Our Approach to Branding
Our approach to brand development and marketing at Oxygen Conservation has been heavily influenced by some wonderful thought leaders, no more so than Daniel Priestly, the author of Oversubscribed and so many other great books.
The central theme of Oversubscribed is about making a business, a product, or in our case, an entire new economic system that is aspirational and inspirational. Doing anything but this makes absolutely no sense to me. If you’re going to invest everything you have into creating a new business, surely you would want to try and make it incredible.
Here’s how we’ve tried to apply Daniel’s inspiration with a little of our own to approach the brand development and marketing presentation of Oxygen Conservation.
Simple Minimalism
I always envisioned Oxygen Conservation’s imagery as simple and minimalist. This was initially intended to be a counter-cultural response to the wider environment sector that so often chooses a technicolour, youthful presentation which achieves making it accessible to all, and sadly by extension, holds little or no value.
We want to be different, distinct, aspirational, and inspirational.
Therefore, from day one, we’ve built on the wonderful simple minimalism of the Oxygen House branding to create the Oxygen Conservation logo and extended this principle through to the newly launched Oxygen Escapes branding.
Our commitment to simple minimalism extends to font choice and colours. We write in biome because of the natural look, feel, and flow and almost always in black and white – because the natural world should be the star of the show.
Making the Environment the Star
One of our very first hires was an incredible photographer and videographer so we could capture the changes we oversee across the growing Oxygen Conservation Portfolio. In this way, we can make the places, people, and wildlife the stars of our show. We make this a feature even in our internal communication with every other slide in our board packs and performance materials a full-page, high-quality image taken from one of our Estates. We only ever use incredible images that we have taken, on land we own and manage.
Living Our Values
As a company, we’re about the environment, positive impact, and adventure. All companies claim they have these incredibly inspiring values and then leave them painted on a wall or sat at the bottom of their email signature. We don’t. We mean them, we live them, and we feature them in our media and marketing materials. Here’s a list: coasteering in West Wales, e-biking in the Highlands, wild swimming in the Borders, hiking in the Yorkshire Dales, paddleboarding in Norfolk, forest bathing in Devon, and free diving in Cornwall.
Elevating the Entire Sector
We’re committed to growing the entire natural capital economy, helping elevate, connect with, and celebrate the incredible working people across the sector. In my experience, this is relatively new for the environment sector but so incredibly important. We have and will continue to showcase these people and their businesses on our Shoot Room Sessions podcast and in our digital and print media.
This extends to us creating some wonderful partnerships and collaborations that have helped make amazing strides in the nature-based economy. This includes working with the leading environmental law firm Burges Salmon, buying land at an unprecedented scale working with Galbraiths, agreeing on the natural capital finance package with Triodos Bank, creating our Wind Farm proposals working with Low Carbon, planning woodland creation ambitions supported by Treestory, developing BNG credits working with Bidwells, and supporting wild camping with our partners CampWild helping people better connect and access the environment.
With Intent
Every word we write, question we ask a podcast guest, or image we share from Oxygen Conservation is done with intent. Where possible, we try to be incredibly positive about what we do and how we do it, but we recognise that people also want honesty. So, when we’re angry, frustrated, tired, or sad, we’re honest about that too. This is something I’ve had to become more comfortable with and if you’re reading this, leading a business and you think your people want to see you as inaccessible and untouchable, trust me you’re wrong. Yes, they will want purposeful leadership, especially in a crisis, but they want to be able to believe you too.
We do everything with intent, even when that means choosing to say no thank you to an opportunity that we do not think will elevate our brand or the entire natural capital sector.
Building Momentum
In business, momentum is so important, a great success so often presents another opportunity, and you have to capitalise on those to build to the next one. If you don’t, often the progress is wasted and can be so easily lost. As a result, we produce a huge amount of content, the most we can without sacrificing the quality of our presentation. With each long-form piece, we try to improve how we write, how we share, and the way we publicise that work. This is especially true with the Shoot Room Sessions podcast which has achieved incredible success and helped showcase so many of the architects of nature recovery and the natural capital economy. We’re committed to building momentum here and are soon to go to twice-a-week releases, with each incredible guest helping us attract more and more eyes and ears to our work.
Quality Matters
The line the team hear from me the most is probably, “How You Do Anything is How You Do Everything”. It all matters. Every detail matters. Unless you relentlessly work hard to enhance your brand, it will deteriorate quickly and age terribly. With the podcast for example, we’ve avoided recording remotely as the lighting, sound, and visual quality is just so much better when done in person, as well of course the quality of the guest experience and the quality of the conversation.
When it comes to our brand, a huge amount of this is shaped by the quality of our photography, videography, podcastery, and data mapping (integrity and visualisation). We are incredibly selective about the work we share because it all matters. That doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes, but it means we don’t make them twice, we use that mistake to learn and teach. We’ve never sacrificed what we do and how we do it and we’re always finding ways to improve.
We’ve Only Just Started
We’re soon to celebrate our third birthday, and we’re incredibly proud and protective of the brand we’ve built and love how much you all love it! Thank you for the support and the positive feedback about everything Oxygen Conservation, in exchange for that support we promise to continue pushing the boundaries to ensure we do more for the environment, deliver great positive impact, and have so many more adventures along the way!
Rich Stockdale
Founder & Managing Director