Brand guidelines are the rules an organisation sets for how it presents itself to others.

So what?

Having consistent branding helps everyone to have the same experiences when interacting with the organisation. It doesn’t matter if you’re tackling marketing in-house or outsourcing to … well, people like us! – brand guidelines are the key to consistency and looking like you are worth engaging with.

Still… so what?

It’s odd to take a something which is innate or intuitively understood and set it out in the cold hard light of scrutiny. But you have a story… tell it right

So people will like us …right?

So people will understand you better and either engage with you or not. If you aren’t the right fit for them, they won’t be the right fit for you. So get it right.

Have a clear idea of who you are really and who your brand is aimed at.

We did 

Taking a much-loved theatre but an old brand and launching a new one requires careful steps. We delivered a new brand for Mayflower Theatre back in 2013, to fit the vision of the then-new CEO Michael Ockwell.

In 2020 with the pandemic at its full lockdown grip, we helped the same visionary CEO to take on a brand-new theatre, its building, and its legacy. We ran workshops with staff and managers to name, brand, and position the new project which was a community-focused, producing theatre.

But the thing about brands is that while a good one should be fundamental, its purposes and clothing needs to keep up with the times and its own development.

So early this year, we ran a brand development workshop with the SLT teams of both theatres, to look at how each brand had grown up or changed since it was born.

As a result, we were able to subtly adjust the brands and their positioning so that the individual theatres are both distinct from each other yet totally related. MAST once the little sister of the Grand Dame, Mayflower Theatre, had grown up with its own distinct personality and talents.

The newly refreshed and re-purposed guidelines are in good working order and both theatres are thriving.

March 2023

Mayflower Theatre & MAST Mayflower Studios

Brand, brand positing and brand guidelines