MEDIA TYPE & CATEGORY: Digital - Creative

SECTOR: Corporate finance

OVERVIEW

In 2021, Shaw & Co launched its 5-year growth plan to evolve into a nationally disruptive operator in the UK corporate finance (CF) market.

 It is on a mission to democratise the CF for SME businesses, often seen as an impenetrable and inhuman world, to make it more accessible, open, and transparent, to help SMEs achieve greater business outcomes.

To support its ambitious growth plan, the brand needed a major rebuild to re-articulate the value proposition and competitive positioning. The pandemic allowed the company the opportunity to conduct internal and external research to understand how employees, business partners and clients valued its brand – building something different, authentic, and disruptive.

PROJECT OBJECTIVES:

·      To position Shaw & Co as a sector disruptor.

·      Communicate a more human world for SME businesses – making it more accessible, open, and transparent.

·      To create and deliver a website experience that reflects the brand proposition and communicates the relevant key messages to the TA.

·      To provide a mobile-first website.

·      To restructure the existing content on the website, making it easily searchable.

·      Develop the structure of the website content, TOV and messaging.

·      To provide a new payment gateway as part of the new ‘Academy’ (education programme) to be launched later in 2022.

·      To improve website navigation and develop a strong SEO strategy.

·      To create a toolkit of digital marketing assets for the in-house team.

DIGITAL BRIEF

The work was prompted by the ambitious growth plan, the brand needed a major rebuild to re-articulate the value proposition and competitive positioning. Supported by a strong digital strategy and platforms.

Shaw & Co approached Structure with both branding and digital briefs:

1. Develop its proposition, positioning, TOV, visual identity, and brand guidelines.

2. Deliver a website, digital marketing assets, and both client and brand vision films.

RESEARCH
Website: To understand the challenges and barriers to success, we undertook:

·      Site audit

·      Keyword search

·      User journey

·      Content investigation & strategy

·      Photoshoot (using real people/ to bring the story to life)

·      Developed video content (real-life client stories)

STRATEGY

The website strategy:

·      Created a mobile-first designed website that is responsive across multiple devices.

·      Provided a self-managed website, with a CMS the client can build upon.

·      Landing page with a clear proposition and CTA.

·      Restructured the content with clearer ‘services’ pillars.

·      Simpler navigation structure to get to key information faster.

·      Demonstrated that Shaw & Co understand customer pain points with no jargon language and a no-nonsense TOV.

·      Demonstrated transformational UX and CX.

·      Simplified the messaging and rethought the content structure.

·      Built out and added new engaging content based on customer needs.

·      Added a human, but authoritative, tone to the functional copy to add value.

·      Supported strong SEO with a handy glossary of corporate terminology.

·      Recorded customer interviews to showcase human stories that best demonstrate the working partnerships with Shaw & Co.

·      Provided a visual impact and a strong UX enabling searchable content.

·      Created an ‘Academy’ section (launching in 2022) with an events page and a payment system.

·      Integrated its ‘Connected’ magazine within the site to make it more accessible.

CREATIVE RESPONSE

By understanding how important people’s businesses are to them and focusing on the emotional drivers, the brand is offering a more differentiated business service. The sector innovation lies in the sector approach – the partnership way of working and humanising the value the brand creates for its clients.

Competitors talk about the products and features in often complicated industry language, based on their services rather than customers' pain points and needs. Partnership and humanity were the key to the design solution, so we designed a connected brand and digital experience for the customer, leveraged from their POV and experiences.

Approach:

The creative approach makes the work stand out in the marketplace. We injected maximum brand personality throughout the creative, illustrating and visualising the product usage and benefits in a simple, engaging, and human way.

Clients understand that the information focuses on them and is supported by relatable real-life stories. The new work supports the ambition to position the company as a ‘disruptor brand’ in the corporate finance market.

The website is one of the brand's most important comms hubs. The creative leverages the new client-focused proposition - ‘We turn your big ambitions into greater outcomes’ - with a distinctively human approach, such as a handwritten typeface to suggest human interaction and hand-drawn assets (arrows, underscores etc.) throughout the comms. In a visual ocean of cold blues, the creative solution disrupts with an ‘alive’ green but more importantly, it is used to elevate people’s stories, to bring their realities to life and how Shaw & Co helped them in a meaningful way.

RESULTS

- Project delivered within time and strict £100k budget with new corporate design, new 600+ page mobile-first UX optimised website, 19x videos, branded collateral suite including sales tools and templates.

- Delivery of new branded template files has enabled the ‘fast-follow’ delivery of in-house created marketing collateral by non-designers, saving approximately £10k of creative agency fees over 2 months.

 -  The ability to curate professional-looking collateral in-house was a key project driver and expected to save approx. £20k - £35k of creative agency costs per year.

- Significant positive feedback from business partners, clients, and competitors on the launch of a new brand and positioning.

- Significant uplift in business development-related opportunities has been seen post-launch which has driven a stronger pipeline.

Metrics:

·      42% INCREASE IN MONTHLY LEAD GENERATION (lead generation)

·      127% INCREASE IN DAILY WEBSITE USERS (website)

·      184%INCREASE IN DAILY WEBSITE PAGE VIEWS (website)

·      87% INCREASE IN WEBSITE GENERATED LEADS (website)

·      182% INCREASE IN MONTHLY LINKEDIN IMPRESSION (social media)

·      622 VIEWS POST-LAUNCH (video Consumption)

·      67% INCREASE IN PRESS PICKUPS SINCE LAUNCH (PR)