Establishing an undisputed industry leader and consumer champion
Despite leading the UK market, the British Ceramic Tile (BCT) brand was mostly unknown to consumers. In an industry where few brands stand out, people tended to be reliant on tilers and retailers to choose from what many considered a bewildering array of products.
On the one hand, BCT wanted to start selling directly to the public and understood that giving consumers the confidence to do so would require an engaging consumer brand that offered inspiration and unrivalled expertise.
On the other, their innovative approach to tile design had not gone unnoticed by manufacturers abroad, who were now copying BCT’s patterns wholesale and selling their ranges at a discount.
“What was galling was the speed at which they’d work. We’d spend months developing a new range, only to see an exact copy of both the tile and our market messaging spring up on a competitor’s website,” said Jayne Adamson, Head of Marketing, British Ceramic Tile.
“Rebranding would help us overcome both of our issues. We needed an identity that would attract consumers and create clear differentiation from our competitors. Our competition could copy most things but one thing they couldn’t copy was our brand.”
To ensure the project delivered the desired results, the team undertook a brand awareness survey and consumer validation programme. The data would help set a benchmark that could be used to drive the direction of the project and critically measure the return on investment.
“We learnt some important lessons early on. We realised that choosing tiling is a difficult purchase, even for those people who were expert at it. If we were going to connect with consumers, we needed to ensure we communicated in a language they would understand and that we built trust by helping them to make the right choices,” said Jayne.
Using the insights from the research as a starting point, the team refined the existing logo and developed a compelling tone of voice to promote and strengthen the personality of the brand. They developed our first consumer campaign advertising campaign as well as developing the brand identity across all touch points in the business.
This was encapsulated in a comprehensive brand bible that included guidelines on design layout, colour, typography, language, media templates and sub-branding.
“Their collaborative approach is like having an extended team. Laura built a solid understanding of our business objectives and offered strategically sound solutions that challenged conventional thinking and enabled us to build an approachable, premium consumer brand. They are flexible, 100% reliable and a pleasure to work with,” said Jayne.
“Internally the new brand was a hit. It was adopted wholesale across the business. Perhaps most gratifying was when we heard from the sales team that customers were commenting that our brand was head and shoulders above our competitors. Considering the rocky relationship that can sometimes exist between marketing and sales, it was a particularly proud moment,” said Jayne.
