What does success look like?

Part of our vision at Naked Marketing is to generate positive impact for our clients and help their organisation achieve success through our ideas, design and approach. This desire for positive impact is built on our belief that design should be an investment, not a cost. When design can deliver tangible, or even less-tangible, results against set objectives, it becomes effective – and through that we maximise value to the client

The effectiveness of design in business is a well-explored narrative. The Design Council established in 2007 that for every £1 invested in design, businesses can expect over £20 in increased revenues. Since 1997, shares in design-led business outperformed the FTSE 100 by more than 200%. But the positive impact of design goes far beyond the bottom line and it can mean different things to different businesses or communities – it can improve customer experience, raise levels of engagement, generate new revenue streams, improve sustainability, raise morale, create new jobs and much more.

This is why, when first discussing a new project, we ask the question: “What does success look like to you?”

Perhaps you aim to increase footfall at your next event (tangible), or it could be that you wish to increase the perceived value of your brand in your customers minds (emotional). One may be easier to measure than the other, but in the course of time the outcome for both objectives can be tracked and analysed.

This mindset isn’t something that you can switch on overnight, it’s a culture that has been embedded in Naked from Day One. Our philosophy of always delivering more value than we charge is built on the idea of having a positive impact on the goals of an organisation. It’s all very well developing good design in response to a business challenge, but, without objectives for success in place and measuring against those, how can you track if your budget was wisely spent with your marketing and design agency? As an example of this, we’ve seen recent success with a relatively new client of ours, Abacus Hotels, who were part of the Best Western group. Naked were asked to help build the brand equity as a standalone group of hotels. The project, of rebranding each hotel and redesigning individual websites, alongside marketing activity, was set against clear objectives for success. After six months, the brand identities have been rolled out across the hotel group, and the website results are now offering tangible rewards. In this period the group has seen an increase in web bookings of 370%, and revenue from these bookings has climbed by 415%. We are confident enough to say that Abacus Hotels have seen a return on their investment within a month. Now our ongoing focus for Abacus is very much on retention of new customers, whilst continuing to build on the growing brand reputation we have helped to create. You can find more on that project here » So before your next project, why not first ask yourself ‘What does success look like?’ …you know we will!