The questions brands ask us,
answered honestly

Look for evidence, not adjectives. A strong partner shows you the thinking behind the work, real case studies in situations like yours, and results a finance director would accept. OTB has spent over 30 years helping ambitious organisations become impossible to ignore, and we are the only UK creative marketing agency honoured with both the Queen’s and King’s Award for Enterprise. Start with a no-pressure conversation and judge us on the clarity we bring to your problem.

No. We are proudly Leeds-based, but our work runs from national household names to genuinely global campaigns, a TV campaign that lifted sales for Handicare in the Netherlands, a US website launch for Very Lazy’s American brand Very Easy, and international pharmaceutical campaigns for Croda Pharma. Distance has never been the thing that decides whether the work is great.

Usually the problem is not the marketing, it is the clarity underneath it. When Unity Trust Bank came to us, customers simply did not understand their social impact proposition, so no campaign could land. We rebuilt the proposition and brand framework first, and everything downstream started working harder. Our Strategy and Planning service finds the insight, audience and message before a penny is spent on media.

You define it around what customers actually value, then test it. That is what we did for Benenden Health, leading strategy, research and proposition evolution as they opened eligibility to everyone, and reversing a membership decline with a brand people finally understood. It is a structured process: research, proposition territories, testing, then a framework your whole organisation can use.

You have probably outgrown the story that got you here. Skipton Building Society had 160 years of trust but needed a new consumer proposition for an ‘all of life’ future, we built the positioning and identity to seize that next market. A strategy refresh is not an admission of failure, it is what established brands do before the plateau becomes a decline.

Yes, this is one of the highest-return pieces of work an organisation can commission. For Leeds Hospitals Charity we built donor personas from their own data aligned with Experian Mosaic profiles, replacing broad, unfocused campaigns with precise targeting their fundraising and marketing teams now share. Audience insight and journey mapping are core to our Strategy and Planning service.

Evolution is usually smarter than revolution. For Skipton Building Society the castle icon was ‘set in stone’, so we delivered a contemporary identity with a hint of nostalgia around it. For Midland Heart we evolved the visual identity rather than replacing it, and we have been their trusted brand partner for over a decade. A good agency protects the equity you have earned while fixing what holds you back.

Yes, and it is costing you. When Methodist Homes (MHA), the UK’s largest charity care provider, wanted consistency across every service and audience, we redefined their proposition around ‘enabling older people to live later life well’ and built the narrative that now runs through everything they do. A brand framework gives everyone, from front line to boardroom, the same story to tell.

A clear brand is one of the most efficient investments a charity can make, it lowers the cost of every future campaign. We have built and refreshed brands for MHA, Leeds Hospitals Charity, BASW and the Leeds & York Partnership NHS Foundation Trust, in each case making the organisation easier to understand, easier to trust and easier to support.

Distinctiveness. Safe, sensible creative gets scrolled past, memorable ideas get talked about. For Thomas Cook’s Direct Holidays we projected holiday scenes onto the Angel of the North and Marble Arch and chalked city train stations, work that won two industry awards including Best Use of Innovative Media. Creative Direction is about ideas strong enough to be remembered, executed with craft.

You reframe the conversation instead of shouting louder. Croda Pharma’s sustainably sourced squalene was being drowned out by competitor noise, so we repositioned it as the clean, future-facing choice for vaccine development, translating complex science into a confident, category-leading message for pharmaceutical decision-makers.

When it is built on insight, yes. Our stereotype-challenging recruitment campaign for West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue delivered a huge uplift in applications, especially among women and under-represented communities. Handicare’s ‘life doesn’t stop’ TV campaign lifted sales in its key Netherlands market. Brave and commercial are not opposites, done properly they are the same thing.

Rebuild it around your users, not your org chart. McCarron Coates’ site was years out of date and causing technical issues, we rebuilt it from the ground up for a first-class experience. For SaaS provider Aptem we designed a best-in-class site that finally matched their ambition and positioning. Our Digital Enablement service covers design, build, CMS and the analytics to prove it works.

Almost always a journey problem, visitors cannot find what they need fast enough, or the site does not build enough trust before asking for contact. We design user-first journeys and put measurement in place, so you can see exactly where people drop away and what each change does to enquiries. That evidence-led approach is the heart of Digital Enablement at OTB.

Yes. When we rebuilt Very Lazy’s recipe and ingredient website, we followed it with an SEO campaign that moved them up the rankings on their chosen keywords. Search performance is designed in from the start, structure, speed, content, then optimised with data after launch.

You translate it, without dumbing it down. For robotics research partnership CRADLE we turned a complex journey into an animated explainer and roadmap infographic a corporate audience could grasp in minutes. For Croda Pharma we turned dense bioprocessing science into the confident ‘Purity that Powers Performance’ platform. Making the complex compelling is what our Content and Motion team does daily.

Used well, video does jobs nothing else can. Our film for National Grid’s Zero2050 initiative helped unite more than 21 partners and the Welsh Government behind one Net Zero vision. Handicare’s TV campaign delivered a measurable sales uplift in the Netherlands. The question is not whether video works, it is whether the idea behind it is strong enough.

With a content engine, a planned flow of copy, social, photography and motion that keeps the brand present and consistent all year. Quiet brands get forgotten, and momentum is far cheaper to keep than to rebuild. We plan and produce content that stays unmistakably on brand across every platform.