ABOUT

Swindon Borough Council, Wiltshire County Council and the Swindon & Wiltshire LEP awarded Whistlejacket a brief in 2019 to develop a strategy and a brand for attracting commercial investment into the region, with an emphasis on from the Far East and US West Coast. The area had a wealth of legacy industry and commercial workplace assets but had suffered some damaging reversals with large employers leaving the region, and it needed to revitalise its efforts in attracting employers to the region.

Swindon and Wiltshire have core strengths in some specific industrial sectors such as Advanced Manufacturing, Life Sciences, Cyber Security and Digital. Our first step, therefore, was to research these strengths, and develop a compelling narrative for why investors in these specific areas would find Swindon and Wiltshire an attractive proposition. This involved a combination of desk research and interviews with key employers and stakeholders in the region

We then developed a three-pronged strategy around these commercial sectors, advocating the region’s strengths in being able to supply a skilled and available workforce, modern and business-ready workspaces in a variety of formats – from large scale manufacturing to start-up hubs aimed at entrepreneurs, and a ‘soft landing’ – support for new businesses entering the region especially those coming here for the first time.

We then developed a new brand identity for the campaign, a new design system (which deliberately followed many of the attributes of the UK wide ‘Britain is Great’ campaign to promote synergy with the national messaging and optimise relationships with national development bodies) and developed a suite of marketing collateral – leaflets, folders and presentation templates – for the Councils and other stakeholder partners to use.

We then designed and built a new website for the campaign which provides support and information about the region, and makes the case for investment. It mirrors the design themes and strategic foundations of the wider campaign. The website was designed to allow the easy addition of new sections to the site.

With the successful launch of the campaign, we have now been commissioned by the region to develop further collateral:

Sector-specific communication pieces going into detail about the region’s expertise in their target industries.

Lifestyle communications, explaining why the region is a wonderful place to live, work and study.

Case Studies for specific businesses that have made the move into the region – and seen the benefits.

And these have involved interviewing key local leaders and entrepreneurs in order to build the region's commercial credentials.

We have now been further commissioned to launch new LinkedIn social media feeds for the campaign which we also populate and run, as well as providing brand assets, templates and social media cards for consistent brand representation.