Creating a clear company identity
Ascential is a specialist, global information company offering industry-leading expertise from brands such as Cannes Lions, WGSN, and Retail Week. But while these brands are well known, Ascential itself is less so.
Through a series of workshops and stakeholder engagement sessions, we worked with the Ascential team to clearly define their digital identity and articulate what it is that makes it a unique, inspiring business. The output was a new corporate website where design, imagery, and copy work together to bring the Ascential story to life.
Services Provided
- Digital and content strategy
- Photography
- Design
- Copywriting
- Web development
The challenge
Authentic and coherent messaging
Prior to starting the project, Ascential had developed a new corporate identity which spoke to their core values and ethos as a company. The task for us was to transform this new identity digitally, making sure that everything from the site architecture to the photography we shot worked together to provide an engaging solution for all stakeholders, be they investors or potential new recruits.
Keeping the focus on Ascential while honoring its world-class brands was a key challenge. Unifying messaging with a single tone of voice proved key to creating a focused website that’s true to the business and its ambitions.
“We are SO excited to go live – the initial feedback we’ve had from around the business has been fantastic. Professional, slick, great design, actually interesting content – and most importantly reflects our company’s mission, values and culture. We can’t wait to watch the site grow as we create more and more brilliant content. Thank you”
, Director of Corporate Communications
The Solution
A story-led corporate website
Aligning our process to Ascential’s mission, values, and culture was key to building a site which delivered the authentic narrative the Ascential team and their stakeholders wanted. Through stakeholder engagement sessions and workshops it became clear that we needed to show how the work Ascential does relates to real-world problems, both now and in the future.
The solution was to make the new website story-led, with a video series of stories highlighting Ascential’s expertise and portfolio on the home page.
Design, copy and photography all reflected the single brand identity and tone of voice, while still allowing the personalities of each business area to shine through. As Ascential is a global company, it was vital we enabled all locations to feed into the content creation process, with photography taking place in the UK, Hong Kong and the US.
For the careers section of the website, we ran a series of dedicated workshops, with questionnaires also sent out to each brand and function. This allowed us to gain a deeper understanding of the individual team cultures around Ascential, which was then reflected in both the written and visual content. Integrating the section with the rest of the corporate site has allowed the Ascential narrative and mission to flow seamlessly across the site, creating a more coherent user journey that also avoids any content duplication. Potential careers applicants now have a much clearer idea of roles and functions, brand values and attitudes, as well as all the necessary application information.
The Outcome
A site people want to visit
The website launched in September 2018. The inclusion of more focused and relevant content, as well as taking the new brand identity digital, has helped clearly tell the Ascential story.
increase in sessions and a huge 58% uplift in page views
increase in average session duration. From 1:34 to 2:23.
decrease in bounce rate. From 58% to 42%.