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CREATING A BRAND IN AN UNLOVED CATEGORY

Disciplines covered

Brand Partnership • Communications • Content • Design • Direct Marketing • Market Research • Marketing Strategy • Merchandising • Project Management • SEO • Sponsorship • Strategy • Video Production

Industry sector

Utilities

SSE is a rare type of business; a FTSE 100 company that for many years invested much less than its competitors in its brand, yet thrived.

Understandably, ‘marketing’ and ‘brand’ were terms treated with some suspicion. Pimento was hired to develop an evidence-based business case for investment in the brand that could be bought into at board level.

To get there, we did two things. Firstly, we undertook the largest piece of independent research ever carried out by SSE to unearth the latent brand potential. Secondly, we carried out an econometric study to understand the investment required to get awareness and consideration levels high enough to reverse their net decline. Our conclusion was stark. Brand creation was needed.

These were unprecedented conversations that drew a line in the sand of the company’s seventy year heritage.

Following a series of board meetings, the green light was given to a three-year investment in the brand and communications. We were now in a new era, SSE’s brand journey had begun, and Pimento are proud to have made a difference from a radical overhaul of its brand to the way it thinks about marketing.

sse.co.uk