The 400 staff firm’s new brand identity project was headed up by Pat Kelly, who joined the business as director, marketing and solutions last December.
CEO Rachael Nevins said: “She certainly hit the ground running as it was a major overhaul… from print collateral to a new website as well as defining the look, feel, language and tone of the business to differentiate ourselves and better reflect the personality of the business, it’s people and leadership.”
The new branding and website went live this morning.
While the rebrand was always part of a three year business plan, Nevins said going live as the easing of lockdown restrictions started to ease felt like it “had been timed impeccably”.
“Although the timing was more on the back of our three-year strategy and the investment we put in place,” she added.
During the course of the pandemic, the business has invested heavily in its digital print and multichannel offerings, which respectively centred on the new Ricoh Pro VC70000 high speed inkjet press at its Huddersfield facility and its new Digital Envelope offering, which covers integrated SMS and secure email capabilities.
Other 2020 investments included a circa £3m spend reequipping its inserting capabilities with three new Epic inserting lines from Bluecrest and six Neopost folder-inserters and the business joining Quadient’s ‘Digital Now’ programme, which Nevins said was a “fantastic addition to our digital programme insofar as it can allow a very rapid response to clients’ needs in terms of the digital transformations”.
She also highlighted that the three-year plan wasn’t purely focused on technology, adding that the business had invested significantly in “bringing in new skills where needed and helping colleagues upskill were needed”.
While Nevins said that the business had been fairly resilient through the pandemic, as a result of its focus on critical communications and hybrid mail, some clients, as a result of the sectors they operated in, had been impacted.
“With the investments we’ve put it place and our new brand that puts us in a super strong position as we come out of lockdown and our clients are back to full force, especially with our clear focus on the sectors we operate in, she said.
She added that the fact that the business had become more agile as a result of the pandemic, would also stand it in good stead and highlighted that business had already secured four significant contract renewals this year including a three-year contract extension with online value retailer Studio Retail.
Compared to the various reequips, Nevins said the cost of the rebrand was “relatively small, but the benefit will be great”.
“It’s all come together, you can see and feel in the language and tone of the website and the look and feel of the brand, it’s so modern and contemporary and it really reflects what the business is about and the hard work the team constantly delivers to support our clients.
“We’ve got a strong heritage going back more than 30 years… but the business has moved on a lot in terms of what it offers, so it feels like a really good way to recognise that heritage but also that we’re a different business [today], a provider of multichannel communications.”
The business has three secure sites in Huddersfield, Nottingham and Redditch, which, combined, produce around 1bn critical customer communications per year.
