Helping a cultural icon break the habits of its sector
Brand
Breed
Music venue and arts charity
Brawn
260 employees
“In giving us the language we needed to better articulate who we are and what we’re here to do, Bethany has helped us to sit more comfortably in our own skin. The end result is not only a powerful voice and a compelling brand, but a stronger and more potent organisational culture.”
The challenge.
The Glasshouse (the artist formerly known as Sage Gateshead) has been a well-loved leader in the North East’s music scene for over 20 years, as well as an iconic feature of the Newcastle skyline.
Stop by and you can catch Self Esteem performing with Royal Northern Sinfonia, join a jazz band, learn to play the ukelele, or be the first to hear a new local artist destined for the big time. People describe their experiences there as “electrifying”, “deeply moving”, and “bloody fantastic”, calling it “my happy place” and declaring “I’m proud to be a Geordie – and this place is one of the reasons why.”
But their organisational language wasn’t living up to that dynamic reality. Despite the warmth and passion of the team, and the joy and vibrancy of their audience’s experiences, their style of communicating was bland, cold, and forgettable.
“For a long time our language was influenced – and, we now see, limited – by the patterns and habits of our sector,” identifies Fraser Anderson, Executive Director at The Glasshouse. “Perhaps we inherited a lot of it from our public sector partnership beginnings.
Also the organisation is complex and has sometimes felt like lots of mini worlds, with different programmes with different purposes talking to different audiences. On any given day we’re communicating with a funder, a 14-year-old gig goer, a world-famous artist, a 50-year-old guitar student – and trying to hold that all together and speak to everyone felt hard, so we settled for a sort of ‘neutral’ tone which we hoped would work for all our audiences (which we now realise didn’t really work for any of them!)”
When outside forces led to the need for a name change, and a wider rebranding process got underway, it seemed like the perfect moment to tackle the issue with their organisational voice.
“A key thing for me was that Bethany is so articulate and persuasive about the value of a brand voice. She’s very skilled at overcoming objections and was fantastic at getting people on side, both in 1-1 contexts and bigger team meetings. It made embedding the work so much smoother than we would have anticipated. In fact not just smooth, but actively positive – people across the organisation have been genuinely energised and empowered by this whole process.”
The work.
- A full audit of their comms (external and internal) – to familiarise myself with their current voice.
- Contextual research into their contemporaries, their competitors, and their audience – to get a clear picture of their brand position, personality, and perceptions.
- Two full days of conversations with representatives of every team, through a mixture of 1-1s and small group chats – to hear firsthand people’s reflections on the culture and identity of the organisation.
- A one-day workshop with the senior leadership team – to present the key challenges I’d identified and together decide the parameters for a way forward.
- Approximately 40 hours of thinking and writing and re-writing – to develop and fine-tune the voice that would best embody the brand.
- Several workshops and listening sessions with key content creators across the organisation – to keep them involved in the development of the voice and get their feedback.
- The creation of an interactive voice toolkit, with practical personality guidance and voice attributes, easy-to-follow dos and don’ts, and a wide range of examples – to give everyone a clear roadmap for getting to the new sound.
- Four half-day voice embedding sessions for staff across the organisation – to help everyone get clear on what the brand’s voice sounds like, why it’s important to master it, and how to apply it in their roles.
- Two extra training sessions for the group of people named as Brand Voice Champions – to grow their familiarity and confidence with the voice as they support their teams with writing day to day.
- The re-writing of key comms pieces (e.g. most-visited website pages, top-level strategy documents, etc) – to make sure significant comms tools have the strongest possible representation of the new voice
“Bethany really pushed us - in a good way. She wouldn’t let us settle for anything mediocre, or any wishy-washy compromises. She’s got strong opinions, but you absolutely feel they are coming from a place of genuinely caring about our success. And because she really took the time to listen and get to know us – considerably more than most contractors – she built up a solid sense of trust from early on.”
The shift
The team realised some big changes were needed – of language and of mindset – to bring the brand’s outsides in line with its insides. Here are three of the most significant insights that came out of our work:
01. They needed permission to be themselves.
As a charity, The Glasshouse relies partly on public funding. And somehow, over the years, this reliance started to morph into resemblance. Although it was unspoken and unconscious, people’s writing (and even some of their behaviours and ideas) had become restricted by the norms of the public sector.
This led to a style of communicating that was all about playing it safe, blending in, and making everything sound serious, detached, and vague. In short, the opposite of what the team is actually like. They needed to shake off the shackles of the sector and take back ownership of their voice.
Practically that involved identifying and codifying the ways in which people were already using language more naturally in their everyday work, as well as exploring things like humour (and its boundaries) and how to navigate musical jargon. But the work really hinged on the team getting validation of their organisational warmth, enthusiasm, and sense of fun – and having permission to let some of that living, breathing humanity leak into their writing.
02. They needed to revel in their regional roots.
The Glasshouse is deeply committed to the region it calls home. A disproportionate number of people in the North-East face struggles with poverty, unemployment, and health – and The Glasshouse exists to make sure local people can take hold of the power music offers to practically improve their lives.
But historically their main way of communicating that was simply to rely on a constant refrain about being ‘rooted in the region’. They needed to find a more holistic way to hammer that message home. They needed to show, not tell. And the answer was that their voice itself had to embrace and embody something of the region’s character.
Of course we took care to avoid lazy stereotypes, not wanting to become a try-hard caricature. We also had to bear in mind accessibility and the global nature of their audience. Ultimately it’s been about allowing their language to offer a nod to the northern vernacular, so people walk (or scroll) away from any encounter feeling like they’ve been chatting with a local.
03. They needed to make space for emotion.
The Glasshouse works hard to be radically inclusive. One of their core goals is to be the most affordable music centre in Europe, leading the way in making sure things like money or background are never a barrier to enjoying world-class music.
But manifesting this strategic commitment to inclusivity in their writing had unintended consequences. As their language tried to be all things to all people, it ended up being nothing especially remarkable to anyone. Everything was bland, flattened – words no one could take issue with. ‘Must-see’. ‘Sensational’. ‘Acclaimed’. ‘Exciting’. They needed to bring the real, vivid, sometimes-divisive emotions that music elicits into the way they talked about it.
That meant looking carefully and creatively at their vocabulary - especially their adjectives. We needed to find ways for their words to tap into their audience’s experiences, both in familiar ways that people would recognise and respond to and in unfamiliar, unexpected ways that would make them curious and draw them in. At the heart of it all was the realisation that whatever else is true of music, it always makes people feel something – so the brand’s language needed to do the same.
“From day one Bethany ensured that our tone of voice wasn"t just a shiny marketing tool, but something that everyone in the organisation could embrace and use. With her guidance, training, and ongoing support, we"ve not just been able to find our brand voice but really own it.”
The Wins
“Now I look back on where we started, our ambitions for the project seem so small,” Fraser admits.
“I simply hoped it would deliver a clear set of voice characteristics that sat well with our new visual brand, and that we’d get a document that gave us a bit of guidance on how to bring those to life in our comms.
In reality we’ve not only got that (although in a much more detailed, meaningful, and dynamic way than I was anticipating) but we’ve also experienced a fundamental shift in our culture. The work has struck a chord with people from every single team, impacting how they see the organisation and their role in it.
In making us examine the roots from which our existing language was springing, Bethany unlocked a conversation about how happy we as an organisation were in our own skin. Going through this process has felt like an enormous exhale – a kind of collective sigh of relief, as we’ve been given the permission and the tools to be ourselves as a team and a brand. It’s changed how we talk to each other, how we treat each other, what we expect from each other. And that in turn has changed how we feel able to engage with our audiences.”
The depth of the project’s impact was ultimately down to the leadership’s willingness to see the work as an organisation-wide pursuit. They quickly realised that it wasn’t just a vanity piece or a pet project for the marketing team, but instead something that could – and should – be embedded everywhere.
“One of the things Bethany was always clear on was that this language we were developing had to go wide and deep,” reflects Fraser. “We needed to bring everything into line with it, not just the top-level marketing pieces. I don’t mind admitting that I was resistant to that at first, especially when it came to key internal documents like our strategic plan or people’s job descriptions. I know our Board were initially questioning some of the changes too, worried about protecting our prestige and not damaging important professional relationships.
But that has all completely fallen away now, as everyone has seen and felt the positives of the new voice. And it’s not just inside the organisation – from all across our audiences, including huge international funders and other leaders in our industry, we’re getting some incredibly positive feedback about how we’re expressing ourselves.”
“Our strategy hasn"t changed. But now we talk about it in a way that people can really connect with, both internally and externally.
We"ve got big plans that will see The Glasshouse leading the charge for creativity, diversity, and sustainability in music. And all in a way that"s full of passion, savvy thinking, and deep care for the music lovers who find a home with us. But before those things were hard to spot. They were tucked away behind language that made us seem stuffy, unimaginative, and distant.
Our new voice means that people can see exactly who we are and what we"re trying to do - which makes it easier for them to see how they fit in.”