Strategy, brand identity and marketing services
Covering every aspect from initial brand strategy to final execution across a range of channels and formats.
Strategy and Positioning
A robust brand strategy leads to a consistent, powerful expression of your brand across all touchpoints. Adding value to your audience’s journey, helping to build brand recognition, loyalty and equity over time.
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The more distinct your strategic DNA, the more distinct your brand will become. A critical extension of your business strategy, a brand strategy directs your brand’s visual and verbal development, providing you with a framework to align all key business decisions whilst bringing your brand to life across all touchpoints.
Because a brand is more than a logo or a name. It is a promise, an emotional connection, a set of values. It is an independent entity, that allows you to connect with your consumer, reflecting any changes in, or evolution of your business’ strategy. Staying relevant. Extending growth. Driving loyalty.
Where do we start?
We start with an in-depth immersion, leading to a comprehensive plan to connect you with the right audience to grow your brand.
Using a combination of insights developed from our experience and desk/formal research we define distinct leverages and consumer needs that show us potential growth gaps. Something you could be famous for.
We synthesise this learning and interpretation into a positioning and direction the brand should pursue. Capturing the biggest consumer needs – where you could make the biggest difference.
We articulate a brand strategy and strategic brand positioning. One that creates maximum equity and inspires great, distinctive design, business and growth solutions.
Our goal?
To create a strategy that functions beyond pillars to produce new perspectives and combinations. Generating solid strategic and creative ideas that are simple, focused and distinct.
Brand
Architecture
Strategically organising and distinguishing brands in your organisation to drive growth and add value. A game plan for your brands.
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Strategically driven brand architecture produces exponential results. Providing a bird’s eye view and channels to best direct your growth. At HM when we develop brand architecture we aim to:
Reflect your business strategy
Provide a simple, practical structure
Serve your business needs
Enable flexibility
Align and reflect your brand value synergies
Brand architecture delivers:
Clarity: Defines your organisational offering and overarching business game plan.
Efficiency: Leverages your offering without overstretching it.
Focus: Directs innovation and marketing investments across your brand portfolio.
Growth: Creates new growth opportunities through existing brand credibility.
Value: Once relationships are defined, equity flows across brands.
Our goal?
A clear and coherent brand structure to direct tactical decisions across your brand portfolios.
Name
Generation
It all starts with the right name. From idea to product, offering, service, brand or innovation we use deep strategic insights to create distinctive brands from name to identity.
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At HM we believe that names should have energy and magic. Whether invented or descriptive, a brand or product name should have that undefinable something that immediately connects with your audience and flows into design.
Names should:
Be easy to read and pronounce, by most language speakers
Have a unilingual base
Not be derogatory (across languages)
Allow for extensions, if necessary
Be registerable, protected and timeless
Have a thoughtful link to the activity/features of the entity
Name generation is split into four categories:
Invented Names. From completely imagined words to anagrams, mnemonics or palindromes. Invented names are usually the strongest in terms of ownable registration but need extensive marketing and communication to be recognised and understood.
Semi-Invented Names. Part meaningless and part suggestive.
Suggestive Names. Inspired by functionalities or qualities.
Descriptive Names. Direct descriptions of a product, service or function. These names do make for tricky registration and can become generic, however they are easily understood and immediately recognised.
Our goal?
To land on a distinctive name that sets your brand apart.
Brand Identity
Distinctive brand design connects with audiences. Bringing your strategic brand purpose, values and goals to life in a way that people can engage with. Setting your brand apart. Telling your story. Growing loyalty.
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At HM we use strategic insights to bring your brand to life, visually and verbally, across every touchpoint. No matter what the brief or creative parameters, we take distinctive ideas and put them through our unique design research process. Adding intuition, flair and craft to create something we’re proud of, a solution that’s never been seen before.
Brand story
Your brand story is a unique narrative that connects with your audiences. Synchronising every element of your brand, from logo to photography to tone of voice, conveying your brand’s purpose and values, breathing life into your brand strategy.
Brand identity
Brand identity is the collective visual, verbal and experiential representation of your company's values, personality and promise. Informed by your strategy, brand identity is a combination of creative elements. Your name tells people who you are. Your logo demonstrates your personality. Typography contributes recognition and legibility. Whilst your colour palette has the potential to be as immediate and powerful as your logo.
Brand experience
Everything a customer will experience by engaging with your brand, from customer service to product quality and user interface across a range of touchpoints. Using our expertise, we develop ideas that come to life for audiences. So that every engagement with your product or service leaves an indelible impression. Engineering these encounters, harnessing every possible moment, transforming them from an experience into a powerful brand connection.
Design solution:
Identity concept design and development of brand toolkit – including visual language guidelines covering typography, colour palette and image/photographic guidelines.
Conceptual design development of all 2D design elements such as corporate stationery design, promotional and marketing materials design.
Custom website design and development, including UX/UI design, responsive design, e-commerce solutions and content management systems (CMS).
Design and development of mobile apps, focusing on user experience, functionality, and brand integration.
Annual and sustainability report design, coffee table book and brochure design.
Packaging design. Including eco-friendly packaging options that minimise environmental impact while maintaining brand appeal.
Audio visual concept development, including script copywriting, storyboarding and production as well as illustration and animation.
Style guide/CI guideline development, that covers template design and development, as well as web-based CI design guidelines.
Training manuals and brand immersion toolkits.
Signage and environmental design from concept development to implementation.
Retail store design and bank branch design, fuel forecourt design.
Finished art – print ready files for production across physical mediums.
Retail Design
Connecting your brand’s positioning and identity to your organisation’s physical environment. From bank branches to retail and office spaces, we continue to develop your narrative, embedding a distinctive market understanding.
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By bringing thoughtful, brand inspired design into a retail space we create connection, continuing your brand message on every broadsheet or down every aisle. Aligning your brand identity, target audience and business objectives.
Retail is no longer only about price points or who can shout the loudest. Today, retail needs to create a consumer experience that enhances loyalty and delivers on your business goals. Often given the least strategic attention, retail is one of the most immediate consumer touchpoints. Which is why at HM we go beyond to ensure your brand remains true to its distinctive identity and unique narrative. From concept development to store layout and visual merchandising, we deliver retail design solutions that create distinctive customer experiences.
Brand Engagement
A strong brand starts on the inside. Engaging employees and colleagues with a unifying goal and purpose, aligns your organisation, making it a more powerful, synchronised entity.
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Working and operating as one means that no matter where your audience engage with you, they will experience the best of your brand. Brand engagement drives and shapes your internal culture, creating an environment that people want to work at and will excel in, attracting and retaining the very best talent in your industry.
We deliver professional brand engagement programmes to ensure that everyone across your business understands your goals and messaging. Why you do what you do, how you do it, what your unique personality and purpose is.
We deliver brand engagement through:
Tailored internal brand engagement strategies that drive internal communications, promotions, design and collateral.
Specialised internal employee training to develop understanding, fuelling the authentic adoption of your brand values, influencing behaviour.
Strategies that manage internal expectations, guide recruitment, define policies, practices and measurements including KPI and performance appraisal tools as well as incentive programmes.
The goal?
Equipping everyone at your business with the emotional commitment and intellectual understanding to passionately deliver your business and brand goals. Because reasons to believe become reasons to deliver.
At HM we’re all about delivering tailored solutions that resonate with your audience and drive impact, from concept to execution. Using market insights to develop the right assets in the right combination to make your brand unforgettable.
Say Hello
Tell us about your project. Let’s collaborate and make your brand distinctive.