In May of this year I worked with The Design Portfolio to re-brand one of their existing clients. Ashley House is a property solutions company operating in primary healthcare, care and community sectors in England and Wales. The company is listed on the AIM stock exchange and has a proven track record of more than 20 years.

Faced with a major re-structuring of the NHS and a changing marketplace that harbours both new challenges and opportunities Ashley House recognised that they needed a new brand identity to lead the organisation into a more sustainable future. In a mature but increasing competitive marketplace Ashley House offered high quality design and construction of primary healthcare properties with an emphasis on cost effectiveness and had an established reputation as a materials and construction infrastructure specialist. An adjustment to the overall positioning of the business meant that a complete re-brand offered an opportunity to add a lot of value to an already strong business platform.

Initially when The Design Portfolio approached me I advised them to work with a dedicated strategist to help position Ashley House. The Design Portfolio felt that I had enough strategy experience to help them make sense of existing market research, the client's marketing ideas and strategic materials developed by other consultancies in the recent past. I was to then create a new brand identity based on this existing material in combination with the outcome of a brand workshop involving key managers, which it was also intended for me to structure and lead.

To better understand the organisation I spent a little more than a week compiling a single strategic document from these various sources. This entailed removing repetition, clarifying descriptions, emphasising key ideas as well as adding brand-led insights to the document. Click on the image above to get an overview of the document. The large pages show how I structured the document and the insights that I added. The document also includes a brand theory section at the end to illustrate the role of a brand identity made up of brand-marks in transforming an organisation.

This single strategic document enabled me to establish a strong foundation for the brand workshop and for the creative brand identity work that was to follow. The document also provided me with an opportunity to implement and demonstrate a differentiated brand consulting methodology based on ideas I've been developing over the past few years.