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Hook, Hampshire, 23 July 2018 – Whiteoaks International, a leading UK-based technology PR agency, has led the launch of a disruptive cyber security start-up to market through a significant branding project, before embarking on a comprehensive communications programme in the UK.

CyberHive was created in early 2018 to provide a new kind of cyber security solution, an IaaS (Internet as a Service) proposition named ‘Trusted Cloud’, which was developed in partnership with the University of Oxford. A server security solution that protects data, Trusted Cloud uses a unique combination of hardware-based cryptography and advances in whitelisting technology.

Whiteoaks was selected following a competitive pitch process to conceive the brand and lead its first integrated marketing programme, incorporating PR, digital and social media and content generation.

In partnership with creative agency Emerald Colour, the teams created CyberHive’s website including all the visual and written content as well as social media channels.

Having launched the business, Whiteoaks International will focus on communicating with cyber security and IT professionals and influencers.

Alan Platt, Chief Operating Officer, CyberHive, said: “We believe that Trusted Cloud is the most innovative and most effective solution to the cyber threats facing all organisations. We selected Whiteoaks to help us launch to market because of its proven knowledge of the cyber security industry and an established record of PR, content and digital work in this area. We particularly liked Whiteoaks’ innovative approach to transparent service delivery and focus on results.”

James Kelliher, Whiteoaks International CEO, said: “Being chosen to work with CyberHive is one of the highlights of our year. It’s not often we have the opportunity to build a new brand from the start. Moving on from here, our focus on tangible results, with set fees for set deliverables, sets us apart from other PR firms. We feel sure that this approach will help the new CyberHive brand increase awareness of its unique solution.”

PR, like many services industries, often has a bad name. It is an inconvenient truth – and one that continues to blight the sector to this day.

The reason, really, is a simple one. Traditionally, PR agencies have charged their clients a monthly retainer, which in effect buys a certain number of hours, with staff filling out and working to a timesheet each week.

Since when, we would ask, has “hours” ever been a metric against which to judge PR success? It certainly falls short when trying to justify that “dreaded” return on investment.

To make matters worse – and perhaps inevitably – the system has often been abused. If the agency were to write a hot topic article, for sake of argument, they would want it to take twice as long as it should do. Once it had been sent to the client for approval, if it needed rounds and rounds of amends, then happy days. More hours racked up on a timesheet, less delivered to the client. And if they use up their allotted hours for the month, then they come to the client asking for more money.

Getting B2B Tech PR Right

By its nature, this retainer-based approach is great for public relations agencies, but less than satisfactory for clients – and that struck us as odd right from our inception as a specialist business to business tech PR agency.

Over the last 25 years, we have become pretty knowledgeable about PR-led tactics, how long they should take and what output they should achieve for B2B technology brands.

As a result, we don’t charge our clients a retainer and we don’t talk to them about hours or timesheets. Instead, we offer set fees for set deliverables, building bespoke campaigns that map to the client’s business objectives. Whether each deliverable takes us two hours, 20 hours or 200 hours, the fee to the client stays the same.

This means, right from the very outset, the client has absolute transparency about what their investment is, and what it is buying. But that’s really only half of the story.

Because we build strategically-aligned campaigns from day one, we set strict performance targets alongside them that link to the tactical plan. For a traditional technology PR and media relations campaign, this could be coverage volume and key message penetration for example, and for social media this would be more tangible engagement metrics as a start.

The final thing that we do is offer all clients a formal service level agreement that simply states; ‘if we do not deliver what we said we would, we give you money back on a pro rata basis’. If we miss our coverage target by 10%, for example, the client gets 10% of their total fee back.

We believe this is a better way for clients to engage a PR agency, one that puts the pressure on us to be proactive and drive the campaign forward. It provides the client’s business with complete certainty in terms of investment, activity and results, and if we fail to perform, you get a proportion of your money back anyway.

Experts in the Technology Sector

Since 1993 Whiteoaks has focussed on the tech sector, almost entirely in the business to business environment. It’s in our DNA. Whether managing more than a dozen PR agencies across the EMEA region for multinational clients such as OKI, to launching disruptive Fintech or cyber security firms to the UK market, we know what success looks like, and we know how to deliver it.

Our approach differentiates us, but we believe our work is second to none. With an unrivalled network of business and tech journalists, analysts, bloggers, vloggers and industry influencers, and an expertise in leveraging social media content on the right platforms for our clients, we ensure their businesses cut through the noise, building brand awareness and generating sales leads through targeted and impactful integrated marketing campaigns.

At the heart of both traditional PR and social media is good content – and we know all about good content. Our expert team of skilled content creators – with decades of experience covering B2B tech – draft everything from press releases to technology articles and technical whitepapers. This guarantees a high level of output for our clients as they know each time they receive a piece of copy, it has been written by their own, dedicated content creator who understands the tech landscape and their specific messaging inside and out.

We’re fortunate to have a raft of B2B clients happy to discuss the great experience they have had working with us in case studies, whether for Tech PR, Content, Digital services or in integrated marketing campaigns. To start your journey towards a better PR experience, please contact us here.

Bekki Bushnell, Head of Business Development

Deliver Integrated Campaigns

When car phones and cell phones that weighed as much as the contents of my handbag were created, the sole purpose was, whisper it, just for making and receiving phone calls in the car and on the move. Motorola’s DynaTAC 8000X phone first reached consumers in the Autumn of 1983, winning the race to sell the world’s first commercial cell phone. When Sir Charles Dunstone and David Ross founded Carphone Warehouse in 1989, prices reduced and the market was about to explode.

It would be almost 10 years before SMS technology arrived and revolutionised the way we could communicate with each other on the move, and whisper it, without talking to each other. In December 1992, a young UK test engineer used a PC to send a Merry Christmas SMS on the Vodafone network to a friend’s phone and we all fell in love with the text.

After this, innovations abounded, with multiple phone manufacturers, network operators, smaller phones and longer battery life. Everything almost changed in 1993, when Research In Motion launched the Blackberry, with email capability, SMS, a web browser and Blackberry Messenger functionality all built in.

Then, everything really changed. On 9 January 2007, Steve Jobs announced the first iPhone at the Macworld convention and on 20 June 2007, the first iPhone was released in the US.

Today we have the iPhones and Android smartphones that we know, and mostly love. A number of research studies all show that we spend significantly more of our time using apps, mainly social media apps, than we do making calls or sending texts. They are our cameras, our navigation tool and the way to stay in touch with everyone, whether it’s on WhatsApp, Instagram, Facebook messenger, VoIP calls or Twitter.

This week’s news that the walkie-talkie – first invented in 1937 – may be making a comeback because we’re impatient with poor mobile phone signal connections or the “coldness of texts”, may seem far-fetched at first. But, not when you realise it’s Apple backing the comeback and in a very 21st century way. Apple is launching a walkie-talkie app for the Apple Watch in the autumn, so you can tap, record and send instant audio messages to friends also with the watch. The receiver’s watch will chime and play the message when it suits them, with a tap option to respond. The concept takes the ‘voice note’ capability in WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger a step further, as both of these functions are more passive in the way they alert the receiver – and require the app to be open to play and send audio notes.

I wonder if, aside from not being an Apple Watch owner myself, the Facebook Messenger, WhatsApp and Apple Watch voice notes could be signalling a desire for more personal communication? After all, we’ve become so used to communicating by tweet, text and email, especially when you consider that for Generation Z this could be all they’ve predominantly known. Plus, whether you love or hate them, the likes of iPhone’s Siri and Amazon’s Echo Alexa are making some of us more comfortable with voice technology.

It all comes back to the tech industry’s current goal: building frictionless technology to help us find, do or buy faster and more easily. And voice has strength: it conveys emotion, reduces the potential for ambiguity and probably takes less time overall. For the moment, Apple Watch ownership is still not mainstream, but as always with Apple, it is creating the shape of things to come….

Buyer or marketing personas are now common terms in the B2B sector and it’s likely that your company devises and executes account-based sales and marketing strategies around them. But why are they so important? How much do you know about them? And how can you use them within your integrated marketing campaigns?

Is it just more marketing jargon?

Quite simply: no. Buyer personas are highly useful, reality and category-based representations of your ideal customers. In fact, a key point is that they are not just useful to marketing folk. Rather, they should also help sales, product and services teams to bring to life the ideal customer your business is trying to attract. They should help you think like and attract prospective customers, as well as retain existing clients. They should filter throughout the business and be used as the basis for the development of new products and services, as well as sales and marketing campaigns.

Guess who?

Without personas, you’ll be using any customer insight from Google Analytics and Client Services teams, social listening and market research output combined with lists of target customers as a ‘best guess’ basis for the products, services and content that you think your audiences want. And experience shows that without a full set of customer profiles, you’re more likely to revert to developing ideas based on what you know best (your company) or what you would respond to, instead of the information your audience is actively seeking. Personas are most powerful when regularly reviewed, updated and shared across the business – and so take things to the next level.

By layering personas on top of all the information I’ve just listed, your understanding of a persona will now be much deeper. You’ll ideally glean additional information by profiling and surveying your existing customers. What is their job title? What are their responsibilities? What are their goals? What fears do they have? What are their demographics? What are their challenges? What are their buying, media consumption, social media usage and communication preferences? When collated and analysed, this combined data will help you define your personas, of which there may be several or only a few.

It’s also beneficial to understand the typical lifecycle stage of each of those personas. For example, are they only just aware of having a business problem which needs addressing? Or have they already started the evaluation process for a solution to that problem? Or are they at the purchase stage?

Personas make for powerful audience-centric content and PR

For PR, social media and digital campaigns to align with the broader marketing campaigns, having defined buyer personas will – as a first step – allow specific messages to be developed for each persona.

It is only at this stage and with this depth of knowledge that targeted content should be mapped, created, and then delivered at the right time. And of course, delivery is absolutely critical. The adage of communicating with a target audience seven times to achieve memorable impact still rings true but in today’s noisy market, it is imperative to select only the channels which you know your prospects and customers will consume. Whether for personal or professional purposes, today’s buyers expect – and will respond – to this focused approach to communications.

Establishing a link with Account-Based Marketing

Buyer personas are the precursor to the now widely understood B2B Account-Based Marketing (ABM) framework. At Whiteoaks we define ABM as the way to categorise, build relationships and target companies or accounts into prioritised groups rather than on an individual leads basis. An ABM strategy covers multi-touch and multi-channel which is implemented throughout a company to achieve goals based on high-value, location or sector-specific account.

In practice, this means selecting a multi-channel, content-rich campaign for each of your buyer personas within the account-based marketing framework. Which of your buyers in each ‘account’ are most active on LinkedIn? Are others likely to consume weekly trade newsletters which explore the nuts and bolts of technology? Or are they more likely to subscribe to daily news digests from BBC? Where does another set of ‘accounts’ and personas look for thought-leadership content – and do they start their search for it on Twitter or their favourite trade blogs? If you know, you can ensure your marketing and PR investment is accurately attributed to achieve the most impactful campaigns.

But, why?

A rich, multi-sourced understanding of your ideal customers will enable a more powerful strategy, making best use of all the marketing tools available, including webinars, PR, social media outreach, content marketing, email campaigns and blogs, leading to precise targeting and more accurate measurement. What you learn will feed into your next campaign or plan and so you should be able to measure and demonstrate the power of your investment more thoroughly each time.

Suzanne Griffiths, Managing Director

Tell Us Your B2B Tech Story

Is it too early for the C word? That’s Christmas. While we might be experiencing some of the hottest temperatures in history, July is still a key time in the retail industry as plans for the Christmas ahead are unveiled. ‘Christmas in July’ is a common phrase in the market and refers to the festive season’s press events, when major brands and their PR teams showcase products from their festive collection to the media. So, the ice creams are being replaced with Christmas puds!

One online retailer that has nailed this period is Amazon, with its Prime Day or the ‘Black Friday’ of the summer. For retailers with a presence on Amazon, Prime Day could be the busiest shopping day of the season as some consumers, believe it or not, look to bag a bargain, five months ahead of Christmas.

Launched in 2015, to celebrate Amazon’s 20th anniversary, the first Prime Day was a one-day-only retail holiday that aimed to overtake Black Friday as the sales event of the year. Originally met with criticism from shoppers over the quality and quantity of the deals on offer, Amazon stepped up its game. Prime Day 2017 was the biggest shopping day in the history of the company, until it was surpassed by Cyber Monday 2017 in November. So key is this event that Amazon has this year moved the date to 16 July to avoid a clash with the World Cup and extended the sale to 36 hours.

Although ‘Christmas in July’ is not a new concept for retailers, Amazon has shown with Prime Day that it is possible to invent your own holiday and it’s a great example of an annual PR and marketing – and sales – success. Amazon turned what is traditionally a slow news season for the media to the headline story, delivering mass media attention and record-breaking sales. McKinsey & Company describes it perfectly: “In keeping with Amazon’s “disrupter” reputation, it pulled off what other retailers have long tried to do: created a catalytic event”.

As shoppers continue to spend more online, retailers can benefit from technology to make stronger connections with consumers and build or cement their brand reputation faster. And Amazon competitors are waking up, as we’ve seen with retailer eBay announcing deals up to 80% off in the same week as Prime Day – although it has not garnered the same extensive media coverage as Prime Day.

With the World Cup delivering an overall boost to consumer spending and with the final and Prime Day taking place on the same weekend, I hope you have your credit card at the ready!

Who are you? And what’s your job at Whiteoaks?

Hi, I’m Zach (with a ‘h’) – and I’m a Junior Account Executive in Team Aries.

What does your daily to-do list look like?

Sorry to be cliché, but I’ve discovered that every day is different from the next! The few constants that exist see me start my day with a cup of coffee and a read through of my emails. I then have a look through all of the morning news stories, and then ensure everything is in place for the day ahead, from co-ordinating the writing schedules, producing client call agendas, to proofreading articles.

What made you want to get into PR?

My degree in Creative and Media Writing was a great choice because it allowed me to explore both my creative and journalistic writing styles. However, despite really enjoying inventing my own stories and writing screenplays, a career in public relations became something I wanted to pursue as I loved being involved in a media-facing role that changes daily based on events around the globe. So, 10 days after my final exam at Uni – here I was at Whiteoaks!

Who is your favourite brand and why?

This is an easy one for me – Nike. I’m a massive sports fan, and I’d say about 90% of my sports clothing at home is Nike branded. I’d love to say that it’s the high-quality fabric or some other technical reason as to why I feel this way, but a more accurate answer is quite simply Rafael Nadal. The tennis star has always been my favourite sportsman, so I’ve bought Nike (and Babolat) products from a young age as they’ve always been Nadal’s sponsor. Chelsea Football Club is also in partnership with Nike now– which only deepens my brand loyalty. Sorry Adidas.

What’s your top tip for someone who wants to get into the PR industry?

I didn’t have any specific PR experience before starting here, so I guess I’m a good example of how getting into PR can be done. However, what also helps is any media or marketing experience that you can get – the more, the better. I would also say having a good understanding of current affairs and keeping up with the latest news stories is always good practice, even if it’s just spending five minutes in the morning on the BBC News app.

How do you unwind after a day in the office?

I normally spend my evenings watching either live sports, trashy TV, or whatever Netflix show I’m currently binging on. At the moment I’ve got the World Cup, Love Island, and FRIENDS (on a year-long loop), so I’m able to do all three!

What’s your favourite anthem suggestion for Friday’s Whiteoaks Power Hour?

I listen to a wide variety of music, but I’m not sure how my go-to hip-hop playlists would go down in the office. I’d probably pick a proper feel good track like Bob Marley – Three Little Birds. Or anything from Hans Zimmer, which is perfect concentration music.

If you could be any character in any film, what would you be?

I absolutely love Harry Potter, so probably anyone from those films. Maybe not Harry though, being ‘the chosen one’ would simply be too much pressure. But anyone else for sure. Who wouldn’t want their own wand and go to school at Hogwarts?

What’s your ideal getaway location?

Anywhere that’s 30+ degrees and has sand. I went to Barbados when I was younger so would love to go back to the Caribbean. I’m one quarter Grenadian, so probably there.

What’s your go-to party trick?

I once opened a bottle of champagne (Prosecco) with a knife after seeing it in the film What Happens in Vegas. Although, I don’t confess to be an expert in the art.

And finally, cheesy chips?

Chips, pasta, beans – anything covered in cheese and I’m all over it.

The Data and Marketing Association defines integrated marketing as “an approach to creating a unified and seamless experience for consumers to interact with the brand/enterprise; it attempts to meld all aspects of marketing communication, through their respective mix of tactics, methods, channels, media, and activities, so that all work together as a unified force. It is a process designed to ensure that all messaging and communications strategies are consistent across all channels and are centred on the customer”.

So, while this definition is the holy grail for most B2B marketers, what’s the true key to integrated campaign success?

Traditionally, businesses planned and executed disparate campaigns, using different resource and suppliers for the various marketing disciplines. Today’s communications landscape is incredibly challenging with an abundance of communication channels and audiences’ short attention spans, coupled with an expectation of personalised audience experiences. Within this diluted backdrop, integrated campaigns have the power to cut through the noise with consistent messaging and content to influence audiences as they go through the sales funnel to drive real business outcomes.

Personalising Personas

The starting point for an integrated campaign is defining the target audiences and creating buyer personas for those ideal customers. With a deep understanding of who you need to engage and influence and what behaviour you want to effect amongst different buyer personas, the platform for devising effective delivery programmes is established.

Audience-Centric Content

When planning the content approach, the objective should be to create assets which will help customers and prospects rather than simply sell to them. Providing audiences with valuable information (for free) will build trust and more effectively support the sales process.

Content is essential but the mistake many organisations make when developing content is to prioritise ‘what we want to say’ over ‘what our audiences want to hear’. Campaigns will only have impact if they take an audience-centric approach to the creation and delivery of the content, which engages audiences whilst still meeting organisational objectives.

Consistency Drives Ultimate Impact

The sales funnel is the various stages which a customer will go through before purchase and it is the job of the marketer – and latterly the sales professional – to move people thorough this funnel by creating content to support every stage of the buying journey.

For the marketer, effective integrated marketing is about ensuring all elements of the marketing mix work together cohesively across channels and through the funnel – consistency has the ultimate impact and strengthens the overall delivery of the message.

As a result, marketers talk a lot about top of the funnel (TOFU), middle of the funnel (MOFU) and bottom of the funnel (BOFU) marketing activities. Essentially, these stages cover building awareness about the problem you address, educating audiences about how to choose a solution and proving why your product or service is the best solution both at campaign and strategic levels. This approach also aligns marketing activities with an account-based marketing (ABM) framework, something which are increasingly working within.

To illustrate how this might look in practice, consider a blend of:

TOFU (Awareness): Prospects will be looking for answers to solve a problem or address a need they have. Content needs to help educate or offer insight which may include original research, thought leadership press coverage, whitepapers, eBooks and blogs.
MOFU (Evaluation): Audiences will know their problem needs to be solved and be exploring what is the best solution is to fit their needs. The content should demonstrate that the company is skilled and delivers results and could include expert guides, webinars, handbooks and case studies.
BOFU (Purchase): A purchasing decision is ready to be made and prospects are reviewing what needs to be done to become a customer. At this stage demos, offers, product and service literature and fact sheets are all useful tools to encourage prospects across the line.

A recent integrated marketing campaign that we executed with Omnico Group generated £12 million in qualified sales and more than 200 pieces of coverage, demonstrating the real business impact this approach can have. This campaign focused on the awareness stage of the sales funnel, using original research to capture the attention of audiences, and was backed up by expert insight and opinion with the goal of moving prospects through the sales funnel. You can watch our client contacts at Omnico discuss working with us here.

If you would like to explore how to expand your current PR programme into one which incorporates other marketing communications methods for improved impact and synergies with your marketing and sales efforts, why not read an overview of what we offer and get in touch? You can book your free one-hour consultation with a senior member of our client services team who will provide you with tailored recommendations to consider.

Hayley Goff, Chief Operating Officer

We are recognised as a top Integrated Marketing Company on DesignRush

Deliver Integrated Campaigns

If you are in the world of PR the term “news hijacking” will be very familiar to you. If you aren’t, it simply means recognising a breaking news item that is relevant to your client and being able to provide expert commentary on it as the story unfolds.

Sounds smart, right?

It is certainly useful to have in the tool-kit and for some sectors it forms a fundamental part of PR outreach and, when done well, results in securing high-profile, high quality media coverage. It is an invaluable tool that drives brand visibility for your client, positions executives as thought leaders and experts on the topic, and helps your company become a resource which the media can go to for future stories.

Take the security industry as an example: It is an ideal sector for this type of PR and recently, with the spate of data breaches, cyberattacks and political threats, security is a sector that is perfectly situated to tackle news hijacking opportunities.

Let’s look at the key steps to follow when looking to hijack the news.

Monitor, monitor, monitor

It is normal practice to be in the habit of monitoring the news if you work in PR but this task becomes essential if you are to jump on breaking news stories before they become old news. Set up news alerts with key terms like data breach or cyberattack, set up notifications on news apps on your phone or tablet, use Tweetdeck to monitor relevant hashtags, head to Google when you open your laptop in the morning and search the top key words for each of your clients. Consistently using one, or a combination of these tactics will help you ensure you are always hot on the tail of breaking news and will help you anticipate the news of tomorrow.

Be creative

There are two parts to this. Sometimes the ideal story for your client will break and the comment is clear; all you need is a simple pitch to journalists you have already built up a good relationship with.
Often though, this isn’t the case and you need to get creative!
Look outside the specific details of what your client offers and find the broader messages they can provide. For example, a cybersecurity client whose products focus on protecting against a specific type of attack – would they be willing to speak more widely on the topic of the cyber threat? What bold assertions would they be able to make?
When it comes to writing comments, it is critical to get guidance from the client on what they are comfortable discussing and from here you can elaborate and write compelling comment. The journalists are most likely to include comments that are strongly opinionated and say something new; so, within reason, the bolder the better.

Ready, steady, go

Once you have secured opportunities, keep in touch with the journalist to follow through and ensure you have provided them with everything you can. If it is a phone briefing or TV interview, make sure you provide both your client and the media contact with any relevant details they need. If the interview process (and the interview itself) runs smoothly and the producer is pleased with the result, they are likely to look to you again for future opportunities. Organisation is key.
As the story evolves and the news shifts to how the incident occurred and the repercussions, it’s good practice to follow up and either provide further comment or thought leadership on what could have been done or what businesses can learn looking forward.

Evaluation and evolution

An effective news hijacking approach is a continuous initiative and requires continuous assessment. What went well? Which media outlets were interested? How easy was it to get hold of the appropriate spokesperson? Is media training required? These are all areas that should be reviewed and discussed with the client in anticipation of the next opportunity.

For the PR agency, hijacking the news is about identifying a story, pitching out to the relevant media, and briefing the client on any opportunities that are secured. For the client, it’s a combination of sourcing appropriate spokespeople and assisting in the approval of comment or facilitating briefings.

1. What’s your career background, in brief?

Just like the world of PR, my background has been rather eclectic. My career really started when I took a year’s placement with McLaren Automotive as part of my PR degree while at Bournemouth University back in 2011. As the internal PR assistant to the global PR manager, the regional managers – spread over five continents including North America, Asia and the Middle East – and the head of communications and PR, it’s definitely safe to say that I hit the ground running!

Fast paced (just like McLaren’s supercars) from day one, this job was an amazing insight into the world of in-house PR. I was lucky to be able to take on so many exciting projects during the launch of the company’s first mass-production car, the MP4-12C, from journalist track days to factory tours in the world-renowned McLaren Technology Centre.

I used this automotive experience in my previous agency role, working with the likes of Volvo and Peugeot on both consumer and B2B campaigns. However, after graduating, I first moved into another in-house role for a food, facilities and uniform services company, which sparked an interest in the B2B channel. This ultimately led me to take up the position of account manager for Whiteoaks International and move into the technology space.

2. What’s the most challenging job you’ve ever had?

Working in retail – mainly because being 17 and having to reluctantly give up your Sunday to work in Primark will always seem like the worst thing in the world. However, given Primark prices, the biggest challenge was trying to stop people haggling for items of clothing reduced to 50p when it looked like 30p…

4. What apps, technology items and gadgets can’t you live without?
Spotify – which I guess also means my phone – as I definitely couldn’t live without music!

5. What’s the best advice you’ve been given?
Quite simply to do what makes you happy.

6. Name one thing about your job that gives you a sense of satisfaction or makes you leave the office smiling…
I think no matter what job you’re in, knowing the client or customer is happy is always a rewarding experience. My team (Team Taurus) always keep me smiling though!

7. Do you personalise your workspace?
I like to have a tidy desk and just keep out what I need during the day. The only thing that sets my desk apart is probably the variety of snacks/teas I keep on there; peppermint tea, peanut butter, a piece of fruit and cashew nuts are usually firm staples.

8. What’s the first thing you do in the office in the morning?
I usually come straight from the gym in the morning, so I’ll eat my breakfast while checking emails with a big cup of coffee!

9. What are you reading, watching or listening to at the moment?
I’m currently reading ‘Why we Sleep’ by Matthew Walker, a professor of neurosciences – it’s probably one of the most eye-opening and fascinating books I’ve ever read and would definitely recommend it. The book delves into everything from what really happens during deep REM (which I discovered stands for rapid eye movement) sleep, to why our sleep patterns change across a lifetime as well as the scary links it has to a lot of major diseases. He also did a great podcast with Joe Rogan for those who’d prefer to listen all about it.

I’m on the lookout for a new series to watch though, so if anyone has any suggestions on that, let me know!

When you hear the name of a brand, most people immediately think of the logo, advert or other visual asset that is associated with it; whether that is McDonald’s golden ‘m’, Twitter’s bird or Apple’s… well, apple. To grab the attention of your audience, your brand must be eye-catching, relevant and be representative of the core values and messages behind your business – and extends far beyond just the logo.

The term ‘brand’ originates from the mark that was put onto livestock as a way of identifying the animal’s owner. While the definition of a brand has significantly developed over time, the concept remains the same; it is a way of identifying the people, values and messages behind a business and the design of a brand is a vital asset.

But how can a B2B business ensure that every aspect of its brand resonates with its target audience and plays its role in creating a successful business?

Here are my three top tips for designing an impactful brand:

1) Be consistent – Consistency is essential for any brand looking to develop long-lasting relationships with its customers and prospects and presenting a coherent image is just the start. The branding of a business gives the prospect or client a reflection of the service they will expect to receive. If a brand is clear, professional and consistent, it will create a positive expectation and increase the likelihood of a prospect engaging with your business. The opposite effect will take place if that same prospect is exposed to a mismatch of imagery and messaging. An effective brand is one that presents itself consistently across all platforms, be that its website, social media pages or other marketing and promotional resources, combining to represent the proposition and value that the business delivers.

2) Trigger an emotion – For a brand to stand out from the crowd it must trigger a positive emotion from its audience and there are several ways in which this can be achieved. While it may not be something that we as consumers consciously think about, colours, shapes and textures play a huge role in the way we think about a brand. When designing a brand, it is fundamental that the psychology behind the design is considered, in combination with the business story, in order to initiate the desired reaction.

3) Keep it simple – The most successful brands are those that have a clear mission and focus all their efforts on achieving that goal. As a result, the design of the brand creates the link relationship between the customer and the business, developing associations with the value that it delivers through its products and/or services. The most impactful brands are those which don’t try hard to explain what it is that they offer and how they create value for its stakeholders. A perfect example of this is Intel, who are known to consumers throughout the world as its ‘sound’ and logo are universally known

While the design aspect of a brand must grab the attention of your target audience, this pales into insignificance if the messages in the content that’s shared don’t match up, tell a story and in the end, sell what the business is selling. It’s not the logo that will ultimately result in sales and brand loyalty. Taking tech giant, Apple as an example, the Apple logo is not the reason you’re reading this blog on your iPhone or MacBook. You’ve been sold a story and it’s the people, the purpose, the messaging and the value that Apple collectively creates, that made you part with your hard-earned cash.