Rebranding

Established in 1977, Bristow & Sutor specialises in debt recovery for public sector organisations, including local authorities.

Following a management buy-out and with a focused growth strategy being developed, Bristow & Sutor tasked us with looking at ways in which it could improve the visibility and perception of the business, with a view to differentiating it amongst its competitors and clarifying its offer with its clients.

In a sector that is often associated with the negative publicity of the ‘can’t pay, we’ll take it away’ culture, clear, honest messaging was crucial to our work. After in-depth stakeholder engagement, research and analysis, we articulated a simple brand purpose and narrative, crafting the new tagline ‘cool, calm and collected’.

Fundamentally though, collection is at the very heart of what the business does, and we thought an interesting way to tell the brand story was by referencing the metaphor of bees gathering pollen. Bees not only work tirelessly and diligently to collect for the greater good, but they are symbolic of industry, organisation and teamwork. Cool, calm and collected values that we thought were particularly appropriate.

To avoid any potentially negative connotations though, we focussed on the hive as opposed to the bees, as we felt it was a softer way of telling the story, and alluded to the collection rather than the collecting.

With that in mind, six stylised ‘chevron’ bees, gather to form a hexagonal building block and deliver a contemporary identity.

The new brand identity was rolled out across the website and literature, utilising innovative typographic treatments, a unique graphic language and striking photography of flowers to tie in with the overall concept.

What we did
Brand strategy / Brand identity / Brand communications: Website / Stationery / Presentation design / Brochures / Signage / Art direction / Interiors / Photography