Spinach branding director Leigh Banks on the Berkeley Group project.

Spinach Branding has built a strong presence in the property and built environment sector, with projects spanning major developments, leading consultancies and architectural practices. Work includes Barking Riverside – one of Europe’s most ambitious regeneration projects – global real estate consultancy Knight Frank, and architecture firm Woldon. It was this experience that led The Berkeley Group, one of the UK’s foremost property developers and housebuilders, to approach Spinach to refresh and update its brand guidelines. We asked Spinach branding director Leigh Banks to guide us through the process.

The brief

The Berkeley Group originally approached Spinach to update their brand guidelines. There are six autonomous companies within the Group (St George, St James, Berkeley, St Edward, St William, and St Joseph), as well as having their own corporate communications requirements. As you can imagine, the brand guidelines were extensive. The sheer size and the density made it difficult for users to navigate, let alone use the existing brand guidelines, and keeping these up-to-date with regular developments and content changes was also proving a challenge.

The approach

When we considered The Berkeley Group’s needs as well as their brand values, the concept of a physical set of printed guidelines seemed dated and not fitting the needs of one of the world’s leading property developers. Instead, we recommended to create an online brand hub for the company. A brand hub, in simple terms, is an online resource that gives employees, media agencies and business partners, access to core brand information, technical guidelines, as well as templates and assets.

The challenges

The Berkeley Group are a professional organisation. They work in a manner that you would expect of most successful and well-managed corporate organisations. As with all projects, we configure the delivery team based on the profile of the project. In the case of The Berkeley Group, it was important to align our delivery strategy and approach to project management to mirror their expectations, whilst maintaining our sense of creativity. We achieved this by putting in place a senior project director to ensure the momentum and direction of the project continued in accordance with the plan. This was all the senior creatives were involved in every stage.

The takeaway

While the project was in the same sector, the brief was unique, which played to our strengths. We often feel Spinach is at its strongest when we are looking for solutions to new challenges. Of course, it is nice to have gained experience of working with some of the largest companies in the property and construction sector, but it is important to note that Spinach has built its success and reputation of being true to the brand, not the industry or sector.