When I started working in professional services eight years ago, it’s safe to say that brand wasn’t at the top of most firms’ agendas. Of course, it was important to have a logo, some general blurb about the firm and information about the services offered, but the general view was that clients instruct individuals, not brands, and so it remained a low priority.
While it’s true that relationships still play a key role in winning work, the professional services market is changing and clients are becoming more likely to shop around.
At Howes Percival, we had ‘brand guidelines’ but they were fairly surface-level and had become diluted over years of steady growth and evolution. Given our growth, it was clear that we had something special enough to make clients want to instruct us and talented people want to work with us.
However, this wasn’t coming across in our communications and our key messages were practically indistinguishable from other law firms – phrases like ‘trusted adviser’, and ‘commercially focussed’ were everywhere! We knew that something had to change.
Where we started
Our first port of call was to figure out our purpose, what we had to offer and our position within our market.
We had recently conducted a series of interviews with a cross section of our clients as well as members of staff across the firm to help us determine why our clients want to work with us, why our people want to work at Howes Percival and how people feel about our firm in the market. This formed the basis of answering key questions – Why are we here? What makes us different? Who are we here for?
It became clear that our shared purpose, and what makes us stand out in the market, is our commitment to our clients. Our people are genuinely interested and invested in the lives and businesses of our clients, and they actively champion our clients’ success.
By identifying our purpose and position in the market, we were able to refresh and uplift our visual identity and marketing collateral to better articulate our brand proposition.
Change management
Support from our senior leadership team was vital in ensuring our brand refresh project was a success. Partners across the firm had a vested interest in the project but it was important that we were allowed a good level of autonomy to avoid ‘design by committee’ and create a proposition that would appeal to our clients, not just the firm’s partners.
While we wanted to set parameters on who had a say in developing the refreshed brand, we equally wanted to bring the whole firm along on our journey and create a strong sense of ownership. We therefore set out an internal communications plan to keep everyone in the firm updated on progress and ensure that everyone had an understanding of what our brand meant, beyond the logo and colour scheme.
New photography and videos were key to bringing the refreshed brand to life, and we were able to get most people across the firm involved in these, meaning that almost everyone was able to contribute to the project.
Bringing everyone along on the journey has created a lot of enthusiasm for the refreshed brand and we have a lot of advocates across the firm who really understand what we are trying to achieve and actively help to promote this.
What next?
We have come a long way, but we see our brand refresh as an ongoing project. It feeds into everything we do – how our offices look and feel, how we run our events and how we engage with our clients and contacts. As our business grows, we need to make sure that we remember our shared purpose and that our brand continues to be a true reflection of us. We also need to be alive to how our market is evolving and be willing to adapt to new landscapes while remaining focused on our reason for being here – to support our clients and communities.
By defining our brand proposition we are able to communicate who we are and why clients should instruct us as well as why talented people should want to work for us. If you are thinking about refreshing your brand, I would recommend starting there – we didn’t even have to change our logo in the end!
Simon deMaid, Milton Keynes Managing Partner said: “Our refreshed brand is a reflection of the way we work – genuinely invested in our clients’ success and proud of the relationships we build. It’s not about changing who we are, but about making it clearer why we’re different. This has been a collective effort, built on the insight and energy of our people. We haven’t changed our logo – we’ve elevated our purpose, sharpened our voice, and created something the whole firm can stand behind.”
For more information, visit the Howes Percival website.
Naomi Rendell, Brand and Engagement Manager Howes Percival
