Dynamic Insights

A new brand to celebrate 25 years of Dynamic

BY LARNER CALEB

14 OCTOBER 2024

Coinciding with our 25^th Anniversary, Dynamic has rebranded. But if a company is riding high on the back of its 25^th year, that suggests plenty of success, so why the need to rebrand?

Well first and foremost, rebrands aren’t always the consequence of a lack of success or even negativity. They can be for all sorts of reasons from expansion into new markets to new product ranges, from a change of culture to aligning with emerging trends—and many more.

In Dynamic’s case, it’s a consequence of a number of drivers coinciding around the same period.

Technological advancements and aligning with emerging trends

Innovation has always been in Dynamic’s DNA. But, whilst we’ve discussed it with clients and implemented it on many projects, we’ve never really made it a core part of our proposition. We are now producing more and more innovative work that not only delivers high-quality learning and communications materials, but that also solves some real commercial challenges. Through our Innovation Department and its increased presence on our website, we aim to show how more challenges can be solved, from training large groups of people in otherwise difficult circumstances to improving the way we can improve feedback and future training, innovation will not only be a core part of our offer, it will be one of three values that we work by, day-to-day.

A change in positioning

We’re finding we’re holding different conversations with clients than those of a few years ago. We’re working with more of them to explore their issues and to overcome a broad range of organisational challenges. Yes, we produce outstanding learning resources, but we’re partnering with more clients strategically as well as delivering an outstanding product. Our new brand will reflect this in the way we look, feel and operate.

We're on a mission

We always have been. Especially when it comes to delivering first-class elearning resources for our clients. But, in line with an evolving industry landscape as well as a whole new post-pandemic world of work, that mission looks slightly different. That mission involves achieving real impact, that lasts. Setting tangible and tailored success metrics. Measuring them, reviewing and improving. And ultimately achieving ROI for our clients. A return which could be money saved, greater productivity, increased sales, improved working environments, safer working practices—or indeed a combination.

…Which brings us neatly to a shift in our values

We’ve distilled what were many positive values down to just three core values. But why? Well, whilst our previous values were positive and designed to help us deliver the best service in the best way, pragmatically speaking, there were just too many of them for our people to remember—and live by, on each and every project.

The process

Over a few weeks we held workshops, so we could get a real feel for what people thought of a number of elements including:

We also took a lot of feedback from clients, past and present and made a real point of reinforcing the elements that were most appreciated. As you can imagine, there were a lot of minds on this and plenty of opinions on what we should focus on. The key here was to distil the data and move towards a greater clarity.

Keep it simple

Simplicity was key. In everything. From defining what we do to the thinking behind our logo, from our strapline to the language we use. All these smaller elements should contribute to a wider but ultimately, simpler brand proposition.

But what does that mean in reality? Well, whilst the services we offer are many and varied, we needed to distil that down into what’s at our core and be explicit about what we offer. Any logo or brandmark we create should have simplicity at its root and not be overcomplicated by the immediate desire ‘just to be different’. Any strapline should really say what we do and why it’s a benefit. And most definitely, any language we use should be jargon-free and sound like it’s coming from us as a good bunch of people to work with; not a faceless corporate body and definitely not AI.

Choose your words wisely

In fact, keeping things simple when it comes to branding should be a cornerstone of any approach. Princeton psychologist Daniel Oppenheimer made this clear in a paper fantastically titled: ‘Consequences of Erudite Vernacular Utilised Irrespective of Necessity: Problems With Using Long Words Needlessly’.

In the study, participants read passages of text including graduate school applications, dissertation abstracts and translations of a piece of work by Descartes. Some participants read the original versions, written in a verbose style while others were given edited versions where unnecessarily complex words were switched for simpler alternatives. After asking the participants to rate the intelligence of the authors, those who read the simplified versions scored 13% higher than those who read the more complex, original texts.

This according to Richard Shotton, in his great book on behavioural science, The Illusion of Choice, is ‘invaluable as it runs counter to much brand behaviour.’

Complexity versus simplicity. Who wins?

‘According to the language consultancy, Linguabrand, the average reading age in the UK is 13.5, but the average reading age of brand websites is 17.5. This, they argue isn’t just a factor of the subject matter—after all the Financial Times communicates far more complex matters but at an average reading age of 16. Instead, it’s explained by a lingering misapprehension: too many professionals believe complexity signals intelligence, but all the evidence points in the opposite direction.’

Richard Shotton

The Illusion of Choice

So all in all, very good reasons to run a thread of simplicity through the whole approach to Dynamic’s new brand.

Make things concrete

The same goes for a strapline and headlines. As Shotton explains elsewhere in The Illusion of Choice, ‘Think about Apple’s early iPod advertising. Whilst other mp3 players of the day trumpeted their storage size in megabytes, Apple made it real with ‘1,000 songs in your pocket’. The consumer was able to picture the device in their jeans pocket, easily storing all their favourite tunes.’

Apple’s preference for concrete language is rare as Shotton explains further, ’Far too many brands are attracted to vague abstractions, like Rightmove’s ‘Find Your Happy’ or Hitachi’s, ‘Inspire the next’. As Shotton explains, ‘A simple copy tweak can make your brand more memorable than the competition.’ And as we didn’t simply rebrand for the heck of it, we thought these were good principles to follow.

So, what of the outputs?

Well one of the main outputs is the website that you’re browsing now. But as you’ll know, that’s not the whole story as we touch on a few more elements (but not all), here.

Our values

So, the need for simplicity drove many key outputs, including reducing the number of values down from double figures to just three. That’s not to say we’ve done away with all the previous values, but more that we’ve distilled them and encompassed them into three core values: Innovation, Inspiration and Integrity. And here’s why:

Innovation

Pushing beyond the ordinary

We combine a ‘can-do’ attitude with a ‘what-if’ curiosity to implement new solutions and ways of working. We stretch emerging technologies, pushing ourselves and the experiences we create for our clients’ audiences, achieving real impact for everyone.

Inspiration

Transforming people and organisations

We design inspirational digital resources to not only look amazing, but also to inspire tangible transformation, such as behavioural change, increased productivity, fewer accidents in the workplace or even more sales. And by inspiring people to be the best they can be, we unlock the potential of organisations and demonstrate the impact of digital learning.

Integrity

Building trust

To inspire and innovate, we build trust through open, honest behaviour and communication with ourselves and our clients. It’s the only way to maximise value, quality and impact—and always deliver on our promises.

And we’ve not only made our values easier to live and work by, we’ve baked them into our logo, which brings us nicely to:

Our brandmark

Our brandmark is a triangle, but in the spirit of all that simplicity mentioned above, you’ll notice it also makes the capital ‘D’ from our Dynamic name.

It also represents a play button, referenced because much of what we produce is interactive and immersive. And, definitely without overcomplicating things, it also represents an arrow pointing forwards, alluding to the progress we help organisations to inspire in themselves and their people.

Simple, right? And it doesn’t stop there. In the interests of simplicity being more easily remembered (and recalled as the more intelligent approach), we’ve constructed our Dynamic ‘D’ from those three values of Inspiration, Innovation and Integrity—so when people see our logo, they see our values staring right back at them. After all, there’s no point re-branding with new values if we don’t carry out our work and carry ourselves in a way that embodies those same values.

Our values, baked into our brandmark:

Innovation

Inspiration

Integrity

Our strapline:

Inspirational digital learning

By now, you know the theme of the approach, so you won’t be surprised to hear that we determined our strapline should outline what we do and why it’s beneficial.

But why?

Well, essentially we create outstanding digital learning (elearning as some still call it). And yes, while we have carried out work in what one may see as other areas including communications, internal comms or even branding, it’s always with the ultimate aim of communicating knowledge, awareness or expertise, digitally. And that ‘Inspirational’ part? Well, that’s not just meant as a complimentary introduction to what we do; it carries real substance as the work we do is intended to inspire some form of tangible transformation, be it through greater awareness, changed behaviours, better working practices, safer environments or indeed many other positive improvements.

That’s why our new mission is:

To inspire human and organisational success through learning that achieves a lasting impact

Growing a 25-year legacy

Together with a new, more modern look and feel, this new brand will continue our 25-year legacy, cement our market position and help us to keep delivering outstanding communications in an ever-evolving learning environment. Not only that, but as we deliver on our values time after time, we hope to enable wider and more diverse conversations with more people—and indeed organisations—that we can help to make progress.

Dynamic Insights

A new brand to celebrate 25 years of Dynamic

BY LARNER CALEB

14 OCTOBER 2024