Unlock the profit
in your IP
Branding and innovation consultancy for material companies that want to maximise value.
Are you under utilising your trademark portfolio?
Is your branding outdated or ineffective?
We help materials companies extract more value from their IP by helping you join the dots between your innovation and real human needs.
The set of challenges your company faces will be unique, but here are some of the common problems we can help you solve:
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You lack a clear brand identity and struggle to articulate your value proposition.
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You have not yet found the right audience or market for your products.
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Your branding does not resonate with your ideal customer and/or fails to build trust or attract attention.
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You are struggling to go beyond the data sheet and communicate your product's benefits clearly and compellingly.
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You do not have a differentiated brand that sets you apart from your competitors.
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You have an extensive trademark portfolio but are not adequately building brand equity or protecting your IP.
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You need clarity following a merger which has left you with a confusing array of brands, internal conflicts and silos, cannibalisation of sales, or integration or efficiency issues.
We’re Richard and Ruth Palmer, and we built our own ingredient brand, D3O, from the ground up. We used the power of brand to transform this smart material, first discovered in a university lab, into a market leader in the impact protection space.
We share this winning formula with our clients, guiding you through the very specific requirements needed to create and build an ingredient brand in the sports and outdoor industry. We’ll help you to maximise the value of your innovation and avoid the pitfalls we encountered during our own journey.
After you complete Sprint, our goal is that you’ll want to continue to work with us to grow your brand. As entrepreneurs, we understand the immense pressures you face and can support you through the challenges of securing funding, growing revenue, increasing profitability, building a fanbase and partnering with manufacturers.
Read more about our story here.
Why choose us?
How we can help you?
We will provide you with a bespoke proposal designed to meet your unique challenges, but a typical project will include the following stages:
We conduct stakeholder interviews and review existing research to understand your company's perceptions, culture, and knowledge. We’ll also review all your current trademarks, IP, branding, and communications.
Immersion
Research
We’ll design a research programme that fits your budget and situation. We take an anthropological approach, seeking to understand your customers' lives. That means we typically lead with qualitative research, sometimes supplemented by quantitative research.
Examples of research we might do:
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Interviews with your customers, end users, retailer and/or sales teams.
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Mystery shopper research or ‘shop alongs’, where we observe shoppers in store.
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Co-creation workshops, where we bring together different stakeholders—such as partners, customers, or employees—to generate new ideas and solutions.
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Competitor desk research
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Using an integrated approach that combines business, brand, and innovation strategy, we use the insights from the research stage to map out your business's opportunity areas.
We will discuss these findings and chart a path forward during a half-day strategy workshop with your senior leadership team.
Examples of the questions we can help you answer include:
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Who are our customers, and what problems are they grappling with?
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What’s happening now and in the future in our category and beyond?
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How can we be perceived differently by our ideal customers?
Sensmaking & opportunity mapping
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Depending on your needs, we may design a brand architecture which outlines how your brands and sub-brands relate to each other within your brand portfolio.
Drawing on our research insights, we’ll create a unique and authentic personality for your brand(s) to help you attract your ideal customers and build an emotional connection with them. This will include:
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Brand values and behaviours, with examples so everyone in the company understands what they are and how to embody them in their communications and day-to-day work.
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Kindred brands that you can learn from and perhaps partner with in the future through collaborations, events, marketing campaigns, etc.
We’ll create a bold and distinctive brand identity for your brand(s), starting with a mood board and developed into:
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Logo design (or redesign)
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Brand icons and devices you can use on your website, packaging, social media, etc.
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A colour palette and typefaces (digital and print) that reflect your brand
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Tone of voice guidelines and messaging examples for different audiences (e.g. internal/external or B2B/B2C)
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Brand boilerplate copy (for press releases, events etc)
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A brand manifesto. This is a declaration of your core values, beliefs and purpose that guides your future actions and decisions. You can share this with your internal team to inspire action and with your audience to create connection.
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A set of brand guidelines so you can ensure your brand identity is implemented consistently across your marketing assets:
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Guidelines for using your logo correctly
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Typography guidelines for print and digital
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Messaging guidelines for different audiences
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Photography and illustration guidelines
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Sonic signature (if required)
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Example layouts
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Brand strategy & identity
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We launch your brand(s) and educate your team about the brand(s) within your portfolio.
We will teach your team how to work with the new brand(s) and consistently bring them to life.
Depending on your needs and budget, we could host internal launch events (virtually or in-person) or produce videos or communications packs.
We can also host workshops to train staff in specific areas such as tone of voice, storytelling or brand usage (getting your partners to abide by your new brand guidelines).
Onboarding
We work with you to create an activation plan to bring the brand to life. The plan will outline how to create opportunities for your customers to interact with the brand.
We’ll align the plan with your specific business goals, whether that’s building a tribe of followers for your brand, raising awareness within your target groups or building partnerships that will help you grow.
There’s a vast array of tactics to choose from when activating your brand: trade shows, social media campaigns, on-product branding, and in-store displays, to name just a few. We’ll help you decide where to focus your resources for maximum impact.
Activation planning
Once we’ve defined your direction, we can continue to work with you as a fractional brand director to ensure your brand-building stays on track.
Brands aren't built during the process of a strategy project, they’re built in the real world through the actions of your staff and customers. We can work with you to continue driving the brand forward, ensuring you get maximum value from our work together.
You can also purchase a graphic design subscription to maintain uninterrupted access to our creative team.
We can offer monthly or weekly consultation calls with your team to guide your brand-building activities.
Activation management & brand growth
Contact us about your project, we'd love to chat.
hello@palmerand.co
Lead with impact
Manufacturing companies make the ingredients for everything that exists on the planet. We believe that helping those that are driven to have a positive impact will accelerate their chances of achieving their goals.
Our team combines scientists, business strategists, engineers, anthropologists, storytellers and designers to help us understand, codify and communicate your business and your IP to connect to the audiences that will help you grow.
