Client: Lonely Goat
Project: Brand Strategy
Output: Lonely Goat Brand Book
Time frame: 4 months
Lonely Goat are the biggest online running community in the UK and I was lucky enough to work with them for four months in December 2020. The main project I worked on during that time was their brand strategy. It was clear after my initial consultation with the co-founders (Andy, Steve and Chris), that to take the business to the next phase of growth, they needed to define their brand and its core purpose.
Here are the steps I took to create the brand strategy and roll it out across the business.
Step 1 – Discovery
The discovery stage consisted of two stages: an internal brainstorm and external assessment.
The internal session took the form of a three hour collaborative workshop attended by the team. We spent this session understanding the essence of the brand, asking questions like:
- What attributes do you want customers and prospects to associate with your brand?
- What market position do you want to achieve?
- What are the core values of the LG brand?
- What is the LG brand persona or point of view?
Some of the outputs from this session included making sport accessible to all, celebrating achievement (no matter how small), celebrating diversity, providing a support network and community for runners, connecting people through a common identity, welcoming people, allowing people to express themselves and share their experiences/ achievements.
The next step was to build on this insight with two virtual focus groups (1 hour each).
The purpose of the focus groups was to gather qualitative data that provided insight into the Lonely Goat community and the members perception of the brand. In these sessions I asked questions like:
- How did you first come across LG?
- Why did you first join the Facebook page/ running club?
- Have those initial thoughts changed or are they still the same?
- What is the best thing about following the Facebook page/ being a member?
The output revealed lots of things, some of these being that members loved the feeling of inclusivity and being part of something. They liked the flexibility of the club and being able to run at a time that suited them, yet still be able to communicate and share experiences with the wider community. They felt welcome and included in the club.
In order to validate these findings, the final step was to conduct a quantitative survey and put some numbers behind the hypothesis. This was done in the form of an online survey.
Before moving to the next step, I discussed the findings with the co-founders. They were happy with the strategic direction, so I proceeded to creation stage.
Step 2 – Create
The creation of the brand strategy involved pulling together all the insight gathered during discovery stage and understanding the key themes running across all of these data points. The core topics that were consistent throughout were: inclusivity, identity, accessibility and community. These themes would therefore form the four core pillars of the brand strategy for Lonely Goat.
The next things to define were the purpose, vision, mission and values. These were defined as follows:
Purpose
Encouraging and enabling sports participation to improve wellbeing worldwide, whilst promoting environmental sustainability.
Vision
To be recognised as a global movement that has redefined sports participation.
Mission
To provide runners around the world with a shared identity and sense of belonging; enabling them to share their running experiences in a supportive and inclusive global community, which they can access any time, anywhere.
You can see the full brand bible here.
Step 3 – Activate
The final, and essential, step in this project was rolling it out to the team and ensuring it was fully understood by all business functions.
To ensure the brand was understood and being actively put into practice, I presented the brand bible to the team in smaller sessions.
And finally…
Chris and the other founders were delighted with the work and here’s what they had to say:
“I worked with Kate on a project that required a broad range of marketing expertise. Kate demonstrated huge amounts of energy and enthusiasm to quickly understand the business, identify the key areas to be addressed, and devised a plan for the team to implement. Kate really helped us develop our brand and better understand our positioning. Kate is very professional but also a pleasure to work with on a personal level. I would recommend her highly to any business requiring a holistic review of their brand and marketing strategy.”
Chris Marsden, Lonely Goat Co-Founder
