we could help.