Cooking up communication brandwidth at Sainsbury’s

Internal communication within a large organisation has a wide and dynamic range of messaging to cope with – often more so than external communication. Yet all too often it is only given cursory consideration in brand identity guidelines that have their roots in external communication. 

Sainsbury’s came to us because of increasing challenges in delivering coherent and compelling employee communications that were ‘on-brand’. Put simply, the existing guidelines didn’t allow the necessary brandwidth. 

From 'look-book' to 'cookbook' 
Having developed a colleague proposition, “You make the difference”, we worked closely with the Communication team with a brief to research, design and implement a simple, friendly and accessible colleague communication ‘toolkit’.

We began with an extensive audit of internal communication, which revealed the challenges and opportunities to create the required bandwidth. Using this insight we defined a new approach, centered around the concept of a brand “cookbook” with simple building blocks and clear guidelines.

New ingredients
We introduced new design “ingredients” which complemented and could sit alongside the Sainsbury’s external brand as well as a more appropriate tone of voice, simply and clearly defined by four characteristics. The results were well received by the internal communication team and agencies alike, and proved the springboard for greater flexibility and creativity across Sainsbury’s employee communications.