Adura’s Jackdaw approval and the speed of institutional credibility

Posted on 21st October 202621st October 2026 by Sam Steele

Strategic brand design accelerates institutional credibility through three measurable pathways. Specifically, de-risking, reduced cognitive load and perceived longevity. Adura, the Shell and Equinor North Sea joint venture whose brand was created by Designhouse, demonstrates the effect. Securing a £3 billion lending facility within months of launch, and today, UK Government consent for the Jackdaw gas field.

On Wednesday 21 October 2026, Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh agreed that the North Sea Transition Authority could grant consent for gas to be produced at Jackdaw. The decision follows a rigorous regulatory process led by OPRED.

Jackdaw lies around 150 miles east of Aberdeen. Gas is expected to reach British homes and businesses from as early as the end of this month. At peak production, the field is expected to increase UK domestic gas production by around 6% and heat the equivalent of around 1.4 million homes.

The project represents £2.1 billion of investment. Ultimately, by the developer’s estimates, it will add around £2.9 billion to the UK economy, safeguard 273 existing jobs and create 27 new ones.

Background

Regulatory confidence of this kind is earned through evidence and operational rigour. Moreover, it also rests on a wider foundation of institutional credibility. Adura has built that foundation at remarkable speed.

Shell and Equinor announced the joint venture in December 2024. Adura launched on 1 December 2025 as the UK’s largest independent North Sea producer. From the outset, regulators, lenders, industry partners, the Aberdeen community and 1,300 transferring employees all needed to form a confident view of a business with no track record of its own.

Designhouse, a London strategic brand consultancy with 55 years of experience, created the name, positioning and visual identity. We combined brand strategy and brand identity design. The brief called for clear independence from both parent companies. Along with reassurance for transferring employees that their careers remained within a substantive business. As well as a genuine connection with the Aberdeen community whose economy depends on North Sea operations.

The commercial results followed quickly. Within months of launch, Adura secured a £3 billion reserve-based lending facility. Less than a year after launch, it has taken Jackdaw through one of the most closely scrutinised consent decisions in the UK energy sector.

How does brand design build institutional credibility?

Our work with Adura shows strategic brand design accelerating credibility through three measurable cognitive pathways.

De-risking. Sophisticated, highly intentional visual systems imply operational maturity. And institutional stakeholders associate polished, compliant design with reduced operational risk. Consequently, Adura’s custom logotype uses compacted geometric letterforms with interlocking characters that read as load-bearing. The opening and closing A form a trapezium, reinforcing structural stability. The wordmark stands alone as the brand’s sole device, the mark of a business confident in its own name.

Reduced cognitive load. Fragmented sub-brands create friction and suspicion. Conversely, a clear brand architecture demonstrates that an institution is organised internally. Flexibility was one of five naming criteria set at the start of the project. The JV required a master brand architecture capable of accommodating sub-brands such as Adura Energy and Adura North Sea Energy while keeping core equity intact. Jackdaw and Rosebank together represent £10.8 billion of investment, and government and regulators engage with one coherent counterparty across both.

Perceived longevity. Timeless typographic choices and deliberate colour systems anchor an institution as a permanent fixture in its industry. The name Adura fuses the A of Aberdeen with the dura of durability. As a result regional heritage and brand promise are embedded in a single word. The palette draws on North Sea stratigraphy, the earthy tones of long-established sediment layers. Scottish purple signals regional identity. Today, the Secretary of State for Scotland described the Jackdaw approval as a win for Aberdeen, for Scottish workers and for Britain’s energy security. That is precisely the position the brand was built to occupy.

What is the value of strategic brand design?

In capital-intensive sectors, credibility determines access to finance, regulatory confidence and the commitment of experienced talent. The conventional route to that credibility runs through years of operational history. However, Adura has compressed it into months. In fact, in less than a year the new company has secured a £3 billion lending facility, consent for Jackdaw, with a decision on Rosebank to follow.

For any organisation forming through a merger, demerger or joint venture, the speed at which a new brand achieves institutional standing is a determinant of commercial momentum. It is also a variable that strategic brand design can materially influence.

The Adura brand was recognised at the Transform Awards Europe 2026 with three awards. Gold for Best Strategic or Creative Development of a New Brand, Gold for Best Visual Identity in the energy sector and Silver for Best Naming Strategy.

Read the full Adura case study.

Frequently asked questions

Who designed the Adura brand?

Designhouse, a London strategic brand consultancy, created the name, positioning and visual identity for Adura, the Shell and Equinor North Sea joint venture that launched on 1 December 2025.

What does the name Adura mean?

Adura fuses the A of Aberdeen with the dura of durability. Spoken in an Aberdeen accent, the hard D softens to Ajura, giving the name both industrial authority and regional warmth.

What is the Jackdaw gas field?

Jackdaw is a gas field around 150 miles east of Aberdeen, operated by Adura and tied back to the Shearwater platform. The UK Government approved production on 21 October 2026, and at peak it is expected to increase UK domestic gas production by around 6%.

How does brand design build institutional credibility?

Strategic brand design builds credibility through three pathways: de-risking, reduced cognitive load and perceived longevity. Adura secured a £3 billion reserve-based lending facility within months of launch.

What awards has the Adura brand won?

At the Transform Awards Europe 2026, the Adura brand won Gold for Best Strategic or Creative Development of a New Brand, Gold for Best Visual Identity in the energy sector and Silver for Best Naming Strategy.

The Adura brand was recognised at the Transform Awards Europe 2026 with Gold for Best Strategic or Creative Development of a New Brand, Gold for Best Visual Identity in the energy sector and Silver for Best Naming Strategy.

written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director, FCIM

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years. We also work with start ups and scale ups to create brand identities that can grow with their business. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’re ready to talk.

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There is a formula for creativity

Posted on 19th August 202620th August 2026 by Sam Steele

In this article we discuss

The formula for creativity
The difference between creativity and innovation
Three question marketing leaders should always ask when selecting a brand agency

In a recent pitch, a client asked what’s the science behind our creative process. It’s a reasonable question from someone signing off a six figure brand investment, and it deserves a considered answer.

There is science. There is also, as it turns out, a formula for creativity. An actual theorem, written by a mathematician who spent the early years of her career operating one of the first computers ever built.

Dr Ruth Noller began her working life in 1944 at Harvard, on the Mark I.

Harvard Mark I computer, Getty Images

The machine was a beast: 51 feet long, eight feet high and weighing close to five tonnes. It had around 765,000 components and a massive 50 foot camshaft, all in order to run calculations for the US Navy in the closing years of the Second World War. Operating it demanded absolute step by step logic. A single misplaced punch card or a misaligned gear stopped the entire system.

Machines execute that type of rigid, linear calculation flawlessly. Through the work, Dr Noller came to see that human beings did something else entirely, generating ideas that had never previously existed.

Which is why she spent the remainder of her career studying human creativity.

At Buffalo State University she worked alongside Alex Osborn, who originated brainstorming. And, with Sidney Parnes she developed the Osborn-Parnes Creative Problem Solving process. That work underpins the university’s world leading Centre for Applied Imagination.

The creativity formula

Being a mathematician, Dr Noller devised a rather elegant formula for creativity:

C = ƒa (K, I, E)

The formula shows how Creativity is an output of applied Knowledge, Imagination and Evaluation. Knowledge is what we hold. Imagination is what we can conceive. Evaluation is the judgement of which idea to pursue. Attitude is the function that operates as a force multiplier across all three. Noller’s research specifically referenced positive mental attitude, a ‘can do’ mindset, if you like, as the real differentiator.

Creativity v. Innovation

If the formula describes the process, Theodore Levitt supplied the commercial application. Writing in 1963, the Harvard Business School marketing professor was dismissive of the “ideas business”. Creativity is thinking up new things, and anyone can do that, he argued. The real challenge is making those ideas work for the business: that is innovation, and the discipline it demands is scarce and expensive.

Innovation is something of a cliché across B2B brand messaging. Everyone claims it, and the difference between creativity and innovation is rarely spelled out. Levitt was blunt about it, “ideation and innovation are not synonyms” he wrote. Ideation generates the idea. Innovation is the work of implementing it successfuly.

Both disciplines matter enormously for anyone allocating a brand budget. Innovation depends on creative thinking having happened first, and on a process rigorous enough to take an idea from a Post-it to a successful market position.

Brand is where the idea becomes commercially readable. It makes innovation legible to customers, investors and employees.

Three practical implications for marketing leaders

When you are deciding which agency to work with, Dr Noller’s formula is a useful reference structure.

Knowledge and Imagination. Ask what an agency already understands about your category before the first workshop. As well, ask where its ideas come from once the obvious territories are exhausted. Brand architecture, naming and positioning create value that accrues for years. Fuller’s Brewery has grown brand equity for over three decades on a Designhouse identity that has never required a redesign. Measured against the cost of starting again, that is the long term return of work built on strong creative foundations.

Fuller’s Brewery Brand identity

Evaluation. Most credentials decks describe how ideas are generated. Ask how routes will be assessed, against which criteria, with which stakeholders, and who gets the final call. Evaluation is where projects are won and lost. On Adura, the Shell and Equinor joint venture in the North Sea, every significant decision was a judgement about people and consequence: how a name would sound in Aberdeen, how much heritage to carry from two parent companies, how far to lean into transition language in a sector under close scrutiny. As Levitt would say, the ideas were the easy part!

Adura brand launch

Attitude. Noller’s multiplier is crucial. Meet in person wherever possible. You can tell within an hour whether a team is invested in your commercial outcome or in the portfolio piece. The team’s disposition, and the chemistry between you, is one of the more reliable predictors of what the work will be worth in three years.

Designhouse team in the studio

The human advantage

Dr Noller began thinking about human creativity in 1944 and spent a career researching it. The formula is as valid today as it has ever been.

With Large Language models, Knowledge has become abundant. Imagination, judgement and conviction remain the scarce inputs and the specialist human skills worth paying a premium for.

written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director, FCIM

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Turn on, Tune in, Get Out

Posted on 30th June 20267th July 2026 by Sam Steele

When the sun shines and the longest days keep the evenings bright the Designhouse team go foraging for brain food. Fave hunting grounds include galleries, festivals and the occasional darkened cinema. We asked the studio team for their creative summer recommendations. Here is a veritable menu of must-dos, a smorgasbord for your brain, and restoratives for your imagination.

Here is what we are loving right now…

TeamLab Borderless, Tokyo

“A digital interactive art exhibition across a series of rooms with no start or end point. Artworks move out of rooms, relate to other works, influence each other and are influenced by you walking through the rooms and touching the artwork itself. I loved how they fused digital technology, sounds, smells and lighting to create a truly magical few hours of exploration.”

Jonti Davies, Client Services Director

Wes Anderson at the Design Museum

“Vivid, highly saturated and bright, this is the colour world behind some of Anderson’s most iconic films, which is to say most of them. A fascinating window into a brilliantly creative mind.”

Sam Steele, Marketing Director

Inside Aardman at the Young V&A

“Loads of models, storyboards and insight from the Aardman team. It’s a joy. On until mid November, so plenty of time to go. I’m not biased, but it is in Bethnal Green, so it’s easy to go to my local after.”

Natalie House, Studio Production Manager

It was Just An Accident

“The subject is heavy and sad but there is a bit of comedy in it and it’s very well made. Plus we all love to look cool watching subbed movies”

Cristina Taje, Senior Account Manager

Escher at Somerset House

“I loved Escher as a kid. Graphically powerful and geometric, it plays with perception and negative space. Brilliant draughtsmanship and imagination.”

Richard Debenham, Creative Director

Oceanographic Museum, Monaco

“An immersive, interactive space and time journey to 2050. It encourages the 650,000 annual visitors to the Oceanographic Museum to become involved in the protection of the Mediterranean.”

Al Connolly, Senior Designer

Marilyn Monroe: A Portrait, National Portrait Gallery

“The exhibition explores her iconic image and the personal brand that was created around her, with brilliant photographers featured.”

Sam Mayhew, Designer

David Hockney, “A Year in Normandie” at the Serpentine

Hockney’s sweeping frieze follows the slow turn of the seasons across the Normandy countryside, painted with the freshness of an artist still chasing the light in his ninth decade.

Matt Gillman, Creative Director

That is the studio’s summer in one list. Curiosity goes where it likes, and it always comes back with something worth sharing. Enjoy the summer!

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Britain’s brands return to growth

Posted on 24th June 20262nd July 2026 by Sam Steele

UK brand value returned to growth in 2026, with the country’s leading brands adding £45.4 billion over the past year, according to new figures from Brand Finance. At the report launch, Mark Ritson asked the room to look harder at what really drives it.

The UK’s 250 most valuable brands grew by 12% to reach £448.9 billion in 2026, the first year-on-year growth since 2023. This is according to Brand Finance’s annual UK report published this month. Britain’s biggest brands added £45.4 billion in collective value over twelve months.

Growth was broad based, spread across the economy. Banking is now the UK’s most valuable sector, lifted in part by Revolut, the fastest-growing brand of the year at 246% to £5 billion, and a 24% rise in banking sector value overall. Aerospace and defence recorded its strongest gains since 2012, and consumer brands now account for eight of the UK’s ten strongest.

One finding drew particular attention. Brand Finance’s analysis shows the UK’s most trusted brands increased in value by 15% over the year, while the least trusted brands saw their value fall by 4%. Emotional responses to brands are difficult to quantify financially. This report shows that trust is directly associated with performance.

Can we trust trust?

Speaking at the launch, the marketing expert and Mini MBA founder Mark Ritson put a deceptively simple question to the room. Can we trust trust?

Drawing on examples ranging from Johnnie Walker to Betty Crocker, he examined how strong brands build emotional connections, and he questioned the assumption that trust alone drives growth. His argument placed salience, being the brand that comes to mind first, among the most powerful levers available to marketers. He left the audience with this question. Should brands focus on being trusted, or on being remembered?

Consistent and coherent

The answer is, of course, both. Trust and salience accumulate through the same discipline: consistent and coherent brand investment sustained over years. The brands climbing this year’s ranking are remembered because they are visible and distinctive. They are trusted because they behave consistently over time.

Shell, a brand Designhouse is proud to count among its clients, marks a decade as Britain’s most valuable brand. Its value rose 16% to £39.5 billion. Other clients, Vodafone, and British Gas both saw their brand value rise, Centrica held its position in the ranking.

The cumulative value of the UK’s top 100 brands has grown 33% since 2016, through repeated periods of economic disruption. Automotive showed the reverse, with total sector brand value down 22% as Jaguar, Range Rover, Defender and Discovery all declined.

The JLR brands demonstrate the trust and salience point precisely. In 2025 Jaguar interrupted its own identity with a controversial rebrand, and at the same time a cyberattack interrupted JLR’s ability to supply, so the brand was neither reliably recognisable nor reliably present.

Brand value is a financial asset. Brand strength accounts for 30% of a company’s stock market value according to the Economist. And like any investment, Brand when managed well compounds value.

Designhouse has spent 55 years helping clients build brands that endure through exactly these cycles. Whether the goal is to be trusted, remembered, or both, the route is the same. Strategy, applied consistently, takes shape as value.

written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director, FCIM

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The brand story behind a trillion-dollar IPO

Posted on 17th June 202617th June 2026 by Sam Steele

What is the brand story behind the largest IPO in history, and what is stopping your organisation from getting there? Maybe less than you think…

In June 2026, SpaceX went public at a valuation near $1.8 trillion. This is a company that posted a net loss the year before. So what was driving the valuation? Investors were pricing in the strategy. And this is how it works…

The value add

SpaceX is the headline act in a wider portfolio that could hardly be more disparate. Moon rockets and inter-planetary spacecraft; satellite internet through Starlink; social media platform X; the Grok AI engine; and even facilities management.

A single stated worldview holds them all together. And that is a future that is multiplanetary, sustainable and AI-powered, framed throughout as work for the good of humanity. Starlink funds the rockets. The rockets carry the mission. Each venture earns its place by advancing the same idea, so the parts compound rather than compete. Whatever you think of Elon Musk, the clarity is the asset, and the market has put a price on that clarity.

Clarity is the gold standard. The more common business reality looks much more brassy.

The complexity cost, or when 1+1=0.25

We are often brought into complex organisations where nobody can articulate the business strategy, and thus nobody can articulate a brand strategy. When the commercial direction is unspoken, the brand has nothing to give shape to, and every decision after that is amorphous and disparate.

Brand gets treated as a cosmetic wrapper. The assumption is that audience understanding will assemble itself through repeated tactical exposure. Brand equity built like that is vapour thin. And it evaporates the moment the activation stops.

The most insidious erosion happens when an organisation sees itself as a federation of sub-brands. Each sub-brand with its own audience, culture and budget. The assumption being that a single-mission-led voice is beyond reach. Well, not according to SpaceX.

In a fragmented business, 1+1 makes something closer to 0.25. Each sub-brand spends to build its own corner, none of it accrues to the parent. Audiences see a scatter of unrelated signals where there should be one organisation worth considerably more than the sum of its parts (hello again SpaceX).

The market has started to price that cost in the open. The 2025 and 2026 wave of corporate breakups, from Kraft Heinz to Honeywell, is a public admission that brand complexity without coherence erodes value. Brand focus is what releases it.

Business first, brand second

The route through is sequential, and the sequencing is crucial.

Business strategy first, so the organisation knows what it is trying to achieve.

Brand strategy next, so that intent takes a form audiences recognise.

Then an architecture that lets each sub-brand borrow equity from the parent and give it back, so the parts strengthen the whole and the whole lifts the parts.

Scale comes from coherence, from every pound and every message pulling in the same direction.

Discipline pays

SpaceX shows what a clearly held mission allows. It can absorb disparate acquisitions because every deal is narrated back to the same idea: compute feeding models feeding applications feeding the multiplanetary, AI-powered future. That is brand discipline. And the IPO shows how it has been used to create record-breaking value.

Brand investment is a business decision, and we treat it like one. At Designhouse we can help you define your strategy, then make that strategy take shape, so you have a brand strategy and a brand that drives ROI across your entire business landscape.

The trillion-dollar insight is business clarity, not rocket science!

written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director, FCIM

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Clarity is the new creative

Posted on 26th May 202617th June 2026 by Sam Steele

Matt Gillman, Designhouse Design Director on the hot topics and heated design debate at this year’s D&AD Festival. Clarity in the face of complexity, the real creative opportunity AI tools represent, courage over caution, and the benefits of actual human interaction.

Simplicity in creativity is not a new idea. But in a world of accelerating complexity, clarity has become a genuine commercial advantage. Spending two days at D&AD last week, surrounded by people who care deeply about ideas, that tension was visible everywhere.

Global creative community, D&AD, has set the benchmark for creative excellence in advertising and design since 1962. Its Pencil awards remain the industry’s measure of the very best creative work globally. And their annual Festival draws together practitioners, strategists and creative leaders to examine where the industry stands and where it is heading.

Challenging Complexity

The strongest work on show tended to be rooted in ideas that felt, in hindsight, obvious. And that is the point. The real creative challenge is taking the obvious idea and making it singular, embedding it into every touchpoint of a brand. So that product, service, experience, all become inseparable from what the brand actually is. In a landscape flooded with AI-generated creative work that is competent and entirely forgettable, distinctive clarity is the force magnifier.

The harder parallel challenge is convincing clients to commit to it. In a volatile commercial environment, bravery is a difficult sell.

That said, simplicity as an antidote to increasing complexity only takes you so far. Reducing everything to its most legible form can become its own kind of constraint. Complexity itself is not the problem. The problem is complexity that is hard to navigate. The most durable brand systems hold genuine strategic and operational depth within an architecture that feels intuitive to use. Making complexity feel effortless is a more precise ambition than simplicity for its own sake.

What AI makes possible

The industry’s response to AI was the other dominant current running through the festival. There is a pronounced resistance, much of it rooted in the speed and scale of change rather than reasoned opposition. Some of it rooted in an instinctive defence of human craft. The comparison to the arrival of the personal computer and the internet gets made often, and it holds some truth, but the analogy is limited. The pace of what is happening now is of a different order entirely. Regulatory and safety questions deserve serious attention. Creatively, however, the more productive question is, what is it that AI makes possible?

I am more confident that AI tools will support our human creative thinking process, for the better. That they can support our emotional intelligence. A way of problem solving that is better calibrated to human behaviour, more attuned to what actually resonates. AI speeds up production, which should mean more time for creative thinking. And that means that, if used responsibly and purposefully, a truly strong creative will have an enhanced level of emotional resonance with their audience. The industry’s current instinct, to lean harder into craft, tactility and the language of human-made work, reads as much as a defence of identity as it does a creative position.

The case for carbon

For me, my experience at D&AD was creatively energising. Being surrounded by people who genuinely care about ideas reminds you why you love it. D&AD felt truly restorative. A reminder, amongst the pressure, to find the joy in what we do. And to power down the digital world and mingle in the real world, with real people, bouncing ideas off carbon-based lifeforms rather than liquid crystal screens.

The industry demands continuous output, continuous thinking, continuous production. Moments like this, that restore the appetite for imagination are vital. I wonder if the pressure to produce has quietly displaced the space to imagine. And if so, maybe the AI impact that everyone is talking about is simply to free up time to think creatively, to find the clarity in the complexity.

Author: Matt Gillman, Design Director, Designhouse

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Evara launches with a brand built for scale

Posted on 14th May 20267th July 2026 by Sam Steele

When a nine-year-old fintech consultancy decides to rebrand, the reasons behind that decision matter as much as the outcome. For Fran Sánchez, Managing Director of Evara, formerly Inbound Fintech, the launch on 27 April 2026 was the result of a deliberate, multi-year growth and evolution process. The brand work was its natural conclusion.

“If you want to scale and you cannot communicate properly who you are, then you are nobody.”

Fran Sánchez, Managing Director

Background

Designhouse worked with Evara through every stage of the programme, from the strategic positioning through to naming, visual identity and brand architecture. The brief was demanding. Evara operates in the highly competitive financial services sector, and after nearly a decade of strong growth and responsive product development, it is repositioning from its origins as a digital marketing agency. The business now needs a brand strategy that reflects who it is and where it is heading over the next decade, as a leading growth systems consultancy for financial services.

“We found our personality, we identified who we are”

Fran Sánchez, Managing Director

Speaking at the launch, Sánchez was direct about where the value of the process lay. “For me, the most impressive part of all the work we did with Designhouse was the strategy. We found our personality, we identified who we are. People building systems, systems building growth. That was an amazing piece of work because it is exactly what we want to do.”

Process

The name itself reflects that strategic clarity. Evoking the word ‘evolve’, Evara also resonates as a name with a strong feminine feel, significant to a business founded by two women in a sector that remains male-dominated. “We always said the company is a woman,” Sánchez explained. “It was founded by two strong women, Sheila Mitham and Marie Hanes, and we didn’t want to dilute that.”

The name emerged through three rounds of internal review with the full team and was the consistent first choice throughout. Short, memorable, and free of the literal descriptiveness that constrained the previous name, it is built for scale.

ROI

For Sánchez, the investment case for brand work of this depth is straightforward, even if it is rarely easy to articulate to a finance director. “We can have the best operations in the world, the best services in the world. If nobody is looking at us, or if nobody is able to understand us, then we have a problem. Brand is an investment that is key, essential.”

“Brand is an investment that is essential”

Fran Sánchez, Managing Director

The timing aligned with a broader operational transformation: more than 100 internal processes created in the past year, a new office in New York, restructured service lines, and a move into AI consultancy. A business preparing to scale needs a brand that can carry that weight.

The launch coincided with Evara’s first full-company retreat, bringing together team members from across multiple geographies. Sánchez noted that the visual identity performed across every surface tested, from digital assets to merchandise, and that the team’s response was immediate and unanimous.

“to be nobody is a big problem”

Fran Sánchez, Managing Director

The Evara engagement illustrates a pattern Designhouse consistently observes in B2B rebrands done well. The visual system and the name are the tangible deliverables. The work that makes them land is investing in the strategic architecture underneath. As Sánchez put it at the launch: “If you want to scale and you cannot communicate properly who you are, then you are nobody. And to be nobody is a big problem.” When the foundation is right, nobody becomes somebody very quickly.

Read the full case study

Evara is operational at evara.co

written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years. We also work with start ups and scale ups to create brand identities that can grow with their business. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

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Do You Need a Brand Storyteller or a Brand Architect?

Posted on 29th April 202629th April 2026 by Sam Steele

It seems everyone wants a brand storyteller these days. But, perhaps what they really need is a brand architect?

In the year to 26 November 2025, the proportion of US LinkedIn postings using the word “storyteller” doubled, covering roughly 50,000 marketing roles and a further 20,000 in media and communications. Chime received over 500 applicants for a single storyteller opening. In the US, Google, Microsoft, even the National Wild Turkey Federation are all recruiting into the category. Accenture have an entire “storytellers team”, who exist to help C-Suite execs gain clarity on business challenges using a narrative framework.

And, according to WSJ, executive mentions of “storytelling” on earnings calls climbed from 147 in 2015 to 469 in 2025. That’s a 3.2x increase over a decade. It’s a steady upward trend for yarn spinners. When CFOs start using a soft word like “storytelling” in front of financial analysts, the narrative has clearly moved from the marketing department to the boardroom.

Most of the commentary around this trend has framed it as a communications story. Google frame it as a business development role: “As storytellers,” a recent Google Storyteller job ad said, “we play an integral role in driving customer acquisition and long-term growth.”

Either way, earned media is shrinking. Newsrooms are contracting. Brands now own their distribution, so they need to produce their own content. AI has flooded the channel with sloppy generic output. Audiences, particularly Gen Z are digital natives who value authenticity over all else.

And all of this, though true, is only one chapter of the story.

Risky Business

In our increasingly complex, interconnected, always on, multi-channel world, narrative is the only thing that holds a business together. It connects customers to suppliers, the through-line from front to back room staff, from C-suite to facilities.

Story is the connective tissue of a complex system. The corporate instinct to hire for storytelling is a reaction to the pressure modern business is under.

And reaction is where the risk lies.

Dropping a journalist into a campaign-driven marketing department is a 20th century response to a 21st century problem. It treats storytelling as a single-set problem with a single-set solution. Buy the skill. Fill the role. Produce the content.

“every piece of content a storyteller produces will read well in isolation and contradict itself in aggregate”

A storyteller can write an excellent case study. They cannot produce coherence across a complex organisation, if that organisation does not already know what it stands for. Without a clear strategic foundation, every piece of content a storyteller produces will read well in isolation and contradict itself in aggregate. The podcast will pull one way. The investor narrative will pull another. The internal comms deck will pull a third. Six months in, the business will have more content and less coherence than ever.

The need for a storyteller is the canary in the coalmine. A symptom of the failure of brand architecture.

Strategic brand architecture is the infrastructure that lets narrative survive contact with complexity. Providing positioning that is distinctive rather than descriptive, specific enough to brief every story the business tells. The set of strategic pillars that filter on-strategy stories from noise. It is the architecture that holds meaning across divisions, projects, platforms, and audiences.

“Strategic brand architecture is the infrastructure that lets narrative survive contact with complexity”

This is upstream work. It does not replace the storyteller. It makes the storyteller effective. Given architecture, a journalist can produce content that compounds. Without it, the same journalist will produce content that at best cancels itself out. At worst is completely dilutes and undermines the brand.

Happy Endings

Adura, the joint venture between Shell and Equinor, demonstrates this principle. Two complex, multinational parent organisations integrated under a single brand architecture with one coherent narrative. This start up JV was solid enough to unite multiple stakeholders and authentic enough to land a £3 billion credit facility, within months of launch. This is because every communication has a coherent brand platform to stand on.

“the brand story told itself once the brand architecture was right”

3Sixty Duty Free is the commercial transformation version of the same strategy. Founder Benny Klepach had a sprawling company on his hands. Designhouse created a coherent brand story and identity to support aggregate growth. Disparate brands, DFASS, Duty Free Air and Ship Supply, became 3Sixty Duty Free & More. A comprehensive brand designed to signal scale and increase market visibility.

Twelve months after the award-winning rebrand launched, Hotel Shilla, the Korean operator behind the world’s third largest travel retailer, announced a subscription to 44% of the share capital of 3Sixty Holding LLC. Industry analysts at The Moodie Davitt Report valued the deal at upwards of US$140 million. Shilla Travel Retail President Ingyu Han specifically cited 3Sixty’s “continued commitment to its strategic approach” as the trigger for finalising the investment, after previous negotiations had broken down two years earlier. The architecture did not just support the story. It unlocked the capital.

In both cases, the brand story told itself once the brand architecture was right.

The Moral Of This Story…

The WSJ numbers suggest that corporate storytelling is firmly on the boardroom agenda in 2026. The consideration for brand and marketing leaders is more fundamental than simply hiring a storytelling into the marketing team.

“turn a complex organisation into a coherent one”

The first question to ask – and answer – is whether the business has the strategic infrastructure to make the hire worthwhile. If you are applying 20th century brand architecture to solve for a 21st century complexity problem, a new hire, no matter how talented, will not help.

The storyteller is not the answer. The work is much further upstream, in the positioning and the architecture that turn a complex organisation into a coherent one. Get that right, and the stories take care of themselves.

written by Sam Steele, Marketing and Communications Director

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 55 years. We also work with start ups and scale ups to create brand identities that can grow with their business. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

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How do you build a £3 billion brand from scratch?

Posted on 15th April 20267th July 2026 by Sam Steele

Designhouse Creative Director Peter Dobie on authenticity, risk and the future of design.

Peter Dobie, Creative Director at Designhouse, faced exactly that question when the agency was appointed to name and brand Adura, the Shell and Equinor North Sea joint venture. The business secured a £3 billion credit facility, within months of launch. The brand had to be worth lending against before it had time to earn an operational track record.

“we’re very much about the relationship with the client”

Peter Dobie, Creative Director

Interviewed by Transform Magazine ahead of their recent awards, Peter’s answer begins with honesty as a structural requirement of the brief. The name, the identity, the entire positioning had to reflect the genuine character of the business. That authenticity is precisely what made it bankable.

In the interview Peter discusses the contrast with Cruxy, Designhouse’s other award-winning project at Transform Europe 2026.

Understand Objectives

Adura needed to slip into the market and feel established. Cruxy, a data-led growth consultancy, needed to earn attention in a sector with deeply established visual and verbal conventions. Playing it safe would have been invisible.

“you don’t always get asked to create a brand that stands out”

Peter Dobie, Creative Director

Designhouse built Cruxy’s entire brand around a single strategic idea: the Calculated Maverick. Taking considered risks, in a controlled way, to deliver a superior result.

Be Brave

Peter describes the point at which the team knew the work was right: they felt genuinely uncomfortable with how far they had pushed the ideas. That discomfort was the signal.

“just push the envelope, go as far as you can”

Peter Dobie, Creative Director

The client supported every element of it without hesitation, which for a creative director, Peter notes, is precisely the brief you want. The commercial outcome, 136% revenue growth in the first half of 2025 is what happens when a brand position is specific, committed to, and executed with discipline.

Those two projects sit at opposite ends of a spectrum that Designhouse navigates regularly. It requires a precise understanding of the competitive landscape, the audience, and the commercial objectives.

Human Centred AI

Peter is excited about what comes next. On AI, his position is direct: it is as significant a shift as the arrival of the Apple Mac. The anxiety the industry feels now is the same anxiety designers felt when digital tools arrived and proceeded to define the next era of the craft.

“in terms of design AI opens the door to a whole boat-load of new thinking”

Peter Dobie, Creative Director

The ideas have always been the irreducibly human part of the work. The intellectual rigour, the strategic positioning, the creative judgement, none of that is what changes. The tools that realise those ideas are simply becoming more powerful, and that opens the door to outcomes that were previously beyond the reach of smaller clients’ budgets. That, Peter argues, is straightforwardly good for the industry.

Watch the full interview with Peter Dobie

Designhouse collected six awards at the Transform Awards Europe 2026, including three Golds, for the Adura and Cruxy projects.

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Sweeping the Board at The Transform Europe Awards

Posted on 26th March 202623rd July 2026 by Sam Steele

Last night, at the Transform Awards Europe 2026, Designhouse took home six awards across two projects. A result that places us among the most decorated independent brand design agencies in Europe.

The awards cover 53 categories. With entries across the full spectrum of the industry, from major international networks to boutique studios. Three Gold awards, two Silver awards and one Bronze, makes us one of only ten agencies this year to achieve multiple Golds.

“We love partnering with you, and appreciate the immense push to just DO GREAT WORK. Yeeeha! “

Carrie Osman, Cruxy CEO & Founder

Creative Excellence

The awards recognise excellence across the full breadth of brand development. Including naming strategy and creative direction through to visual identity and brand evolution. To win across so many disciplines in a single evening reflects the strategic rigour that underpins everything we do.

Our work with data-led growth consultancy Cruxy was the standout story of the evening. We bagged four awards: Gold for Best Brand Evolution (Business), Gold for Best Visual Identity in the Professional Services sector, Silver for Best Visual Identity in the Financial Services sector, and Silver for Best Creative Strategy.

Adura, the Shell and Equinor joint venture, won Gold for Best Naming Strategy (New Name) and Bronze for Best Visual Identity.

Getting to the Cruxy Gold

We worked closely with the Cruxy leadership team through a series of collaborative workshops to understand the firm’s genuine competitive differentiation. From those conversations, we identified a brand personality we named the “Calculated Maverick”. A balance of intellectual precision combined with a daring, challenging energy. That single insight shaped every subsequent decision, from the visual identity to the tone of voice.

“an outstanding brand evolution that shifted the business with great results”

Judge’s comments

The judges were unambiguous in their assessment. On the Gold for Best Brand Evolution, the panel noted it was “an outstanding brand evolution that shifted the business with great results”.

On the Gold for Best Visual Identity, judges described it as “a strong rebrand that brings a unique brand personality to the sector”. The Silver for Best Visual Identity in Financial Services recognised “a design solution that succeeds with an identity that demands attention”.

“a design solution that succeeds with an identity that demands attention”

Judge’s comments

Additionally, the Silver for Best Creative Strategy acknowledged the work’s strategic foundation. Judges noted the Calculated Maverick strategy, “expressed through bold geometry, a confident colour system and a voice that is incisive yet approachable, reimagined Cruxy as a consultancy that does not just advise, but also accelerates.”

“bold geometry, a confident colour system and a voice that is incisive yet approachable”

Judge’s comments

The commercial results speak for themselves. In the first half of 2025, Cruxy achieved a 136% increase in revenue compared to the same period in 2024. They went on to secure over $250 billion in additional Assets Under Management.

These are not vanity metrics. This is strong brand strategy, designed coherently, to create commercial momentum that compounds over time.

Building A New North Sea Brand, Adura

The Adura brief was a really demanding naming challenge. A JV between international energy companies, Shell and Equinor, needs a name that accomplishes several seemingly contradictory things at once. It has to establish immediate credibility as a major operator without any operational track record. A the same time it has to differentiate itself from two parent companies whose combined heritage spans more than a century. And it has to resonate authentically with the broadest number of stakeholders. This includes the local Aberdonian community, government regulators, 1,300 transferring employees, and commercial partners in billion-pound negotiations.

“highly rigorous work that gives Adura a credible foundation”

Judge’s comments

Designhouse developed a rigorous naming methodology built around five criteria: authority, independence, regional connection, durability and flexibility.

The result “Adura” fuses Aberdeen with durability, embedding both geographical heritage and brand promise. A name that is a single, distinctive word that sits outside all the conventional naming conventions of the sector. Crucially, the phonetics were deliberate. Spoken with a Scottish accent, the hard D softens to produce a sound that carries regional warmth. At the same time, the visual identity system, with its granite-dense custom logotype and trapezium symmetry, reinforces the name’s qualities of permanence and structural integrity.

“super-strong concept with execution to match”

Judge’s comments

The judges responded with considerable enthusiasm. On the Gold for Best Naming Strategy, the panel described it as a “super-strong concept with execution to match”. They noted the brand name is “memorable and ownable, with great results.” The Bronze for Best Visual Identity acknowledged “highly rigorous work that gives Adura a credible foundation”.

“memorable and ownable, with great results”

Judge’s comments

Celebrating with Clients

The evening was made all the more memorable by the warmth of our clients. Cruxy CEO Carrie Osman responded to the wins with genuine enthusiasm, “we love partnering with you, and appreciate the immense push to just DO GREAT WORK. Yeeeha!”

Cruxy Business Development Executive, Rosie Sugarman wrote. “Seeing it recognised like that really reinforces the quality, creativity and thought your team brings to everything we do together.”

“the quality, creativity and thought your team brings to everything we do together.”

Carrie Osman, Cruxy CEO & Founder

Six awards is a result to be proud of. The judges are a highly prestigious panel of experienced international design directors, brand and marketing leaders, and industry creatives. The accolades reflect not just the quality of the creative work, but also the close relationships we build with our clients

This is how great brand design actually works. Collaboration built on mutual trust and a shared commitment to ambitious outcomes.

For 55 years, that has been the Designhouse way. Last night was a fine reminder of why it matters.

Read the Cruxy case study here

When The Shopper is an Algorithm

Posted on 18th March 20267th July 2026 by Sam Steele

AI isn’t just changing how people shop. It is becoming the shopper of choice. In this post we’ll explain why that matters for your brand strategy.

Agentic commerce is when AI systems act on behalf of consumers to discover, evaluate, and purchase products. This is no longer a speculative scenario. It is taking shape now, in enterprise procurement tools, in consumer AI assistants, and in the broader infrastructure being built by the world’s largest technology companies.

If you’re responsible for brand strategy, the implications are significant. And they are arriving faster than a laser blink.

63% of global retailers agree that companies without AI agents will fall behind within two years*
58% believe AI agents will handle most customer interactions within five years*
60% of shoppers will use agentic AI to make purchases within the next 12 months**

sources: *Deloitte, **Harvard Business Review

Marketing managers must fundamentally rethink how brands, customers, and AI interact. For anyone responsible for brand, the implications are significant. Read on to understand why and what to do about it…

The AI Customer

To understand the stakes, you need to understand the process.

A personal AI agent operating on behalf of a consumer or a procurement team does not browse in the way a human does. It does not linger on a homepage, respond to a mood board, or a well-crafted headline. Instead, it queries structured data, cross-references criteria, weighs variables against stated preferences, and returns a shortlist or a decision.

Agentic commerce compresses days of human research, discovery, and comparison into instantaneous moments of evaluation. And this fundamentally changes how consumers allocate attention and make choices.

The New Criteria

The inputs AI agents use include

product specifications
pricing data
availability
reviews
sustainability ratings
structured brand data – machine-readable and consistently maintained across digital touchpoints

For example, I ask my AI agent find me options for a new TV. And then the AI agent retrieves and filters options, applying a weighting to the search based on both my stated and inferred priorities. As a result, it may present recommendations, or increasingly, simply complete the transaction. Alternatively, it may advise me to wait while it monitors price fluctuations, and then will automatically buy when the price drops. My input is minimal, the AI is doing all the leg work and, crucially a lot of the decision making.

Therefore, a brand whose product appears in the agentic search has won. The brand that does not is invisible, regardless of how compelling its creative work might be.

This shift is already happening. Adobe reported that AI-driven traffic to US retail sites jumped 670% year-on-year on Cyber Monday. OpenAI is partnering with Walmart, Shopify and payment platforms like Stripe. Perplexity is working with PayPal. And Google just released agentic checkout options. All of which means a bot will search, shop and ship your favourite goods to you, with minimal human input. (GeekWire)

In the B2B space, the pattern is equally pronounced. B2B buyers are increasingly using AI tools to conduct the early stages of vendor research. The tools filter out a significant proportion of the competitive set before the human even sees them.

If your brand is not structured, consistent, and legible to machine systems at that filtering stage, it may never reach the conversation at all.

Brand Identity that’s Visible to Both Computer and Human

Research from Pernod Ricard’s head of digital and design illustrates the risk acutely. When the company analysed how leading AI models represented its brands, they saw immediate issues of mislabelling and lack of visibility. LLM data was often incomplete or incorrect, with one popular model miscategorising an affordable mass-market whisky as a prestige product (Harvard Business Review). The consequences of that kind of misrepresentation, at scale and at speed, are considerable.

Most brand investment is built around human perception. Visual identity conveys authority. Tone of voice builds trust. Campaigns that create emotional connection. These things remain valuable, but now, they are only part of the picture.

The other part, the one that agentic systems respond to, is structural. It is the coherence and consistency of your

product data
brand architecture across digital channels
accuracy and completeness of the information that AI systems read

The disciplines of brand management and data architecture are becoming inseparable.

The Brand Coherence Advantage

By 2030, the US consumer retail market alone could see up to $1 trillion in revenue generated by agentic commerce. Global projections are estimated at as much as $5 trillion. (Microsoft)

In this new world, organisations with strong, consistently maintained brand architecture have the advantage. A brand that means one thing clearly, that presents itself consistently across every channel and system, is easier for an AI agent to assess and surface. A brand with fragmented positioning, inconsistent written content, or poorly structured digital infrastructure presents as ambiguous. And ambiguity is completely incompatible with algorithmic decision-making.

The organisations that are best placed in an agentic commerce environment will be those that have invested in brand foundations:-

clear positioning
rigorous consistency
well-structured brand architecture

Brand equity now needs to be read by the systems increasingly making decisions on behalf of your customers. If that’s not happening, your equity is quietly being eroded. Have a look at your brand architecture today and ask yourself

is it coherent?
is it consistent?
is it searchable?

The brands best placed for this shift are already asking these questions. If you are not yet, now is a good time to start. We can help.

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Case Study: Evara

Preserva: a new brand that’s more than a load of old balls

Posted on 17th March 202619th March 2026 by Sam Steele

Young entrepreneur Freddie Bott was 23 when he looked at a dead tennis ball and thought, there has to be a better way.

The result is Preserva a brand that is as fun to look at as it is clever in concept.

from L: Design Director Matt Gillman, Account Exec Millie Regan and Freddie Bott discussing the project

Product

The product is simple and brilliant. Preserva is a fully automatic, rechargeable pressuriser that restores tennis and padel balls to their original playing condition, keeping them performing like new for at least four times longer.

With over 300 million tennis balls going to landfill every year, Bott’s solution is timely, practical and genuinely impactful.

Solution

The brand identity we created for Preserva reflects exactly what the product is: unpretentious, energetic and a little bit cheeky. The logo is deliberately soft and rounded, playful in its form. It has a squishy quality that feels at home on a court bag as much as it does on screen. Like Freddie, the logo does not take itself too seriously, and that is entirely the point.

After a detailed briefing with Freddie, the creative treatment is inspired by the pressure inside the balls and the tube. The logo’s letterforms designed to reflect that pressure.

And while many sports brand are heavily visually influenced by data and performance, Preserva deliberately is not. For example, brands like F1, Adidas, NBA, WHOOP and Oura build their entire visual identity around metrics, waveforms and performance-data.

While there is an obvious performance benefit to keeping tennis and padel ball pressure at their best, the brand isn’t truly about this. At it’s heart it’s about extending ball life, and in doing so extending play-time, as well as being more economical and sustainable along the way.

The bright, bold and confident green and orange of the colour palette are synonymous with the worlds of tennis and padel. They also pay more than a passing nod to the enthusiastic energy of the founder.

All of which make for a brand that’s hard to miss on a crowded retail shelf or a fast-moving social feed.

Underneath the playful exterior, the functional message is always present. The packaging is clean and clear, the product promise is front and centre, and every touchpoint communicates reliability without sacrificing the brand’s character.

Freddie set out to solve a real problem. Designhouse set out to make sure the world noticed. We think we managed both.

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200 Million Dollar Lesson in Brand Trust

Posted on 17th March 202619th March 2026 by Sam Steele

Earlier this month, when Anthropic refused the Pentagon’s demand to remove ethical guardrails from ClaudeAI, it lost a 200 million dollar contract overnight. Ouch!

Within hours, OpenAI, parent of ChatGPT, stepped in and took the deal.

Smart business move by ChatGPT’s Sam Altman? Not really.

ChatGPT uninstalls surged 295%
Social media was alight with calls to “cancel ChatGPT”
Key staff quit Open AI
Claude hit number one on the App Store for the first time ever
Claude installs rose by 51%
36% increase in revenue for Anthropic in just two weeks

Chat GPT agentic soldier created using AI

Trust Vs Profit

This is not a new story for brand equity watchers. At huge cost, Johnson & Johnson recalled 31 million bottles of Tylenol, and gained an invaluable long term reputation as the guardian of America’s public health. Patagonia told customers not to buy its products during Black Friday sales. Nike put Colin Kaepernick on its billboards while the stock was falling. In each case, the short-term loss was visible and measurable. The long-term gain was something ultimately more valuable. You can’t put a number on consumer trust.

This is the brand loyalty that comes from watching a company absorb a hard financial hit and hold its line anyway.

Consumers have become sophisticated readers of corporate behaviour. They know the difference between a brand that talks about values and one that walks them.

In the face of overwhelming consumer backlash, Altman publicly admitted his move “looked opportunistic and sloppy” and has rolled back back his Pentagon support. The damage to the ChatGPT brand may be harder to recover.

Integrity is not the enemy of growth. It is the foundation of it.

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years. We create brand identities that are authentic and long lasting. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

Contact us

ISI brand: from patchwork to platform

Posted on 17th March 20269th September 2026 by Sam Steele

Challenge

ISI had a problem that many ambitious, fast-scaling B2B organisations will recognise. The commercial story was compelling, the products were best-in-class, and the growth trajectory was clear. The brand, however, was not keeping pace.

There were five strong product lines, CEIC, EMIS, EPFR, REDD and iMoneyNet. Through a smart M&S strategy, ISI built genuine market authority. Each sub brand carried real equity with its audience. However, viewed together, the portfolio told a fragmented story. This is a result of separate visual languages, disconnected narratives and a corporate identity that did not reflect the integrated intelligence platform the business now is.

The brief was clear, and the ambition behind it impressive. Our task was to build a brand architecture that unified the portfolio under a single, coherent identity. The trick was to maintain the product-level equity that ISI’s marketing team had spent years building.

New Logo

The identity is bold and deliberate. A distinctive mark reduced to its most essential form. We created a primary palette anchored in a striking orange. And a typographic system that balances editorial character with functional precision. Consequently, ISI’s marketing team now have exactly the framework they need:

clear rules
scalable systems
consistent execution across regions and formats

We started, as we always do, with the strategic work. This includes stakeholder interviews, a competitive landscape review and a rigorous brand audit. As a result, we have a coherent base of insight from which to build, leading to three strategic hypotheses. These were developed and tested with the ISI leadership team before we settled on a direction.

The resulting brand model established a clear hierarchy. A strong, confident master brand identity for ISI. Each product line with its own lockup and positioning. Appropriately, and crucially, all sub brands are now now visibly connected to the group.

New Website

The new website, designed and built by our in-house digital team and launched this month, is the most visible expression of that work. It surfaces the integrated nature of ISI’s data platform. With improved navigation across the product portfolio, the brand positions the group for the enterprise conversations it is now ready to have.

Client feedback

“This bold brand refresh reflects the progress we have made as a group and embodies the distinctive role we play in the ecosystem, helping our customers cut through complexity and act with conviction.”

Steve Pulley, CEO

For any marketing leader managing a complex portfolio of sub-brands, ISI’s journey is instructive. Brand coherence is not a cosmetic exercise. Done properly, it is a structural asset, one that reduces the cost of execution, sharpens commercial positioning, and builds the long-term value that a business of this ambition deserves.

Visit isimarkets.com to see the new brand in action.

Learn more about the importance of brand architecture and coherence here

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

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When a Cheaper Competitor Launches, Does Your Brand Hold?

Posted on 18th February 202618th March 2026 by Sam Steele

Sometimes brand investment is short term and dates quickly. And then there is a smarter investment, brand design that compounds and lasts. The Heathrow Express story is the latter. This is a case study in strategic brand investment that delivered measurable ROI across fifteen years, through competitive disruption, a global pandemic, and a market that looked very different in 2025 than it did in 2011.

Where We Started

When we partnered with Heathrow Express way back in 2011, ahead of the 2012 London Olympics, the brief was about more than a visual refresh. The challenge was to modernise a recognised brand without losing the equity already built into it. We had to create a visual system robust enough to sustain premium positioning for the long term.

We started with hard research, not aesthetics.

Passenger perception
Journey mapping
Competitive landscape
Careful auditing of what to retain versus what to evolve

The result was a comprehensive brand architecture, applied consistently across

150 daily services
Every customer touchpoint, from livery and uniforms to ticketing, wayfinding, and real-time digital communications

The work was recognised immediately. Heathrow Express won a Transform Awards Gold for Best UK Rebrand, seen as the most innovative, premium train brand in the country, closely aligned with business and first-class air travel.

The commercial impact was equally swift. In 2011, Heathrow Express carried 5.68 million passengers, a 5.9% increase on the previous year. In 2012, despite the Olympic period triggering a significant reduction in overall airline passengers across the board, the service still carried 5.6 million. Corporate client retention grew to 88%, and the number of corporate accounts grew 94% year on year. The new brand was already doing its job.

Where We Ended

The more telling results came a decade later.

In 2022, the state of the art Elizabeth Line launched. Lower fares, broader connectivity, and a direct competitive challenge to Heathrow Express’s passenger base. Brand equity, in moments like this, either holds or it doesn’t. For Heathrow Express, it held, delivering

94% Customer satisfaction, the highest in UK rail.
73% Value-for-money ratings, the highest of any UK train operator, despite premium pricing.
93% Punctuality satisfaction
91% Cleanliness
94% Personal safety at 94%

By Q3 2025, passenger journeys had grown 18% year on year, making Heathrow Express the primary driver of growth across all open access operators, according to the Office of Rail and Road.

TLDR

Premium pricing
Volume growth
Industry-leading satisfaction
Fifteen years after the original investment

This is what strategic brand work looks like when it’s built properly. Not a campaign, not a cosmetic update, but a system designed to create competitive advantage over time and resilient enough to withstand genuine market disruption.

Read the full case study

Designhouse has partnered with FTSE 250 companies and global enterprises for over 50 years, delivering strategic brand consultancy that creates measurable competitive advantage. If you’d like to discuss your brand challenges, we’d be glad to talk.

Contact us

2025 Brand Glow-ups and Blow-ups

Posted on 19th December 202517th March 2026 by Sam Steele

The Year Digital-First Design Became Non-Negotiable

2025 marked a turning point – the world’s most valuable brands stopped designing for print and started designing for screens. The evidence is clear in the work, and more importantly, in the results.

30% of stock market value for S&P 500 companies is driven by brand strength (The Economist)
40%+ of a company’s market cap comes from brand and reputation, according to 60% of CEOs. (World Economic Forum)
56% higher total returns and 32% more shareholder return come from strong-reputation brands (McKinsey & Company).

Play with your brand equity at your balance sheet peril (yes, we’re looking at you Cracker Barrel and HBO Max)

So who were the winners and losers in the rebrands, evolutions, make-overs and muck ups of the year? We’ve listed a few below, and identified the three strategic trends that have defined 2025…

Trend 1: The Gradient Shift, Signalling Adaptability in Static Logos

Google, Microsoft, TDK Electronics, and Eventbrite all introduced gradient colour systems where solid blocks previously existed

TDK logo redesign, before and after

Microsoft’s Jon Friedman explicitly connected this shift to AI and “how AI is shifting the discipline of design.” Gradients signal continuous transformation and adaptability, critical messages when your market perceives change as the only constant. TDK’s gradient, developed by Interbrand “symbolizes TDK Transformation,” directly tying visual evolution to business strategy.

the evolution of MS icons

These aren’t aesthetic choices, they’re positioning statements that communicate organisational agility with innovation to secure ROI.

Trend 2: Screen-Native Design (The Death of Print-First Thinking)

Rounded corners replaced sharp edges across Microsoft Office, Walmart‘s spark motif, and Bentley’s winged B. Lufthansa Group removed its circular frame entirely. Amazon‘s rebrand by Koto prioritized “digital-first” colour saturation for Prime.

Simpler shapes, sharper, brighter colours all features of 2025 most successful brand redesigns

With Microsoft alone serving 400+ million Office users daily on screens, legibility at small sizes became business-critical. The Word icon dropped from four rectangles to three specifically to “reduce visual noise”, a direct response to mobile-first usage patterns.

Brands that haven’t optimized for 20px favicon displays and notification icons are actively losing recognition in the environments where engagement happens.

Trend 3: Vibrant Colour Recalibration: Standing Out in Saturated Digital Feeds

Eventbrite introduced “highlighter neons,” Alpen moved from heritage muted tones to “creams, blues and greens designed to bring vitality,” Amazon standardized “Smile Orange” after years of iterating sub brands with different colours, type fonts and inconsistent shades. And Walmart’s “spark” motif logo and yellow and blue palette were designed to be bolder and brighter than the 2008 iteration while remaining largely similar.

Eventbrite’s neons, Alpen’s colour glow-up, Walmart’s subtle evolution, with more vibrant blues and yellows

In algorithmically-curated feeds where users scroll past 300+ posts daily, colour becomes the primary stopping mechanism. Brands competing for attention needed saturation levels that registered on backlit screens, not just printed packaging.

The Billion Dollar Cost of Brand Equity

Cracker Barrel demonstrated how not to mess with your brand logo this year:

Removed 98-year heritage logo for generic wordmark
Stock dropped 10% within days (-$200M value)
Full reversal within weeks

original logo -> August 21 2025 rebrand -> August 27 2025 revert

And Cracker Barrel were not alone in what industry experts call the “corporate walk of shame”.

The HBO Max → Max → HBO Max debacle was roundly ridiculed and described as “the pinnacle of walking away from brand equity.” Having dropped the most recognisable and much loved brand element, HBO, two years ago, HBO has now been re-instated to the platform branding. The rebrand cost alone exceeded “what some streamers spend on content.”

HBO Max’s log walk of brand shame

Both brands confused modernisation with erasure. The strategic failure is the knowledge that 50+ years of consumer recognition has quantifiable value that vastly exceeds the cost of evolutionary refinement.

The New Brand Paradox: Instant Credibility Without Heritage

When Shell and Equinor needed branding for their North Sea joint venture, they faced the opposite problem: how to project 50 years of credibility on day one when entering a market where competitors were actively exiting.

The solution required encoding durability into every design decision, from the name (the A of Aberdeen + dura of durability) to the custom wordmark “deliberately designed to feel dense, as if carved out of granite.” Even the phonetics were strategic: spoken with a Scottish accent, the hard “D” softens to “Ajura,” balancing industrial authority with regional warmth.

Instant authority, Adura, Shell and Equinor’s North Sea joint venture

Whether preserving existing equity or manufacturing instant credibility, strategic design must encode the business positioning into visual systems that communicate before words do.

Designing For Tomorrow’s Digital Context

The brand evolutions we’ve seen in 2025 are infrastructure investments responding to three measurable pressures:

Mobile-first consumption: 60%+ of brand interactions now happen on screens under 6 inches
Algorithmic distribution: Brands must optimize for feed-based discovery, not destination sites
Global scalability: Multi-market operations demand systematic consistency over artisanal variation

The best redesigns came from creatives at Interbrand, Koto, Buck Design Ltd, BrandOpus, and our teams at Designhouse, all delivering work that prioritized systematic scalability over singular creative expression.

Whether unifying 50+ sub-brands (Amazon/Koto) or encoding instant credibility into new ventures (Adura/DesignHouse), the emphasis shifted from logo artistry to strategic systems thinking.

What This Means for B2B Brands in 2026

If your brand identity was designed before 2020, it likely optimizes for contexts that no longer drive business outcomes:

Print collateral that sits in drawers
Trade show booths visited by declining attendance
Desktop-first websites losing traffic to mobile

The question isn’t whether to evolve, it’s whether to do so proactively or reactively after your competitors have already captured the positioning premium.

DesignHouse has created strategic brand transformations for global leaders across telecommunications, transport, energy, and consumer sectors for over 50 years. Based in London, we combine strategic rigor with design excellence to create identities that drive business outcomes.

https://designhouse.co.uk/