Unlocking a brand’s fresh intent.

At the end of 2024, Elsoms, the UK’s leading independent seed specialists, asked us to undertake a full review of their brand. This was primarily driven by increasingly successful expansion into world markets, a move which was changing their business across the group.

Elsoms acknowledged factors around their brand that were not aligned to the pace of change in the business: their identity no longer reflected their fresh ambition; the brand was not always visible enough, and had little awareness outside of the UK.

Our process kicked off with a brand workshop with the leadership team to get consensus on strategy for the brand, underpinned by customer and staff surveys to gather perceptions on areas such as image, reputation, quality and service delivery. This unpacked clarity around appetite and degree of change – namely, retain the spirit of Elsoms’ heritage and expertise in balance with flexible modernity to elevate brand awareness and signal change to all markets.

Creatively this could not be soft tweaks around the edges. Simply evolving the existing identity was not the long-term solution and we challenged them to move to a braver transformational approach.

A parallel key development was to create clarity of purpose for the brand. To do this we brought their long-term vision – ‘grow more from less’ – to life. A new positioning resulted; ‘Unlocking the power of plants’. This alone was a big leap in ambition and underpinned the company’s focus on expanding its pedigree for innovation and market share outside the UK.