Page category: Case studies

Using their new brand style and voice, we created a website that shone a light on their purpose-driven approach – giving them an experience that genuinely reflects their proud northern heritage and the good growth that’s always been a part of who they are.

But, like any good business website, it still had to ignite the interest of the customers they most want to work with. We moved them away from an inward-looking approach, and gave them a user journey built around the stuff that gets customers engaged, excited and eager to chat.

Marketing Strategy

Workshop

We met with the Borough Care team to understand their challenges and the key messages around their live life in colour promise. We then went away and put together a strategy workshop, designed to tap into the Borough Care stakeholders’ thoughts and feelings around their current strategy vs. where they wanted and envisioned themselves to be. 

We design our workshops as a collaborative experience that engages the whole team. In order to decipher what the strategy needed to tackle, this particular workshop focused on three exercises – peaks and constants (looking at ‘always on’ marketing activity and short-term campaigns), stakeholder mapping (examining key audiences) and goal setting. 

Getting the team together to carry out these exercises allows us to read the room, draw out any themes worth exploring and gives everyone the opportunity to share their thoughts and feelings in an open environment.

Strategy

Using the workshop outcomes to inform our next steps, we created a full marketing strategy to bring clarity to Borough Care’s empathetic brand and stance on social care. We focused on how we could deliver this to the people who matter most, their target audiences – including care home managers, family members and commissioners – and examined their competitors’ online presence in particular. 

Another key part of the strategy were the specific goals designed to drive Borough Care towards their aim of helping more people live life in colour in their homes. Addressing this goal went hand in hand with improving their presence in the care home space and becoming the go-to employer for professionals in the sector. 

Once we ran through our process, the Borough Care strategy directed the organisations’ marketing efforts to create a point of difference to competitors. This document could then be used by the Borough Care team as a constant point of reference throughout the transition period to the new approach.

Working together

Internal marketing function

The internal Borough Care team were struggling to make their marketing work for them, with multiple roles splitting the function. This was creating a bottleneck and making the process fragmented. We suggested that the organisation hire an internal Marketing Manager for the first time to address these issues and shape the role so it fulfilled the new needs of the strategy. We then helped to support the Borough Care team throughout the recruitment process. 

With a new hire in place, we set to work relationship building with their new Marketing Manager. Collaborating to improve internal processes and spotting opportunities to improve was helped by the introduction of a fresh set of eyes.

Using empathy to inform

In order to gain an understanding of how unique Borough Care’s approach truly is, our team visited some of the homes for the day. We worked alongside Borough Care’s Activity and Lifestyle Facilitators (ALFs). ALFs are colleagues who are responsible solely for engagement, activities and bringing joy to everyday life in their homes. Spending the day with these key members of staff allowed us to gain insight into what it is, or what it will be, like day-to-day for the target audiences we’re engaging – current staff, new potential residents and potential new employees. This also allowed us to develop empathy for the Borough Care team, improving our relationships and our understanding of them from the very heart of the organisation. 

Website Design & Build

We completely redesigned The Women’s Organisation’s website. Our aim was to create an online resource that would showcase their vision and inspire the women who visit it, in the same way that the team inspires the women they meet.

Collaboration is always an important part of our projects. We created a project roadmap and then worked on the website in phases, seeking feedback from The Women’s Organisation’s team and handling challenges together.

The project scope included:

• Wireframe development
• User interface (UI) design
• Theme build
• Custom feature development

User Experience

Improving the website’s user experience was essential. The previous site had poor navigation, which meant users would get lost, reach dead-end pages, and fail to find the content they needed — none of which reflected how The Women’s Organisation wanted users to feel.

We redesigned the website with the user in mind. It’s now simple, easy to navigate, search engine optimised and mobile responsive. 

And thanks to our training, the staff at The Women’s Organisation can edit and update it whenever they need to.

Search Engine Optimisation

One of our top priorities was to make the new site easy to find. The previous site’s search profile was lacking, leaving The Women’s Organisation undiscovered to many of the women it could help.

We created an in-depth SEO strategy, aimed at improving the site’s search engine rankings for relevant terms, and proposed rewriting the website’s content to further strengthen its reach.

Content Architecture

We designed the website’s content structure to be as clear as possible, and to act as an effective framework not just for the copy we wrote, but for future content written by The Women’s Organisation’s team.

Content now centres on clear calls-to-action that aim to start conversations and encourage more women to sign up for courses and events.

The visual assets on the old website were out of date. And while we didn’t supply the site’s photography, we gave The Women’s Organisation the push they needed to invest in eye-catching new visuals.

Visual Identity

Workshop

To help capture the spirit of Liverpool Health Partners, and the people behind the brand, we began with a Visual Wall Workshop. These dynamic, fun environments help ideas to flow freely and for our designer to get a first impression of how the brand needs to be presented. During this process we share several different stimuli to help steer the conversation. Voting takes places to help capture the sentiment in the room. As this work was carried out during COVID-19, we ran the workshop virtually using Miro.

Research & development 

Based on the outcomes of the workshop, our designer then begins the R&D phase. This stage helps to further focus what was discussed during the workshop and where the brand could go next. Several options are presented with further discussion to help inform the logo design phase.

Sketches from the R&D phase by Luke McConkey.

Logo design & asset creation

The LHP logo is inspired by their strategic vision and is founded in their plans to improve population health and boost the economic productivity of the city region. Their collaborative approach is captured in the many different elements working together harmoniously. A bold and impactful blue was used to help reflect the newly defined brand personality.

User-friendly brand guidelines

One of the most crucial outcomes for the brand identity were understandable and practical brand guidelines that anyone in the organisation could use. It was vital they were understood by professionals and non-professionals alike. 

To achieve this, we created two different versions of the brand guidelines; one for beginners and another for professionals. By creating a one-page guide for people within LHP to use, the guidelines became more accessible and valuable.

Brand tone of voice

Workshop

To begin defining the new LHP brand voice, we ran a tone of voice workshop with their executive team. The workshop helped everyone to collaboratively decide what their values are and how they wanted to convey their personality. We took the team through a number of guided exercises to help them arrive at four personality traits. These traits played an intrinsic role informing the visual identity.

Guidelines

Previously, LHP were lacking tone of voice guidelines, giving their last brand an unfinished feel. By producing user-friendly guidelines, we were able to help LHP overcome some common problems their team were facing:

• A lack of clarity on what ‘sounds like LHP’
• What their key messages are 
• How to execute their brand voice
• Clear examples to follow

The tone of voice guidelines were combined with the visual guidelines to create a one-stop, practical document.

Handover Training

Previously, LHP were lacking tone of voice guidelines, giving their last brand an unfinished feel. By producing user-friendly guidelines, we were able to help LHP overcome some common problems their team were facing:

• A lack of clarity on what ‘sounds like LHP’
• What their key messages are 
• How to execute their brand voice
• Clear examples to follow

The tone of voice guidelines were combined with the visual guidelines to create a one-stop, practical document.

Content

Briefing

We met with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority team to understand the challenge and what the key messages around their Pathway to Net-Zero plans were. We worked alongside the team throughout to effectively tell the story of the pathway the organisation is going to take. The key takeaway from the briefing was that the information needed to be shared far and wide across the Liverpool City Region. To make this happen, the language used in the asset needed to be fully accessible, whilst still in the LCRCA brand voice.

Content Creation

Following on from the briefing, we then reviewed what had already been created by the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority team, which incorporated all of the information the audience needed to know. The Matchstick Creative team then looked at aspects such as tone and language choices; making sure everything was free of jargon. The exercise allowed us to ensure we were writing the document in the LCRCA brand voice; balancing important technical information alongside more narrative-driven content. This combination of storytelling methods gave the piece enough depth to allow it to be repurposed for multiple channels and purposes.

Design

Design Development

Our designer then developed the information in a visual manner, completely collaborating with the Liverpool City Region Combined Authority team every step of the way. Having LCRCA highly involved in this phase ensured any snags were ironed out early on and the assets were developed to a high standard. We enhanced the report with visual storytelling, creating a series of 3D infographic-style illustrations. Laying the document out in this way and creating a series of stunning images allowed us to breathe life and personality into the document, making it visually appealing and easy to digest.

Iteration and Refinement

We refined our initial ideas based on multiple stakeholders’ feedback, this had to be implemented whilst keeping the document’s integrity and purpose at the forefront. The result was a cohesive, informative piece that was engaging and didn’t overwhelm the target audience; no matter where and how they accessed it. The document was created in such a way that the team had the ability to break the information down further into stand alone social media posts, posters and simplified print outs.

Infographic-style illustrations brought the document to life