Overview
Industry:
Marketing
Services:
Brand strategy
Brand identity
Copywriting
Marketing strategy
Tone of voice
Internal rollout
Activation assets
Web design
A brand that needed to catch up with itself.
For a long time, something didn’t feel aligned at Ketchup. The work was strong, the thinking was sharp, but the way our brand showed up didn’t do who we had internally become, justice. We knew a rebrand would be a ton of work, but not doing it was much more costly. To grow, attract the right clients, and establish Ketchup as the premier Nottingham marketing agency, we had to face it: we needed a sharper identity.
We hadn’t changed overnight: we had grown over the years. Now, the difference between internal reality and external perception was too stark to ignore.
So we did what we often do for our clients: we held up a mirror. This project became about bringing our brand back into alignment with the people, thinking and culture behind it. We revolted, and the results have been legendary.
Read more about the start of the journey.
We revolted, and the results have been legendary.
The job was a big, but important one: to properly reflect who we are today, not who we used to be. To make sure that everything we do is aligned and feels true to who we are.
This meant interrogating everything: our tone of voice, our visual identity, and the internal language we’d grown used to, but had grown out of. We needed clarity, consistency, and a system that could scale with us as we grew. It’s not easy looking in a mirror sometimes, but we had to face reality.
Through brand workshops, creative surgery sessions, and open conversation across the team, we rebuilt clarity from the inside out. We defined what still felt true by developing new brand values, and decided what needed refining and what had simply become habit.
That process shaped everything that followed, from tone of voice principles to visual devices like the strikethrough and highlight system and the Ketchup Way of thinking. We designed a refreshed identity system built around honesty, contrast and intent. The intention? To reflect how we actually think and work. That includes our new logo, the ikon.
Explore the messy middle of the process.
See all the thought behind the development stage.
The result is a brand that finally reflects the agency behind it. We have a clearer identity. A more intentional tone of voice. A visual system that embraces process, not polish.
More importantly, it gave the team a shared language for how Ketchup shows up, and it aligned us with our why – our reason for existing. And that’s to leave things better than we found them. This wasn’t about becoming something new, but becoming accurate. Matching up to the right marketing, done the right way. The Ketchup Way. And it’s time we show who we are to the world.
Brand strategy.
We refined the foundations of the brand by stripping back assumptions and rebuilding clarity around who we are, what we stand for, and how we articulate that consistently.
Tone of voice.
We developed a sharper, more confident voice built on graft, craft, and clarity, removing filler language and focusing on how we actually speak – not how agencies are expected to sound.
Visual identity system.
We created a flexible identity system built around contrast, including the strikethrough and highlight devices, designed to show the thinking and not just the output.
0
Internal workshops, creative surgeries and working sessions that shaped the direction of the brand.
0
Unified identity system built across strategy, tone of voice and visual language.
0%
increase in direct traffic to the Ketchup website – people wanted to know what’s new!
