Case Study: More than a logo

At Wales Millennium Centre, we’re about three years into our brand project. As the person responsible for integrating it into the organisation I can testify that I’m still reminding my colleagues every day that brand is more than simply a logo, but now lots of my colleagues are saying it too, and that is really rewarding. It would have been simple to deliver a new logo for the Centre in 2007, but the vision of the Head of Marketing and the executive team was that it was an opportunity to help shape the business for the long term. Having buy-in from the top gave us the confidence to persevere with our mission to steer thinking away from logos and into territory that truly makes a difference to the success of a customer-centric organisation, such as: coherent product development, consistent messaging and a visitor experience that exceeds expectations. Three years in, it has started to feel as though we are achieving this vision. Conversations start with the needs of our visitors. This is a welcome cultural shift.
 

Truthfully, we always have put customers first – it’s just we hadn’t properly articulated this, or consistently applied one set of values. We were also guilty of silo thinking, with each team having a different way of doing things. The brand set out to change this. When we rolled it out, I ran information sessions where we restated the organisation’s mission, introduced the values, the promise, our tone-of-voice and the visual identity, and, crucially, awakened staff to the fact that they were the brand: an iconic building is one thing, but we give it meaning and life. Some people really didn’t like it, but taking the time to understand the reasons behind their concerns revealed that they were just a bit scared. It would have been simple to reveal a new logo and just ask that Word documents got updated with it. What we were doing felt radical.
We needed everyone to accept personal responsibility for delivering our brand values and therefore the organisation’s long-term success. For our vision to work, decisions now needed to be based on our brand thinking, and instead of multiple approaches to communications there was now one. Everyone needed to buy into the vision, but we had to give it time.
After six months of working practically with the brand, we were ready to roll out our guidelines. We held sessions with each team and used it as an opportunity to talk openly about our experiences so far. In contrast to the original sessions, these were really positive. I’m sure the coffee and ‘branded’ cakes we gave everyone played no part in this change of attitude. During the guideline development we also used the brand to influence our new customer care training programme. It proved really useful, and it was clear that, to continue bedding in the brand, we had to influence more business-wide initiatives in this way. Soon there were a number on the go: how do we position our programme of free and participatory events? how do we improve the experience for visitors front of house? how do we roll out a personal development review scheme? What was significant was that in a relatively short period of time, the culture here had changed. Projects now had input from across the organisation and the brand was being successfully used to help navigate and inform decisions. Most recently we’ve tweaked our membership programmes and established a new restaurant on this basis. The impact has been significant: we have, for example, far more conversations with customers and we have seen increases in return on investment from our communications.
When we started out, we wanted to deliver a framework that could build a strong and sustainable business: we wanted to help change the culture and give individuals the tools and confidence to use the brand and contribute to our collective success. In 2009, our fifth birthday year, we achieved Investors in People status and the Management and Leadership Model. The report states, “The Centre has a very strong brand [it] is so clearly defined and at the heart of all activities that there is a tremendous buy in from staff and a genuine pride in working for the organisation.”
This recognition should motivate us to remain true to our brand. The next step in our project is to open ourselves up and to reflect our visitors and audiences better. We’ve started using social media, with user-generated content now featuring in our communications. We want to do more, and brand-thinking will guide us so that it remains meaningful and relevant to us, and continue to deliver audiences and visitors in the most sustainable ways possible.