Brief
Baldwins Group, a leading accountancy firm based in the Midlands, came to Champions to better understand its brand.
Despite large scale M&A activity, the organisation was still set up as a group of unrelated businesses, clustered under three main brands – Campbell Dallas, Wilkins Kennedy, and Baldwins Group, and Baldwins was looking to streamline its marketing activity and unify its brands to work more harmoniously together.
Delivery
To achieve this, the Champions Strategy team spent around six months meeting and corresponding with 57 employees of the three businesses that come under the Baldwins umbrella to gain a deeper insight into and understanding of the business to provide tangible and effective recommendations around the future direction of the collective communications.
Champions outlined the value of all of the businesses coming together under one brand, communicating a clear message to the market, and set out the business rationale, highlighting the benefits the group would receive from brand alignment and how it supported Baldwins’ objective(s).
The Strategy team then created a framework and roadmap for how the alignment could be achieved across the businesses with maximum cost and time efficiency.
In addition, Champions helped Baldwins spot a clear market opportunity, identifying that the entrepreneurial, owner-driver, family, independent business markets were being underserviced by large accountants racing to pick up ‘scraps’ from the break-up of the big 4 on PLC and Government audit work.
Outcome
The Champions team was able to demonstrate that this underserviced market is not only very strong and growing, but also a natural fit with Baldwins’ existing client base, its local service delivery focus and broad service line offering.
Furthermore, Baldwins was provided with a wealth of information and resources regarding potential activity recommendations, based on the three businesses, their objectives, current activities, and competition.
"Your presentation very accurately summarised the business as it currently stands and was a catalyst for some very honest, open debate. A debate that has long been needed. Very healthy and good timing too, as we need to make changes before it is too late. This exercise does not just apply to marketing but the whole ethos of the business in everything we do. I was very pleasantly surprised by the level of insight and the recommendations made. I can imagine that your team put a lot of good work into the findings, so a big thank you to them.”
Tim Croft, Managing Partner, Baldwins
