The RM Education story

The Story

Work had already been conducted on their core values, propositions and a logo before Accrue was asked to bring everything together. What was needed was a common look and feel, a narrative and materials that would bring their story to life. A story had to be created that not only explained what they did and why, but also who they were - bringing to life their personality with a unique tone of voice.

There is a fine balance between showing how an organisation is unique and creating a simple 'I get it' moment. The line 'collaboration and innovation' created that balance. It enabled the organisation to tell a consistent story across all of its different businesses. Their story was about not just making things to sell,  but listening and working with people on the ground to collectively solve real and challenging problems that made a real difference to governments, authorities, teachers and most importantly, pupils.

 

Brand guidelines

We started to tell their story by pulling together all the real stories from across the organisation, interweaving them with a narrative (a series of simple statements that explained why they did things their way), into a set of visual guidelines. These guidelines, which included how to deal with all their sub-brands, were then developed into different forms of internal and external communication - posters, leaflets and exhibitions.

• We ran creative workshops with their marketing teams on tone of voice.
• Developed a range of internal communications pieces to bring their story alive to their people.
• Set out a range of guidelines that looked at sub-branding, imagery and use of the logo.
• Produced several key pieces of sales communication.
• Provided ongoing consultancy support to help align and develop their story.

Tone of voice workshop

It's hard for any organisation to find their own voice internally. They are often restrained by their internal language, acronyms and layers of complexity. Accrue helped RM define their tone of voice through a series of workshops.

Using a range of techniques, Accrue helped visualise different personalities and explore how each would communicate the same message. This gave the comparison that the teams needed to break through and understand how to do things differently.