Fine Jeweller: A fast-growing global brand needs one story, one voice

When you’re the world’s fastest growing fine jeweller, your brand is the most valuable asset you own.

The Founder of this company was leading a very aggressive expansion plan. He wanted to open a new boutique every couple of months for the next 7 years – the plan was to have over 100 boutiques by 2025. The VP of Marketing knew that she needed to act fast to make sure that each new boutique they opened would help to build a strong, consistent brand, rather than diluting the brand through inconsistency. She knew the quickest, most effective way to align everyone in the company was to give them one consistent brand voice.

But first, the brand story needed to be clarified.

Language is the easiest marketing tool to use

When we interviewed key stakeholders, it soon became clear that there were so many good stories about the brand and its Founder, that they were fighting each other for the customer’s attention.

We worked to identify the higher purpose, or brand philosophy, that all these individual stories supported. This became the overall guiding thought for the brand. In most cases, this would have been the end of our work.

But, during the interviews, we had also learned that clients often asked about other specific elements of the brand, such as the provenance of the brand and the Founder’s role, and that different people within the company were addressing these stories in different ways.

As a result, these questions from clients were becoming a source of consternation, when they should have been seen as an opportunity to engage them. To remedy this, we interviewed the Founder, and researched the heritage and modern stories of the brand’s home country. We realised that these two stories were inextricably linked, and that the brand could only have been created by this particular Founder in this particular country at this particular time in history.

When we reframed the stories like this, they acted as compelling proof points for the overall brand positioning, both internally and externally.

From the boardroom to the boutiques

When a brand is growing fast, and on several different continents at once, it’s crucial to get a brand’s positioning out of the boardroom and quickly into every single boutique. This is especially true in the luxury sector, where the same clients might encounter the brand in different cities.

So, to make sure the brand would quickly come to life with a consistent story and voice for clients, we ‘operationalised the brand’ by writing a 30-second retail pitch and the 3-minute brand story. As part of this work, we also wrote a series of verbal memes. These memes were short, easy-to-remember, easy-to-share phrases that acted like hooks for key points in the brand’s story, both for the boutique staff and then for their clients.

Better than we can say it

We have now been engaged by the client to work on operationalising other areas of the brand.