The Challenge
Based in Canberra, FERST approached us to help re-position their business. Specifically, the task was to transition them from a traditional fire safety and emergency training organisation to a far broader business spanning: emergency response, risk assessment, evacuation training consultancy for businesses, health care, government departments and education. As leaders in their field for more than 10 years, FERST was also preparing for growth into new territories where they would need to compete with larger, well-established organisations. This made re-evaluating how they presented themselves to the market even more important.
Working together with FERST to establish a clear new positioning for their business.
The Strategy
The journey began by gathering vital insights from customer research with clients in Canberra, across ACT and NSW. We then worked closely with FERST to establish a clear new positioning for the business. Ultimately, what FERST does is protect a business’s key asset: it’s employees. Using this as our foundation, we also needed to create a simple descriptor to reinforce FERST’s broader offering and the unique skills within their business, from paramedic-trained first aid specialists to terrorism and intruder response specialists. The positioning we landed on was: ‘People First’. Simple, clear and direct.
The Creative
With a defined brand strategy in place, we next had to ensure the visual brand identity and marketing communications matched with the new positioning in message, tone of voice and professionalism. Consequently we re-designed the FERST branding, from the master brand logo to each of their three service pillars – Risk, Response and Training. This ensured all collateral, training manuals, new business presentations and direct marketing had the same consistent look, in doing so representing a new level of professionalism and differentiation for the business.
The Results
The new branding has given our clients a clear vision of what we do. We are no longer seen as just as an emergency response training company. We are an industry leading company protecting people with knowledge, giving people the skills to determine and minimise risk, the tools to identify and respond and then training people in facets of risk, security, hostile intruder and emergency response.”
