At Blue Moon we see a lot of businesses tie their brand to what they do or what they sell. And we get it - they're proud of their product, their service, their expertise - so they make it the centre of everything.
But markets move and their priorities shift. What the world needed three years ago isn’t necessarily what it needs today. If you build your brand around a specific product or service you could wake up one day to a market that’s moved on and your brand no longer means anything to them.
Our client, RE:GEN Group is a case study in what can happen when you separate your brand from what you do and put more focus on your ‘why’.
They’ve appeared in ‘Ward Hadaway North East Fastest 50’ three years running – winning overall fastest growing business back-toback. They’ve grown from nothing to ~£150M revenue in five years. But what those headlines don’t tell you is that RE:GEN today is a fundamentally different business to the one that opened its doors five years ago.
Most businesses don’t survive one pivot cleanly. RE:GEN has navigated several. How does a business manage this? We sat down with Anne Reynolds, Founder of Blue Moon and fractional CMO of RE:GEN Group, to dig a little deeper.
It would be impossible to distill five years of marketing strategy into a 750 word article, but here are our two big takeaways from the conversation:
Build a brand that doesn’t depend on what you sell
“We’ve built RE:GEN’s brand around a simple idea: ‘delivering on our promises’.
It might sound straightforward, but that’s exactly the point.
Without tying ourselves to a single product, service, or niche, our positioning doesn’t date, dilute, or disappear.
And when it’s applied to what we do, it lands with real weight, because in our world, as much as our customers’, delivery is everything.”
What this means in practice is that every time the business has had to change shape with a new offering, expand with a new acquisition, or talk to a new audience, the brand has travelled with it. Seamlessly. From renewables to new regions; from asbestos removal to a skills academy.
When your brand is pinned to what you do, a pivot can be a contradiction. But when your brand is pinned to how and why you do it, a pivot gives you an opportunity to grow.
Building what the market needs, not what you want to build
“From the beginning we were wholly focused on the customer. We had visions of what we wanted to do, but we knew that had to be secondary to what the audience needed.
We also knew that we couldn’t be everything to everyone, so we focussed our attention on the audiences where we had a right to win.
We ignored huge market segments, segments with money that would make your eyes water, but we knew our lane and we stuck to it. That lane has twisted and turned over the years, but because we’ve always focussed on the demands of the market, we’ve always been able to see where it’s going”
This second thing RE:GEN got right is harder to replicate, because it requires an ego check that most organisations fail.
Most businesses build their offering and then go looking for demand. RE:GEN looked at the market and built what it needed. Then they kept looking at the market, and when those needs changed, they changed with them. Over and over again.
That’s what we call ‘market orientation’, and it’s rare. Very rare.
So what can we learn?
Your brand is the only thing you own that can survive your product or service becoming irrelevant.
If it’s wrapped too tightly around what you currently sell, you’ve built a business that’s one market shift away from a very bad day in the office.
But if you keep your brand separate from what you’re doing today, it stays relevant for what you might end up doing tomorrow.
That’s where market orientation becomes a superpower. Compared to competitors who aren’t tuned in, it can feel like having a crystal ball; seeing what’s coming and pivoting in real time while others are still reacting.
If you want to build a marketing plan that balances brand building with sales activation, let’s talk. At Blue Moon we offer brand management, marketing strategy, and tactical delivery under a fractional model, giving you access to the full marketing suite for the monthly cost of a single hire.
We can’t promise you’ll make the Fastest Growing 50, but we’ll give it a damn good shot!
Drop us an email: anne@bluemoon-marketing.co.uk