Four case studies, one recurring problem

People often ask what the through-line is across the work I've done. The sectors look unrelated on paper: a zoo, a national telethon, an online retailer, a cancer charity. But the problems underneath them were far more similar than the org charts suggested, and that is usually the case.

Here is a short tour of the case studies on this site, and what each one was really about.

Chester Zoo: competing on value, not price

The temptation for any visitor attraction under pressure is to discount. It feels responsive, and it shows up in the numbers quickly. It also trains your audience to wait for the offer.

The work at Chester Zoo was about shifting the conversation from price to value: what people were actually buying, and why it was worth it. That was a strategy problem rather than a campaign problem, which is a distinction worth holding on to. No amount of creative fixes a positioning that has quietly slipped.

Children in Need: when your audience moves and your model doesn't

Telethon viewing fell as audiences moved to on-demand. The instinct in that situation is to make the night bigger and louder. The answer was structural instead: a shift to a season-long national-and-local model, so the fundraising no longer depended on everyone being in front of the same screen at the same time.

This is the most transferable lesson of the four. Your people have moved, and your model has not moved with them. Most sectors face a version of it eventually.

Very: repositioning without tearing anything down

Very carried a finance-first catalogue image at a point when it needed to be seen as a desirable fashion brand. The work was repositioning through brand and celebrity partnerships, and the commercial result followed: twenty percent year-on-year growth and the number one sales contributor in the group.

What matters here is what was not done. The business was not rebuilt. Reinvention for its own sake is a risk rather than a result. This was a sharper version of what already existed.

Versus Cancer: small team, clear opportunity

A seed fund of fifteen thousand pounds and a team of six built a Manchester concert series for The Christie. Eighty percent of tickets sold before any artist was announced, and the proceeds went on to fund immunotherapy research now used across the NHS.

That did not come from resource. It came from seeing an opportunity clearly and backing it before the evidence was complete.

What the four have in common

Read them together and the same three things come up.

• The real problem is rarely the presented problem. Boards tend to arrive with a campaign brief. The useful conversation is usually one level above it.
• Building on what exists beats starting again. Three of these four were about sharpening something the organisation already had, not replacing it.
• Someone had to decide before it was certain. None of these were obvious at the time. They looked obvious afterwards, which is a different thing entirely.

If your situation resembles any of these more closely than you would like, it is probably worth a conversation about which of the four it actually is.

Summary

• Chester Zoo: moved the conversation from price to value rather than discounting.
• Children in Need: changed the model when the audience moved, instead of making the night bigger.
• Very: repositioned a finance-first image into a fashion brand without rebuilding the business.
• Versus Cancer: a small team and a small seed fund backed a clear opportunity early.
• The pattern: look one level above the brief, sharpen what already exists, and decide before it is certain.