What car are you? A brand exercise
After a slight refocusing today we launched the latest version of our website! Throughout our four years we’ve had a strong sense of who we are, our identity, yet we never put it down on paper. It felt right to conduct one of our workshops on ourselves and really understand our brand. It’s a highly rewarding process, taking a step back and saying who are we really? Who are we trying to help? How do we want to spend our time?
Try it for yourself, write it down on the nearest scrap of paper, why you do what you do? What makes you tick? For me personally it's the puzzle solving aspects, taking complex ideas and creating simple ways of understanding them. Chris is all about efficiency, the satisfaction of a well made product.
Companies large and small reposition or even rebrand completely for a whole host of reasons. Some for a digital transformation, others introducing new product lines. A common theme is tackling new markets and needing a fresh approach so as not to fracture what you already have.
For us there are two major elements of the process we wanted to focus on. The distillation of our message, embracing the essence of who we are as designers, as strategists and getting to the core of our vision. The second area looks back at our collection of work, what do we enjoy, what can we focus on that’s rewarding for both our clients and staff. By selecting a specialism it gives us more time to interrogate those markets and truly understand them.
Vision + essence
So what are we all about? In short we’re about the power of bespoke design. We’re about professionalism, creating work specific to our clients needs that isn’t stolen from templates, it’s handcrafted beautiful work that achieves objectives.
The principles of our hero, Dieter Rams, constantly spring to mind;
- Good design is honest
- Good design is unobtrusive
- Good design is long-lasting
- Good design is thorough down to the last detail
- Good design is as little design as possible.
That last one really strikes a chord, the beauty in simplicity, true minimalists at heart. That’s not to say we can’t be bold, we simply want to create more of what matters and less of what doesn’t.
Looking for business tips? Invest in good design. Your customers expect a great experience, instant gratification and a seamless interaction. That’s what design is, problem solving, making the complex simple. As UX practitioners we’re all about achieving objectives with strategic, minimalist design - this is who we are, and why we do what we do.
Sometimes it’s easier for people to think in terms they’re more used to, take cars; If your company were a car brand what would you be? Ask the person next to you, the results might surprise you. Do this on a larger scale, get all the business stakeholders involved and you’ve got yourself a great workshop. By talking to one another with an example everyone can approach you to get to the essence of where each of you see the company now and where you're striving towards.
Sport + Leisure
Next step; brand positioning. As an agency it’s natural to try and be all things to all people but sometimes it’s good to take a leaf out of a startups book. Focus on a small number of things, learn, build, measure, continuously improve your specialism.
We’ve covered a lot of different ground over the last four years. Not anymore. Now it’s time to double down and focus. After reviewing past projects, looking at what we’ve enjoyed the most and where we’ve been able to have the most impact Sport + Leisure comes to the fore. This will be our focus for the future. Our decision buoyed by the success of The Climbing Hangar and the fun we’ve had working on Offload and the Liverpool Hope International Tennis Tournament.
It’s not all gut feeling, there numbers behind the strategy. The leisure industries grew to £117bn last year and currently hold 13.7% of UK jobs. Europe recorded 12 million more tourists last year compared to 2015 – a total of 620 million international arrivals with further growth of 2-3% forecasted for 2017. The UK looks more attractive for overseas visitors due to the lower value of the pound, increasing their purchasing power.
Nicholas Baskerville is our new Marketing Manager. He’s the co-owner and Marketing Director of award-winning venue Constellations and knows a thing or two about the leisure industry. He says;
With our combined understanding and knowledge we’re confident we can establish Kitsune as a leading brand and design company servicing leisure businesses. Working to enhance our client’s story through our deep understanding of the sector, by analysing their data and connecting this with great design, content and experiences.
Some of our most interesting works happens with clients who work at the cross section of sport + leisure. They have a real interest in delivering a great experience to their customers. It became an obvious coupling in our strategy. To find out more about some of the projects we’ve delivered go to our projects page kitsune.co.uk/projects
The UK sports industry is worth £23.8 billion and holds nearly 1 million jobs. It generates more than £20 bn for the UK economy annually. With an ever increasing focus on healthy living and huge interest in health tech wearables we can only see this market growing.
Our strategic approach coupled with sector-specific knowledge allows us to offer an increasing return on investment to our clients. Nick has come into the company and added his extensive marketing, events and leisure sector insights to our brand, strategy and UX sensibilities.
FREE workshops!
To round things off we’re offering free workshops to any sports or leisure companies looking to improve their brand engagement or digital offering. On offer are;
- Brand strategy workshop; position yourself for success.
- UX Discovery workshop; investigate your user personas.
- Customer journey workshop; optimise conversions.
There's no catch, these are the same workshops we run day in day out for our clients. They're specifically designed to help you focus on your targets and create actionable, measurable goals. Only for the moment whilst we're feeling generous they're free! You get a report at the end collating all the information in a usable form and we make more friends in the industries that matter the most to us. These workshops aren't to a room of people, they're one-to-one brand surgeries.
Focus your objectives this year, align your brand and excite your customers. Email us to schedule in your free workshop; studio@kitsune.co.uk