You’re a social enterprise that uses your profits to make the world a better place. You want a creative partner that cares about the same things you do. That’s me&you.
We specialise in design for social enterprise, as well as charities and non-profit organisations. Together we shape impactful brands, build user-friendly websites and create marketing materials that help social enterprises to stand out from the crowd, secure funding and ensure their long-term sustainability.
Then me&you can help you. We use our strategic, creative and digital skills to empower social enterprises of all shapes and sizes to build stronger connections with their audiences, deliver more impact and do more work that matters.
Now more than ever, consumers are looking to make more conscious buying choices. Decisions are weighed on things like whether materials are responsibly sourced, if those producing the product are fairly paid and what impact a brand has on the planet. People actively want to support businesses and brands that make a positive impact on the world and feel that by purchasing from them, they themselves are doing good. This is a fantastic opportunity for social enterprises!
However, social enterprises are not alone in doing good, other businesses have started to recognise this trend for conscious consumerism. Many are starting to show their social commitment by becoming BCorp certified or creating schemes that benefit people or planet. Therein lies the challenge for social enterprises. They are not just competing for business against other social enterprises, they are also competing against profit-making organisations who have more money to invest in advertising and brand development.
So how can a social enterprise stand out against their competitors? They must build a solid brand strategy and a relevant, emotive and distinctive brand that connects with their audience and addresses their needs.
Many social enterprises are brilliant at ‘doing’ great work but struggle with ‘telling’ their target audience in a compelling way why it should matter to them. It can be really helpful to have a Brand Discovery Workshop with a creative agency to help to clarify your messaging and make sure that your social enterprise branding is the best it can be.
At me&you, we know what it takes to build strong and effective marketing and design for social enterprise but we also understand the pressures that socially-focussed businesses face. That’s why we’ll work closely with your inhouse team, supporting you at every step to help you achieve your goals and meet your customer’s needs.
The key to effective design for social enterprise is to fully understand your target audience (or audiences, as you’re likely to have more than one) and make sure you’re clearly communicating why you’re the best people to meet their needs.
At the start of any project, we suggest conducting a Brand Discovery Workshop where we take time to find out about the people that are most likely to use your services and why. We’ll also discuss the challenges your social enterprise is currently facing, along with your future aims. Following this session, we’ll produce a report for you, outlining our findings and suggestions for how me&you can help make improvements to your social enterprise branding and marketing.
You may already have a good idea of what improvements your social enterprise requires, perhaps your website is dated and longer fit for purpose or your inhouse team is struggling to create attractive social media assets with your current brand.
me&you are a full-service creative agency with experience in design for social enterprise, so whether you require a brand refresh, help getting your marketing materials into shape, or event support materials, we can help you.
Branding is what your customers see first when they encounter your social enterprise, that’s why it’s so important to get it right. People look for visual cues to reassure them that they can trust the brand they are purchasing from, these include making sure that logos and branding are consistent and good quality across all touchpoints.
Using volunteer designers or free creative assets may seem savvy when budgets are tight but it can be a false economy and may not address your key challenges or goals.
At me&you, we judge all our creative outputs by the following criteria: Is it Relevant? Is it Emotive? Is it Distinctive? Free, off-the-peg design resources like Canva may help your brand meet some of these criteria but in order to tick all these boxes and to create a brand identity that stands the test of time, professional design services may be required.
In the words of Dr Ralph Speth, “If you think good design is expensive, you should look at the cost of bad design”. Investing in design for social enterprise can help you gain more customers and increase your sales and profits, allowing you to create even greater social impact.
If you’d like to test the water and find out more about how me&you could help your social enterprise, why not Book a Chat with Matt or consider a Brand Discovery Workshop?
Absolutely. A common reason organisations engage me&you is because they are using Salesforce as their CRM but struggling to connect it to their website. We understand that a lot of social enterprises use Salesforce, we know how to get data from your website into Salesforce and back again. One frequent pain point we fix is the issue of ‘duplicate content’ instead making Salesforce your ‘central source of truth’ and the website a presenter of this information – no need to enter information in twice!
We did this for FoodCycle, when you visit their website large areas of it is entirely driven by Salesforce, so when they add a venue in Salesforce the number of community meals updates on the website and the ‘find a venue’ search feature automatically brings in all the information from Salesforce. The website is built in Wordpress but the synchronisation of data too and from Salesforce is where true value lies. Saving admin time and ultimately saving your social enterprise money.