Creating a brand to promote wonderful days out with this water utility provider

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Severn Trent is responsible for lakes and reservoirs across the Midlands and Wales from the Upper Derwent Valley reservoir, home to the Dambusters, to the incredibly beautiful Lake Vyrnwy

These sites are the only customer-facing shop window for this FTSE 100 company, yet they remained massively under-used in terms of a brand experience. As part of our ongoing relationship with Severn Trent supporting them on major campaigns and communications, we were briefed to create a visitor centre brand capable of driving engagement with the centres and creating positive perceptions of Severn Trent.

Insight

Visitor attraction sites are an increasingly competitive market and Severn Trent was setting itself against the most competitive players in their market; National Trust, English Heritage, and Forestry England. Unsurprisingly, awareness of Severn Trent’s offer was much lower than these market leaders.

However, with over 4 million visitors a year, the sites are obviously loved by those in the know. Our research revealed the reasons for that love were hyper-local and site specific. Developing a brand with the flexibility to demonstrate the unique USP of each site while tying it into the Severn Trent master brand would be key to standing up to the competition.

Ideas

Time around water is amazing – whether we’re fishing in it, sailing on it or playing by it. It is this relationship to water that makes Severn Trent’s visitor sites so desirable. Severn Trent take the responsibility of protecting these amazing spaces and the water they contain
very seriously.

We translated this responsibility into a common purpose – sharing a love for water, creating time to cherish and to nurture unique places through wonderful days out – that could bind the sites together and root each site’s identity in the very aspect its users hold dear.

Impact

By providing each location with its own site specific signature – a unique illustration that represents a feature or activity of special significance to that lake or reservoir – we’ve been able to build brand awareness on behalf of Severn Trent and help more people than ever discover wonderful days out and create wonderful water-filled memories.

Testimonial

The team at rbl were able to understand our complex objectives, get underneath the skin of our target audience and deliver a brilliant creative solution that will drive engagement and positive
brand perceptions.

~Liz Wood, Senior Marketing Manager, Severn Trent