The Art of Branding –
why benefits shouldn’t miss out
Branding is essential for every company to set itself apart from the competition and define its mission for both customers and employees. We are used to thinking about brands as the choice of breakfast cereals, gaming consoles or cars to drive. Often we forget that the same approach should apply to employee benefits.
So whether the communication is a letter about pensions, or a table talker announcing a benefit selection window, the consistency of the brand remains the same. Creating a brand you can trust, means you build employee engagement and see a return on your investment.
A simple logo alone doesn’t make for a strong brand identity. Let’s examine a couple of very important, but often overlooked, elements more closely:
Name
The right name is timeless, easy to remember, its sound has rhythm and it stands for something. A well-chosen name is an essential brand asset – it captures the imagination and connects you with the employees you want to reach.
A few common naming myths:
- “Naming a brand is easy, like naming a baby.”
- “I will know it when I hear it.”
- “There is no perfect name.”
A great name option can come from a metaphor, it could be an acronym, or an entirely fabricated or a shortened version of a term you want associated with your brand (think how International Business Machines became IBM, Intelligent Chip Company became Intel, etc.) Be brave and encourage your communications consultants to think outside the conventional box when coming up with name proposals!
Colour
If you want your benefit comms to stand out amongst the daily noise, it’s crucial to create a separate brand identity from the external company brand. An effective way to do it is through the use of colour.
Think of the unmistakeable colour of a Tiffany box. By choosing a single unique colour and using it consistently over the years, you can build a powerful visual presence in a clutter-filled world. At Christmas, every brand and store uses green and red to celebrate the holiday, yet Tiffany & Co. sticks to blue and becomes even more noticeable under the tree as a result.
More top design tips for branding your benefits
- Avoid giving your employees mixed messages with too many and conflicting design elements.
- Limit the amount of colours in the palette and try not to change colours across different touch points.
- Be original! You won’t stand out if you’ve copied something that already exists.
- Keep consistency between online and offline. Send the same visual message at every touch point.
Why does it matter?
Consider what a strong benefits brand could achieve for your company as a whole. Many candidates and new joiners are exposed to other benefit brands in their previous employment. This presents a challenge to build a brand that will stand out without knowing exactly what you are competing against. To do this, your brand should fit your company uniquely, featuring your strengths and capitalising on your target audience.
Great branding makes your benefit package more desirable. It increases the perceived value of your benefit offer to your employees. It forms a stronger bond with its audience and creates employee advocates, which are the most valuable marketing tools you have at your disposal.
So, is your benefit branding doing what it needs to do?
Think simple and make sure you ask the right questions when you are looking for help with your brand. Whatever your needs, the Thomsons Communications Team are up to the job!
Introducing our newest innovation –
Comms On Demand
Neuroscience (and our common sense) tells us that we’re all forgetful. That’s because the brain needs lots of energy to function so it can cut corners on some things. That’s good right?
Well yes and no. It does mean that if our clients only communicate to employees once a year about their benefits, chances are when an employee gets another job offer or chats to friends and family about their place of work, they won’t remember the value benefits offer to them.
Our clients invest a lot in benefits and they are missing a trick if those pounds and pence don’t translate into positive sentiment, a great business reputation and more engaged employees. Our research tells us that companies that say they have an engaged workforce are 25% more likely to communicate at least every 2 months about their benefits.
Makes sense… but what’s the solution, Comms Team?
We’re so glad you asked!
We know HR teams are busy. Often they want to communicate more but it’s difficult to find the time and resource to do it.
That’s where Comms On Demand comes in.
It’s a password protected, self-service portal offering:
• Themed, editable off-the-shelf content to help clients communicate with employees throughout the year.
• Guidance and thought leadership materials designed to help them push the benefit communications agenda in their organisation and be inspired by our best practice approach and advice.
So it takes the heavy lifting off their shoulders?
Exactly. HR teams usually have access to company communication options like social media platforms, intranet and e-newsletters. But… an HR team might struggle to get the headspace to come up with ideas and content to use them properly.
Once a client has paid for access to Comms On Demand they can browse the library of content and plan what to use when. It covers a wide range of topics, for example wellbeing articles and content about specific benefits like discounts and cycle to work, and there’s no limit to how much downloading they can do. Once they have the content they can edit and adapt it to suit their tone of voice and where they want to use it.
Why not take a tour of the site and explore what it has to offer.
How do I find out more?
There’s some background information on Confluence here or just drop us a line and we can take you through a demo and answer any questions you may have. Don’t be a stranger 
Consulting Collaboration –
latest news from the Pension team
Our annual pension provider report has evolved over time, from being a reference piece for our clients to a more widely read report which gets published across the pensions industry. The report differs to many others out there – in the sense that it’s very much our review of a select group of pension providers, viewed through the lens of Darwin.
Furthermore, our report is not merely a collection of statistics and scores, but an expression of our opinions about which providers are excelling and which have work to do. It’s therefore important that the report reflects the character of the Thomsons Consulting team and our desire to do things differently and to ultimately do things better than the competition.
This year, the input from our Comms team has helped to raise the bar another couple of notches, by applying a creative layout and enhanced functionality to a written style which is designed to be thought provoking and readable.
The ability to work more closely together, by being on the same floor, has undoubtedly been a significant factor in generating a better end product. That, for us, is a big tick in the box for the Skygarden!
The three E’s of Company Culture
Did you know the average person will spend a third of their life at work? For many this is over 90,000 hours over a lifetime, so it’s important that the place in which we spend a significant portion of our time allows us to thrive in the other areas of our life. At Thomsons we are encouraged to ‘Be Brilliant Together’ and have a wide range of initiatives that encourage our Pink People to flourish. Here we look at some of our best practices:
1 – Environment
Our Pink culture is infectious and anyone that works here will tell you that pink does not just run through our veins, but through our décor too. But it’s not just the pink furniture that makes our offices a nice place to be. Break out areas, comfortable meeting rooms, hotspot desks and ‘quiet zone’ booths are just a few physical elements that our teams can utilise to make sure they are as comfortable as possible during the workday.
2 – Engagement
Here at Thomsons one of the most important and valuable culture strategies we have in place is ‘Everybody Thrives’. The group consists of different chapters including Mental Health, LGBTQ+, Parents and Carers, Accessibility, Citizenship and Gender. Working as ambassadors for change, the group helps to create an environment where you can come to work as your true self. Tackling sensitive topics with bravery and receiving support from others means that monthly events are successful and greatly appreciated. ‘Everybody Thrives’ encourages everyone to take part in their campaigns and having the support and participation from the senior leadership team, means that keys messages really do resonate with the wider audience.
3 – Encouragement
This is a key element of success within thriving teams. An encouraging culture means we can help colleagues develop personally and professionally. Encouragement comes from small initiatives such as free fruit each day to promote a healthy diet, through to weekly huddles and quarterly team times, which can be used as an opportunity to celebrate collaborations and good individual work.
Culture is a hot topic when it comes to employee wellbeing. With the likes of Google leading the way in wellbeing, flexible working and culture best practice, it’s no surprise that more organisations are looking at the way they approach employee benefits and culture as part of the bigger picture. Helping organisations promote their culture is an area that particularly excites the Comms team. Whether a client needs advice on communicating environmental changes or boosting engagement via a new internal initiative, there’s always something we can do.
Watch this space
We love collaboration, and here at the Sky Garden we have opened up many new projects. Keep your eyes peeled for a new cultural proposition making its way to you soon!
Nun’s the word
When we think of pop art, our minds instantly go to Warhol’s Coke bottles or Lichtenstein’s larger than life comic book pages. These pieces speak about the joys and pitfalls of consumerism in a print making process that made the work as mass produced and repeatable as their subject matter.
Meanwhile in Los Angeles, Warhol’s techniques were being used with an entirely different context by Teacher/Artist/Nun, Sister Mary Corita, also known as Corita Kent.
While Kent’s work uses the same screen printing techniques and lurid colours that have become the signature of the pop art movement, her work’s purpose was always activism.
Whether that was highlighting political issues of the time, like her 1967 screen print “Stop the bombing” in which she protects the use of Nuclear Weaponry, or raising money as part of her work as a Nun at the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary.
The Comms design team went to see the “Power up.” exhibit at the House of Illustration in Kings Cross last month. The exhibit was one of only two times this powerhouse designer’s work has been shown in the UK and we were not disappointed with our trip!
Travelling through the gallery space, we found ourselves overwhelmed by bold distorted letterforms paired with hand written quotes and bible passages supporting the immediate visual impact of the pieces. “Enriched bread” used the visual iconography of wonder bread and a quote from Gandhi; “there are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of bread.” This was contrasted by an interview Kent carried out with a woman who couldn’t afford to feed her kids. Combining Gandhi’s famous words with those of someone ignored by society makes a profound message about the poverty line in America.
One of the literal take aways of the exhibit was a list of 10 rules for working devised during Kent’s time as a teacher. She appeared to be strict but fair. It was important for her to have this prolific attitude as the only time she was able to make own work was the 2-week gap between terms. You wouldn’t know it looking at the vibrant halls of the House of Illustration, every inch of available wall space covered with visually varied work.
We’ll leave you with a quote from the Nun herself about appreciating design wherever you can find it:
“You hate to judge people, but you think that the people who are so nervous about signs, and wish they would remove the billboards so that we could see the lovely trees and hills behind, might not enjoy the trees and hills nearly as much as the people who can delight in both.”
The Buzz Banter
The summer months are getting closer and the excitement for long lazy days in the sun can be felt all around the Sky Garden. Though we haven’t quite had the heatwave we so thoroughly enjoyed last year, there is one thing that hasn’t changed year on year – the summer wedding chatter.
Our Comms weekly catch-ups now inevitably feature updates from team members about the hen or stag do they’ve been on last weekend, the nightmare bridesmaids someone is having to deal with or the perfect dress worn by the bride at the 5th wedding attended this year so far.
We even have wedding bells ringing in the Comms team. Our very own Ben Harrison is tying the knot at the end of the year and we’d like to invite you in congratulating him on the fantastic news.
We’ve also been thinking a lot about gamification and how we can challenge our creativity every day. The design team have been enjoying thinking outside the box with a fortnightly game intended to flex our art muscles. Some of the highlights involve a task to design a new alphabet and the still to be drawn Exquisite Corpse challenge.
In the spirit of summer fun and because we’re feeling the love, we’ve decided to run a Buzz Banter summer competition!
The prize
A portrait of yourself illustrated by one of our fabulous designers each in their unique style.
We have four designers and Thomsons colleagues in four countries, which makes a perfect match in our eyes. This means there are FOUR portraits up for grabs.
A winner from each location (UK, Cluj, Singapore and US) will be chosen at random and announced soon after the close date.
The rules
Simply figure out the riddle below and email your answer to commsteam@thomsons.com by the end of Monday 24th June.
The riddle
You will see two of me
When you attend a wedding
I am not a bride or groom
What am I?
That’s it from us until next time! We hope you have a lovely summer, whatever you do.
Thanks for reading!
Remember, if you have any thoughts…
Love, The Comms Team 😉