Brand Box used to create a new kind of boxing experience.

A Chesterfield gym came to WDA for assistance in launching their own charity boxing event.  Full of ideas for the event itself, but with no name, no identity, no brand – and a very limited budget. After an initial discussion it became clear that the client qualified for our Brand Box product – effectively a ‘brand in a box’ aimed squarely at SME’s looking to drive business by creating a competitive brand advantage.

Working with them WDA were able to develop a totally unique brand positioning that has given them the tools to occupy a distinctive place in their market and become one of the fastest growing boxing events in the UK. 

The Power of 4

The inspiration for the new name came at one of our famous ‘Off the Wall’ creative session with the team where we brainstormed the reasons people new to boxing might want to get involved. We whittled these down to four core motivations;  determining people would do it either for the challenge, the fitness, the skills or for a great charitable cause (and hopefully all four!).

As with any branding project, inspiring people to engage with the brand was critical; and linking the event to Help for Heroes was the key to giving the brand a purpose the audience could connect with and gave the brand the latter part of its name – Boxing4Heroes.

The Boxing4Heroes visual identity was developed graphically to leverage everything the new brand stands for: The four stripes representing the four ropes of a ring, and the angular arrangement also hinting the ribbon of a medal (which will be developed in the future). The brand ethos of sporting achievement and personal challenge gave the identity its sportswear feel, something which elevates  it above and beyond just the boxing to allow for future diversification and also the retailing of official Boxing4heroes apparel. The ////4 symbol and impactful colour palette allows the identity to comfortably sit alongside the likes of Adidas and Nike in terms of brand quality perception.

Brand Box

Thanks to WDA’s Brand Box product, Boxing4Heroes now has a clear focus and has captured a very clearly defined space within its market allowing the audience to fully connect with the brand, get behind it and feel part of its purpose, all of which adds to the value of the brand. In a short space of time the boxing start-up has been awarded Help for Heroes Charity of the Year status and has events being planned nationally, with £thousands being raised for the charity.

What the client says

“Without the help of WDA and their brilliant Brand Box product we would just be another boxing event and would be back to square one every show. Brand Box has given us affordable access to the expertise of an award winning branding agency, and without the brand they have created for us we wouldn’t have been able to see such fast growth in such a short space of time. Their understanding of how to differentiate us and make our events truly unique was inspiring, the brand has become bigger than the event and has been fully embraced by our public. Having been involved in other boxing events businesses over the years, it is clear that boxing4heroes is the most engaging boxing brand by far within its space.

Brand Box – A professional branding solution for SME’s

A Coca-Cola executive was famously quoted as saying: “If Coca-Cola were to lose all of its production-related assets in a disaster, the company would survive. By contrast, if all consumers were to have a sudden lapse of memory and forget everything related to Coca-Cola, the company would go out of business.

Brands are not just for big businesses likeCoca-Cola, effective branding is a critical deciding factor when consumers are choosing between products and services at all price points, from all business types and sizes, and in both B2B and B2C environments. WDA’s Brand box product has been specifically designed for SME’s of a certain size who appreciate and desire the competitive business advantages a brand driven marketing approach delivers, but find it either prohibitively expensive or too complicated to understand.

Brand Box has been designed to offer a ‘big brand’ solution to businesses looking for a quick and simple solution.

WDA’s Lee Waterhouse explains:

“Brand Box is a brand new product from WDA. It was conceived to satisfy a clear gap in the market for start ups and SME’s looking to turn their businesses into brands; and all the commercial benefits that brings. With Brand Box, qualifying SME’s get to work alongside an agency with a proven track record having working on some of the World’s biggest brands. You get the same people, access to the same expertise, and ultimately end up with a great branding solution for your business. Brand Box is designed to be easy to understand, quick and affordable.

Brand Box is not for everyone. For starters, your business has to qualify based on size. The reason is simple, WDA has always been very committed to delivering branding solutions which have a direct impact on driving clients business and as a result our services are charged on a value – not time – basis. Therefore a very large multinational client stands to gain a much higher commercial return (in absolute terms) than a start up or SME. Brand Box addresses this by finally offering something of real value to SME’s – the pricing pitched to allow qualifying businesses to enjoy a solid return on their investment.

We’ve also been able to offer a lower cost by ‘packaging’ our process somewhat. This has been done both to make the process easy to understand, but also to limit the deliveries to just those things necessary to create a great solution. Whilst the process is ‘fixed’ (you get what it says on the tin as such), the solution is very much bespoke – this isn’t like buying stock imagery!

Bigger clients tend to be more complicated. Their needs are very different, and WDA are often dealing with a large marketing  department; often with a dedicated brand manager. Typically the projects are much more involved and require a host of additional expertise and deliveries. For example, a large client may well invest the total cost of Brand Box into international brand name searches and trademark registrations. Or they may require us to deliver in-depth market research and organise focus groups. It really is horses for courses and these things are typically not needed for smaller businesses.

Find out more about Brand Box

Contact WDA’s BD Manager Anna Buonaguro

WDA have delivered a global rebrand project for a leading software business based on Pride Park.

The new positioning will enhance Strumis’ emphasis on directly benefiting its clients’ bottom line results by bringing better order and control to their business systems and processes. The positioning also reinforces Strumis commitment to the Structural Steel Fabrication Industry.

‘Bringing Structure to Steel’
The new positioning ‘Bringing Structure to Steel’ will additionally help unify communications globally and is accompanied by a brand communications platform developed to ensure Strumis can consistently but flexibly communicate its brand message – and critically within that its brand and bottom line delivery difference – to a wide audience of both existing customers and those new to Strumis. A new visual toolkit has also been developed to leverage this new positioning and platform.

Strumis Managing Director Simon Inman presented the new strategic brand positioning and platform at the company’s global sales conference held at the group HQ in the UK to key Strumis managers from countries including the US, Canada, China, India, Australia and the Middle East.

“This was a strategic exercise,” explained Simon “which aims to create a clearer positioning for Strumis ‘the brand’ together with a flexible and targetable brand platform which supports all our future product development and marketing plans.

Going into this process the consensus was that whilst we’re great at doing what we do, we’re maybe not as good at explaining that to everyone within the market! For that reason we didn’t just want a lick of paint or any old ’tag line’. This was about delving into our DNA and uncovering the things that differentiate our offering and clearly resonate with our audience.

Our global HQ in the UK is the company’s cost centre, being the place where all the software development takes place [Strumis employs a much larger team of specialist developers than anyone else in the sector]. For this reason It’s easy occasionally for us as a business to get caught up on the technicalities of the software we create and develop. Of course we are extremely proud of all that code! Likewise the software solutions we offer are we believe the best on the market today. A claim we feel is backed up by the fact that we enjoyed 47 active ‘swap-outs’ from competitor software last year alone. [To date Strumis are not aware of a single swap-out going the other way]. Indeed we are especially proud of our 3D BimReview module and our unique mobile app technologies. We also have an all in one license model which customers love.”

Bringing an expert external perspective
However after enlisting the help of renowned UK branding experts WDA, Strumis began to reappraise its proposition. WDA’s external perspective and insights suggested that perhaps Strumis weren’t really  in the software development business at all.

“Working with WDA we realised that the technicalities and features of our software were only part of the story, and due to the rapid rate we are developing new components, a (very fast) moving feast. When we really started to think about the Strumis brand offering from the industry’s perspective, it became clear that we are actually in the Steel Fabrication Business Solutions business.

The bottom line for our clients, and the reason so many remain loyal (and so many switch over) is that ultimately our solutions create highly desirable commercial business benefits – directly boosting revenues or profits – most often both.

They do this by connecting, streamlining and simplifying clients business systems and resources. And this is at the heart of what we offer – whether customers are big or small, whichever software edition or modules they use and wherever in the world they are located – Strumis brings the same core commercial advantages,  the same significant client rewards  and the specific business benefits  required.

We have truly brilliant solutions for businesses from small fabrication shops, right through to the giants. Of course their needs vary considerably, but we realise that whilst on a different scale [and often achieved in a different way] both customer groups are essentially partnering with Strumis for the same reasons: We understand their sector better than anyone else; and our solutions bring structure to their systems – which in turn cuts costs and increases efficiencies, effectiveness and profits.”

Taking ‘New Strumis’ out to market
In addition to the global rebrand WDA have created a host of ‘route to market’ collateral both digital and tangible, from stand and launch campaign (including animation) for the recent NASCC Steel Show in Orlando Florida; to assistance with the launch of the company’s most important software release to date – V10.