Corporate branding: Skills for Business

Inspiring employers to skill their workforces to make the UK more competitive

The brief

The UK is facing an unprecedented challenge to compete in a global economy on the basis of the skills and productivity of its workforce. The government established the Sector Skills Development Agency in 2002 to regulate and support a network of over 20 sector skills councils that replace 90 national training organisations. These UK-wide councils are charged with leading the skills and productivity drive in industry and business sectors.

Our brief was to create a brand strategy and visual identity for the SSDA, the new agency empowered to regulate the policy.

The solution

We believed that what employers wanted was a business-led campaign brand, not an organisational logo. We needed to brand the policy, not the place, and describe what sector skills councils are designed to achieve - create skills for business.

We developed a brand language and worked with the SSDA to launch its first Skills Convention and have gone on to produce a brand service for Sector Skills Councils.

"Your efforts to produce our new guide have been heroic."
Rt. Hon John Healey MP, Minister for Skills

"The Team is simply exemplary when it comes to understanding the requirements of central government. Their professionalism and unique ability to link ministers' policy objectives to a consumer-orientated approach to communications and brand management is unrivalled anywhere."
Tom Bewick, Former DfES Senior Ministerial Adviser