The bastion of business

The Moment of Change: Changing the game

What GFirst LEP was doing for the county was pretty revolutionary. Out of all the LEPs, they made the most compelling cases to the government and EU, getting millions of pounds of funding that let them do some real good for Gloucestershire.

They just couldn’t tell that story very well. The tone of their comms didn’t match the dynamic nature of the team and its CEO, and their projects took years to finalise, so it was hard for them to make any impact. They needed some help to get people excited about the change they were making.

The plan we made

With a comms audit and a can-do attitude, we challenged GFirst LEP to tell their story, rather than communicating just to justify their existence. It was time to put an end letting dense datasets and policy take the centre stage. Instead, it was time to embrace the future.

We came up with the perfect strapline that underpinned everything GFirst LEP worked on, summing up their mission statement in three simple words – Gloucestershire: Future-Proofed. We backed it up with a clear and confident tone of voice and inspired them to ditch the jargon, paving the way for a game-changing advertising campaign.

That wasn’t the end of it, though. Throughout the rest of the LEP’s tenure, we’ve continued to work with them on important documents that outline their ambitious vision. For each of these, we stripped the design and content right back, presenting the LEP as more confident and professional, while making sure important points could stand out. We developed bright, bold ways of displaying data so that each document was a pleasure to read, rather than a chore.

We were also entrusted with the brands and digital presences for numerous key initiatives, including Made in Gloucestershire, Invest in Gloucestershire, the GFirst Careers Hub and the Gloucestershire Skills Portal. Each of these projects had very different audiences, but one thing had to be certain – they had to have the same GFirst LEP confidence and clarity. That’s where our sense of style and optimistic, yet clear, tone of voice came out to play.

The Mighty change

The government brought the LEP initiatives to a halt in 2023/24, but the legacy of GFirst LEP is still set to live on. Thanks to our change in communicative style, the LEP’s strategic documents were amongst the strongest in the UK, and the people of Gloucestershire recognised GFirst LEP as the county’s bastion of business.

We couldn’t be more proud to put together their final legacy document, detailing all of their successful projects from throughout the years. The impact of GFirst LEP’s work will be felt for decades – and we’re honoured to have played a part in that.