Staff were actively involved in communicating the new LV= brand.

Liverpool Victoria went through a major re-branding exercise last year to become LV=. Lorne Armstrong, a partner in the consultancy team who assisted the project, looks at why the campaign was such a success.

Founded in 1843 to help people with limited means bury their loved ones with dignity, Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society grew to become the UK’s largest Friendly Society, managing more than £8 billion on behalf of members and customers.

Then, in 2006, after listening to members, customers and employees, the new leadership team decided the Liverpool Victoria brand needed to evolve to make it more relevant for today’s society and for the future of the business.

David Radford, LV= group marketing director says: “We recognised that for the re-brand to succeed, our employees needed to have real ownership of the different behaviours that reflect our new values so that they bring them to life in their work.”

So, after the new look, brand name and values had been agreed, my agency, Involve, was brought in to actively include all LV= employees in the change.

To provide employees with the right balance between the what? why? and how? of the re-brand, we created four intensive and fun half-day experiences.

Relatively standard engagement techniques were used to communicate the ‘what’ and ‘why’. These included a walk-in experience “tunnel” depicting the brand’s history, and an on-stage question-and-answer session, where ITN News anchor Nina Hossain challenged LV= group chief executive Mike Rogers on the brand and the future strategy for the business.

Employees were then split into mixed teams and challenged to experience four very different active sessions, which is where the involvement really started. In these experiences, teams not only gained a deeper understanding of the values and behaviours behind the new brand but, more importantly, they were involved in determining "how" they would actually deliver them.

At the event, teams of delegates came up with top-level ideas for "how" to bring the new brand to life and we used graffiti and story-board artists to make the idea more visual. These graphic outputs were transposed on to giant murals and then put on permanent display in prominent locations in the LV= offices – such as reception areas, meeting rooms and inside lifts.

After the events, teams regrouped to add a further layer of detail to the "how" and the murals were updated accordingly.

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