Telling the stories that need to be heard: reinvigorating the brand, visual identity & website for a purposeful PR agency

Our initial work began with a workshop to distil the culture of the organisation, and begin to clearly state the value that Hot Tin Roof creates for its customers. Some internal work had already been undertaken following a company-wide meeting, so we had some raw material to work with.

Having extracted a wealth of information from the team ranging from personal statements of purpose, to customer journeys and talent development, we brought the brand together highlighting a number of critical factors. Most importantly, was the team's ability to help their customers navigate their sector through their own stories: to communicate with clarity, tell the right story at the right time and achieve meaningful, tangible impact.

The PR world is not short of purposeful agencies, so we focussed on developing a more compelling brand personality, a more focussed space in which to operate and shared purpose with customers to create a distinct and memorable brand story.

We settled on an simple elevator pitch for the brand:

Much like the wider brand, Hot Tin Roof's identity had seen little love over the last decade. Although it felt a little dated, there was equity in the logotype and some of the assets that had been used across the website and other marcomms. Our brief was to modernise the identity system and introduce more personality and flexibility.

We spent some time investigating how the identity had been used throughout its history. And we spent some time looking at the competitive set, so we could ensure some distinctiveness. Trawling through the years, we found a set of illustrative assets which, arguably, provides as much equity and value as the logo itself.

The solution was a small evolution of the logotype, mainly creating space through the word mark, as well as updates the brands colour palette, not moving away from the widely known orange, but extending the palette of usable colours and bringing some tonal consistency. We updated the brand's typography to include a more descriptive, newspaper inspired typeface, paired with something simple to carry the weight of body copy.

We developed a simple duotone treatment for imagery so it would feel more own-able, and we brought it all together into a system that enables consistency across all the brand's touch points, from search and social media to documentation and presentations.

We adopted a similar, evolutionary approach to website development. Keeping it simple was key to the brief. Having documented a comprehensive overview of services, a detailed approach, and reframed some of the brand's values during the strategy stage, we were able to define the website's structure and architecture.

We built the website using Elementor, for ease of maintenance moving forward, and to give the team full control over all their content. There was plenty of content for us to export years of news articles and blog posts mainly, and working together with the team we found a better way to present campaigns, including coverage and statistics which help to back up the impact that Hot Tin Roof helps to create.

As the team at Hot Tin Roof produce much of their marketing material in house, we opted for a more up-to-date delivery of their brand, through Canva. We set up their brand hub, created templates for social media, presentations and credentials, so that they can apply the visual identity coherently and consistently.

As the team were using Canva before we started working with them, the interface is familiar, and now that there are guidelines and templates available, anyone on the team can quickly create assets which are on-brand. And, whenever the team needs a helping hand or a review of their output, everything is stored in a single place for ease of use and quick reference.