© Strength+Honour 2019

Bringing the CAE brand to life

“In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is.”

CAE, the IT infrastructure solutions provider, wanted to stand out from a grey and dull industry and showcase a more personal approach to technology. As part of this process S+H delivered a full rebrand –  brand strategy, proposition, creative development, messaging and delivering full brand guidelines.

S+H then delivered a series of brand implementation projects using the newly created CAE brand.

Creative delivery is a journey in its own right.  The rollout of a brand is important. It’s where we accelerate carefully crafted strategy and creative concepts into beautifully effective communication tools. It’s when we see our work in action, applying a brand in a creative, sensitive and considered way. Working in practice, instead of theory (however well developed!) allows us to evolve the brand even further. Guidelines can’t always anticipate new challenges – so through the creation of each marketing or brand touchpoint, we develop the brand further, ensuring it remains authentic and relevant.

There were a number of rollout assets and events that contributed to the launch and continued development of the CAE brand – a single page leave behind which highlighted the key features and benefits of working with CAE to customers; a number of relevant case studies; marketing collateral and templates (brochures, leaflets, merchandise; interiors and a launch video. Each of these brought a different dimension to the brand (harnessed within a consistent framework) and contributed to how customers engaged with the brand.

A key milestone that really brought the new CAE brand to life was a GDPR event, held in Manchester and targeted at key businesses and individuals. The event was held a few months before the changes to the GDPR law were initially implemented, and GDPR was (and still is) an important subject to discuss.

Strength+Honour ensured that CAE talked about GDPR in ‘their’ way –  rather than in the grey, boring language typical of IT information seminars.

As part of the brand development, we had assigned creative brand assets to visually communicate the core CAE solutions, or key campaigns.  For example, we highlight Digital Workspace with an image of ants, which signifies the community working together.

For the important topic of GDPR, we chose to use an image of a bee. The image brought to life the three areas of GDPR that CAE intended to help their customers prepare for:

  • How you legally get data (COLLECT) – signified by how the bee sources pollen
  • How you legally store data (STORE) – represented by storage within the hive
  • How you use and dispose of it (ERASE) – denoted in the way pollen is used to make honey

Strength+Honour created and curated a full brand experience across the event (invitations, event staging and branding, banners and signage, competitions, GDPR-focused marketing collateral, goody bags, full event management, and event capture video).

To add an element of memorable drama, we developed a “beehive” storage unit to bring the three key areas of learning to life.  Attendees wrote their data onto a legally compliant branded card (demonstrating exemplary data collection). The cards were then inserted into a locked storage box (visually representing secure data storage).  One participant was drawn as the winner, and their card

was retrieved from the locked box.  Finally, the remaining cards were shredded live in front of the audience (denoting compliant data disposal).

This was a highly effective and interactive visual representation of how to deal with data correctly, highlighting the three key learning points of Collect, Store, Erase.

At S+H we believe that every interaction someone has with your brand is a chance to connect, and we’re passionate about building clear communication strategies and delivering exceptional output for your brand.

Following the event CAE received a large number of positive comments including that they had “been able to shed light on a complicated and confusing area in a way that no one had yet been able to do”. The event was rolled out in other areas of the country across the next two months, and created high levels of engagement with core customers and prospects.