In-house Essays: Up and to the Right

Being the in-house team that runs a brand is great fun.

We work fast with a deep knowledge of our products, and our creative ideas and processes can influence the rest of the organisation.

But it’s important for us to remember that creativity is a Business Function, not a Business Purpose.

At what3words, our mission is to become a global standard in addressing and our business ambition is to be worth billions of pounds.

The most important chart in the company shows usage and revenue plotted over time as a line.

It's a very simple graph that shows how all the work we do accumulates value, and the CEO needs the line to go up and to the right.

The in-house team must contribute to that line moving in the right direction.

As business leaders we need to fully understand the company's strategy and then translate that into a brand story that inspires and enables our colleagues, partners and customers.

As an example, every few years we make sure the what3words Brand Principles are correct to help the team create more of the work we believe will help us achieve our goals.

We discussed our key objectives, looked at which of our recent campaigns are working best, decided what we need to do more of, and then checked if the existing brand principles were still fit for purpose.

We decided to sharpen two of the three principles: an evolution, not a revolution, but necessary.

We’ve also found a Brand Strategy that is made as practical as possible is much easier to accept and execute by the whole business.

It’s orders of magnitude more impactful when everyone in the company can use the Brand to help them create value every day.

From UX, to Tech, to Sales, we can all deliver a great brand experience that helps the line go up and to the right.

At what3words we design the brand and in-house team to achieve our business ambitions.

That’s what the CEO of every organisation needs.

And of course, the ability to create a great brand is key to that success.