brand-e

By Hugh Jordan. Redefining brands. If you want an honest opinion on the difference between big name and independent agencies, you could do worse than ask Neil Henderson. The managing partner at St Luke’s has experienced both sides of the agency model and is in no doubts as to which he prefers.
“There’s more freedom at an independent,” says Henderson. “You’re there by choice and so is the client. At an über-organisation, often the relationship has been foisted on everyone in the room. That never makes for good work.”
Add in the fact that St Luke’s is owned by everyone who works there, is bang up on the green agenda and has ‘social shares’ for its staff entitling them to 50 hours, fully paid, volunteering with an organisation of their choice, and it’s easy to see why independence appeals.
London’s longest running independent, St Luke’s has devised campaigns for a wide range of clients: everyone from Ikea to the Royal National Institute for the Blind. Perhaps its most recognisable recent work, however, has been for Strongbow.
“Our speciality is taking brands that have lost their way a bit and getting them back on track,” Henderson explains. “Strongbow had been a leader in its field for years but then all of a sudden the cider market came alive and Strongbow found itself needing to redefine its brand”.
St Luke’s developed the concept of Bow Time, a slogan now lodged in the nation’s consciousness like one of Strongbow’s iconic arrows. Targeting roofers, grafters and tradesmen, Bow Time is the hour after work where men get their hard-earned reward. St Luke’s latest TV ad for the brand features ‘Marcus the Grafter’ rallying his band of tradesmen to take their Bow Time in true Braveheart fashion.
Over the past 13 years, the bulk of St Luke’s work has been for TV but that, Henderson says, is changing.
“Brands are definitely keener to get online, to use social media,” he says. “They can see their customers are engaged on Facebook and Twitter and they want to get involved.”
For Strongbow, it has happened organically. As well as the official Bow Time Facebook group set up by St Luke’s, several unofficial ones sprung up too. If, indeed, imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, the agency must be blushing.
And Marcus the Grafter has proved to be the perfect Twitterer. Whenever anyone is having a tough time of it, he sends out a tweet telling them to ‘keep grafting’ – even Barack Obama received one thanks to the problems he was having pushing through healthcare reforms in the US.
It is this type of quick thinking that sets St Luke’s apart from competitors, and Henderson recalls a campaign the agency did for Mills and Boon, a small publisher with a limited budget.
“Virgin Trains announced it was banning kissing at its Warrington station and within half an hour we had people there with placards, a Facebook group set up, and were organising a protest. The campaign was picked up by quite a few media outlets and generated a lot of publicity for Mills and Boon”.
Clever stuff, but according to Henderson it all stems from understanding the central premise of the brand – in the case of Mills and Boon, romance.
“You have to be really close to and understand what the brand stands for, then be able to describe how it adds value to people’s lives,” he explains. “When your thinking becomes too focused on a particular campaign, rather than the brand’s identity, that’s when you risk losing the client. A campaign only lasts a year or two but ideally you want your relationship with the client to go on beyond that”.
And what does the future hold for St Luke’s?
“At the moment we do TV, digital and content, but we intend to add more delivery channels over time – PR and programming, for example,” says Henderson. “Once you have a central approach that works, you can grow that out. That’s what we intend to do”.