Item Alastair Clarkson, and HR professional began his journey into self-employment in 2022, and like many start-ups the funds to develop a professional brand, identity and online presence just wasn’t there. So, making do with a basic logo, a one-page website, Alastair embarked on a tonne of network to get the business off the ground. Fast forward a year and the business was screaming out for a professional brand to help with the establishment and growth. With money still start-up-tight, I created a brand-lite product to help Alastair realise his ambitions, which included the development of brand purpose, proposition and personality of the business with a full identity, simple website and guidelines that could be used to develop materials as required.description

Develop a future-proof brand identity positioning the business as an approachable, forward-thinking strategic partner focused on driving growth for prospective clients through the development of their people culture.

Working with Alastair we completed the brand questionnaire to provide insight and clarity to the scope of the offer, the brand proposition and vision, and identified target prospects to ensure we created a brand that would connect the two. I also researched how business owners within the target persona group viewed and understood the value of HR/people function.

Learnings:

·       Moving away from the consultant model to a business model would add weight to the start-up and enable the business to grow.

·       Clarity around the proposition was vital to get buy in.

·       To engage with the target persona the business had to have an established, confident feel.  

Shaping the brand purpose served as an uncluttered focused narrative, for all future communication, marketing, and collateral, leaning into language to signal growth was how this project started to take life.

The purpose articulated the simple benefit Sprout brings to its customers– growth through people:
Sprout. lives and breathes to help businesses grow through the cultivation of their people.

From there I worked to create an impactful, modern identity. Changing the business name from Alastair Clarkson Consulting to SPROUT instantly addressed the issue of perception and purpose inferring a link to growth, reinforced with the explanatory strapline ‘powering up your people to help your business grow up big and strong’, the addition of the domain ‘eatyoursprout.com’ enabled us to showcase Alastair’s personality adding a witty, human element to the new brand.

I then started on the visuals, developing a marque, logotype and colour palette that reflected confidence, modernity and growth with a website that reinforced the brand identity.  Completing the project Alastair was supplied with a set of brand guidelines to use as he developed the brand and reassurance that I was on hand to help if needed for the first month of hand over.

Completing the purpose, proposition and personality part of the project, I moved onto the identity.  

Changing the business name from Alastair Clarkson Consulting to SPROUT instantly created an identity centred around growth, supported by the strapline ‘powering up your people to help your business grow up big and strong’, a humorous, human element was introduced via the domain ‘eatyoursprout.com’.

Susi held my hand through the full branding process and helped me to understand the importance behind every little detail. The result is that I show up in my brand and it clearly shows what I do. Helping people emotionally react to my brand was not something I'd ever considered but Susi showed me the importance and the response I'm getting now is the results I was looking for.

Alastair Clarkson Founder