our

APPROACH

ON THIS PAGE:

Our Approach
To Ideas >

Ideas That Crush
Blank Pages >

Protecting
Expressions >

A Hybrid
Approach To AI >

Our Approach
– Before AI >

If AI Had Been
Available Then >

Which Geese Lay
The Golden Eggs >

Where We Fit Into
Your Landscape >

Easy Route
Finder >

Thanks For
Being Curious >

Supporting Your
Growth Plan >

How We Define
Your Archetype >

The Basic
Archetypes >

Developing
Your Archetype >

The Importance
Of Storytelling >

Our No 1 offering; regardless of industry, sector, aims or desired outcomes is…

(imagine a fanfare)

IDEAS!

Sound simple?

This is not about “being inspired”

“Inspiration is for amateurs”
Comedian, Jimmy Carr.

It’s about a perpetual conveyor belt of continuous interest in as many subjects as possible – all the time (for decades).

Copious notes, experiences and memories horded in a huge warehouse of hive mind metamorphosing concepts…

QUICK NOTE: If you’ve worked with design companies before and none of this is ringing bells – you may be thinking you did all the heavy lifting, having to tell them exactly what you wanted and chasing them to do it; when you weren’t 100% convinced you knew what that was? You were probably dealing with Art Workers, not Designers.

Art Workers are usually very nice fellows, some are highly skilled on their computers – but it isn’t their job to come up with original ideas.

WHEN YOU BRING YOUR DREAMS, ideas, plans, queries and projects to our table, we are not only obsessed with discovering how you do what you do and fascinated by absolutely everything you offer your customers – we are cross referencing what you think you might need with every other client experience we’ve ever had across all sectors: Applying every thought process, philosophy and abstract of everything that makes us all human – and most importantly – what humanises your connection to your potential clients.

The originality that arrives by working with you is then added to the “pile” >>>>

so we can work on…

Copywriting & Message Development.
Mood & Storyboarding.
Creative Marketing & Branding Strategy.

Our influencers aren’t celebrities

Influencers – BSE Style: Colour Swatches, OED, audio interfaces, design books, binoculars, model of cyclist, sheet music, Morph bookend, 30M Year Old Tree Fossil, Vinyl Records, PRS Piezo Hollowbody II, Headphones, Artists Mannequin, Elephant Bookends, Cycling Helmet, Super 8 Camera, Film Negative, Paintbrushes, Triumph Bonneville with flashing sidelights.

IDEAS THAT CRUSH BLANK PAGES.

The late great Sir Ken Robinson retold a story he had heard; you may have seen this on his You Tube channel, but always worth repeating.

Written exactly as Sir Ken told it:

A little girl was in a drawing lesson, she was six and sat at the back drawing, and the Teacher said this little girl hardly ever paid attention, but in this drawing lesson she did.

The Teacher was fascinated and she went over to her and said:
“What are you drawing?”…

and the girl said
“I’m drawing a picture of God.”

and the Teacher said
“But nobody knows what God looks like”

and the girl said
“They will in a minute.”

THAT my friends, is a great punchline to a story!

It’s also a great conversation starter, about innocence, imagination and blank pages –

Also, the simplest way to describe where we start.

Then…

Carry out Discovery work
Agree where you want to start
Straight into an exacting project brief or
Wider level of Consultancy – helping to create the brief you need or
A pre – everything Deep Dive into an 80/20 IMR.
for initial landscape views and discovering new views of your landscape

Then, either way…

Propose and agree a Scope of Work

Keep Drawing The Unknowable.
Children aren’t restricted by experience, their imaginations see everything.

PROTECTING EXPRESSIONS

All the work, the think time the creative writing and concept development we produce for a clients consideration – all the research and orchestration of Brand Strategy, Positioning, Campaign Concepts and Tactics even if ready for production and roll out, none of that can be protected as Intellectual Property.

You can’t Copyright an idea – you can only Copyright the “Expression” of an idea…

Many clients working on larger plans will insist on NDAs being in place for this very reason. An NDA (Non-Disclosure Agreement) goes some way to protecting the ideas that aren’t already in the public domain.

We have a standard NDA letter form available if you don’t have your own, and don’t want to pay a lawyer to write one for you.

Once “expressed” in written words (original Names, Straplines, Slogans etc) and original visual / physical designs (logo’s brand devices, design elements) you can avail yourselves of:

(Almost automatic) Unregistered Design Rights.
Statements and Marks: ©
Designs can be Registered: ®
Logos that can be Trade Marked:
Service Company Logos that can be Service Marked :
(Note: as soon as you apply for registration you can place TM or SM against your logo – known in the trade as “Totally Meaningless” or Slightly More (appropriate).
Once Registration has been approved and certified you can carry on using the ™/ sm symbol or replace it with the ® – which is also used for any other Registered Designs – not just Logos.)

If you think we’ve missed something – ASK!
The answer is likely be ( 80% to 99%) YES!

* For Our Approach to Copyright and IP, see Taking Care of Business.

Protecting an idea may need an NDA, Protecting the expression of an idea needs registered status.

A HYBRID APPROACH TO AI.

You simply cannot ignore AI.

For all the naysayers; artists, designers, writers, crafts people, those who think it will take their jobs (some truth in that) and those who deny its brilliance…

History says – it’s just another Tool…

Just like:

William Caxton’s Printing Press,
IBM,
The Rotring Pen,
Bar & QR Codes,
Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut,
The World Wide Web,
and everything Adobe…
AI IS BRILLIANT
as a time-saving tool for quick research, data checking, and copy reviews.

It takes information from public data, which it synthesises (does a mash up; “some answers may be incorrect”) to answer your queries and prompts – and gives everyone using the same prompts the same answers – it is literally Google Search on Steroids:

And just as unoriginal.

Elsewhere, specifically designed AI programmes have a million uses in all sectors; industry, medicine, and life sciences where 1 + 1 tends to make 2.

WHERE IT GOES WRONG right now, is in the theft of Intellectual Property, the abuse of privacy and actors’ personas, and the publicly available, mostly free of charge, standard packages in high demand for writing copy and manipulating imagery (more on that later).

HUMANS ARE EVEN MORE BRILLIANT
for Originality, Creativity and Skills – especially in Art or Design, Written Word and Expression of original concepts.

Humans use information based on tacit knowledge and lateral thought, learnt muscle memory of the mind and deep understandings that started with the Limbic part of our brains – millions of years ago.

It’s how we know something looks, reads or sounds “right”; it’s how we know when something has been produced by AI.

AI GENERATES - HUMANS CREATE.

This Website is Fully Compliant with SIG Rules and is exempt from AI Labelling.

At Blue Strawberry Elephant – we use AI to allow
our clients the cost savings that can come with AI processes – adding Human Originality to create Substantive Changes to anything generated by AI for that initial time saving.
WE DON’T USE AI for generating ideas, we do use it to double check accuracy of research.
WE DON’T USE AI to generate copy, we do use it as a super charged spelling and grammar check.
WE DON’T USE AI to generate imagery – we do use it for some digital effects and sourcing royalty free photographic images.
OUR HUMANS ARE IN TOTAL CONTROL

(more in ” 5. Taking Care of Business” and Ts&Cs)

Part One:

OUR APPROACH - BEFORE AI.

A client of ours plied his trade in a very straight forward manner.

For years his company had worked hard, networked, built a solid contact list and a reputation for fair pricing, innovative solutions and fast reliable service.

Then, their market shifted radically.

Politicised interventions, corporate buyouts and new management structures meant traditional, loyal customer relationships disappeared overnight.

He had to pitch to shiny new procurement departments alongside hungry competitors – who all sold the same services to the same marketplace.

Like all good business folk, thinking on his feet, he decided on a tactical approach to deal with the new dynamic.

He turned his own systems on their head, adding new products and services to his offering while recruiting a new “fresh faced” and enthusiastic sales team.

Then he realised, from our chance meeting, that despite all his exciting plans – the company still looked exactly the same as it always had – and that wasn’t significantly “different” from any of his competitors.

To stand out, grab attention and look a safer bet than his commercial peers he needed a completely new approach to his company image.

We executed a complete rebrand:

New corporate logo and brand architecture
Redesigned literature, product catalogues, and signage
Custom vehicle liveries, advertising campaigns, and direct marketing collateral
Providing continuous support in advertising and marketing tools to support his sales team.

The Result:

Over the following two years, the client won massive contracts with Ford, Kodak, Local Authorities, and Government departments, they did so well that after 8 years they were acquired by a global brand.

It had taken their fastest competitor a full year just to react and almost catch up with our client’s new market presence.

Part Two:

IF AI HAD BEEN AVAILABLE THEN.

To borrow from the Paltrow film, “Sliding Doors” concept (look it up):

Imagine if that client had been able to use AI for everything we did for him.

His competition would be sending Gemini or Chat GPT the same prompts and queries – and getting the same answers from AI – “because they were all trying to sell the same things to the same end customers.”

Even if our client had been first – catching up with his rebranding would have taken a fraction of the time it did.

In that smaller window of opportunity those large contracts with Ford, Kodak etc may have all gone elsewhere or at least been spread between our client and his competitors.

Because AI is unoriginal, the real difference in branding, presentation and marketing between the companies in that supply sector would have been almost indistinguishable.

“…the image and messaging was far better after the company’s AI Makeover – but it wasn’t sufficiently “different” from any of its competitors”.

Because of that lack of differentiation in the marketplace, the struggle for attention would have been much harder, they wouldn’t have been acquired by a Global Brand and…

…our old client wouldn’t have been sat on a beach sipping Margaritas right now.

WHICH GEESE LAY THE GOLDEN EGGS.

In 2025, due to events beyond the control of the Business community, changes came in the way marketing budgets were spent.

If you have been in business long enough, you know this is nothing new.

The split between Creative, Marketing Maintenance and Procurement shifted heavily away from Original Creative and towards ensuring “value for money” through cutbacks and procurement systems – but also, this time under the impression that “creative” and marketing maintenance could be handled cheaply, as opposed to cost effectively, by AI.

Of course, this is a very broadbrush statement – there are almost as many approaches to how businesses market themselves and control costs as there are businesses (hyperbole).

STILL! History repeats itself and STILL we never learn…

When fiscal responsibility and governance takes hold of the reins in every department, freedom of expression and real Creativity; “the difference”, tends to be the first casualty, followed swiftly by innovation in products and services going out of the window or at least onto a back burner. Because there are very few accountants who understand that the loss of creativity and innovation impacts the sacred bottom line in the medium to long term.

Often much more quickly.

This may become part of a mission to explain what our industry contributes.

It isn’t a “nice to have’, it’s an essential…

So, when it comes to which “Geese” really lay the Golden Eggs:

Is it:

• The Originality of standout Creativity from the vastly superior Human Mind?
Or
• The convenient and increasingly clever plagiarism of AI?
Or
• The analysis by calculator that can’t put a value on Creative?

At Blue Strawberry Elephant we interrogate AI for some research, to quicken fine tuning or confirm a factoid, while controlling that output with the tacit knowledge of our clients and our own experience.

We combine our skills with AI to shorten the more ordinary non original tasks in generating digital artwork that we have been producing with each leap in technology for over 30 years. (See “The AI Para Box” for more on this – also “Art vs Design” and “Artisan Crafts” for further reading).

All while working with clients to respect budgets that are realistically proportioned, as opposed to wishful thinking.

SO, THE ANSWER to the Great Geese Conundrum is:

ALL OF THEM!

You need a Gaggle of Geese and they all need feeding:

But if the Creative Goose is starved the rest will soon find they have nothing to eat.

Get the balance of the Gaggle right and they’ll turn your company into a Skein.

A SHORT ANNOUNCEMENT!

JUST TO MAKE SURE WE’RE ON THE SAME PAGE:

Your Landscape is everything you know so far:

Your colleagues, loyal customers, your trusted suppliers and associates, the products and services you sell.

Then all the things your very busy life may have stopped you thinking about:

All the intangibles – your tacit industry knowledge, (the knowledge AI can’t provide) company image, brand position, style of messaging, communications… How everyone who knows you, sees you.

WHERE WE FIT INTO YOUR LANDSCAPE.

You could make us part of that; slotting in where needed, changing or enhancing the way you are seen – like groundsmen, cutting the grass and trimming the shrubbery.

Or we could be supporting your Sales & Marketing Teams if you already have them – or helping you to define and build that function if you haven’t…

Providing the constantly updated “Tools” they need to be truly effective. Making you ready to be seen by more of the people you want to be seen by.

Or you could use us as archaeologists, historians, architects and vision builders – helping you find the Why, What, Where, When and How of your future plans – we are great listeners creative partner’s and sounding board.

As you don’t like to waste time and you know what you want, with maybe a better service than you’ve previously enjoyed, plus proactive creative input.

Or if you feel it’s time for a fresh perspective from a Deeper Dive –

Use the CTA’s just below where Harry is floating about – or –

PICK UP THE PHONE! 0114 255 9993

EASY ROUTE FINDER:

Design Services

Specific Project

Marketing Support

Consultancy

THANKS FOR BEING CURIOUS!

As you’re still here, we may as well tell you how to make the most of the Blue Strawberry Elephant Approach:

A quick note:

Our client roster has covered most business sizes from Micro to Global and most industry sectors from Service to Manufacturing, Financial to Charitable, Precision Engineering to Healthcare, Retail to Sports, Arts and Education.

All that said; we don’t design “by Sector”

You should never be stereotyped by your industry; or let your competition (or AI) dictate your style.

SUPPORTING YOUR GROWTH PLAN.

Every company that is trying to grow has “Growing Pains”.

HOW WE CAN HELP WITH THAT

ORGANIC GROWTH:

You’ve successfully reached a Plateau.
We can help you reach the next level.

We do this by:

Making small businesses look bigger and
Making bigger businesses look better

GROWTH BY ACQUISITION:

Nice Growth by Acquisition comes two ways:

Planned growth; you know what you want to add so buying out another business already set up with the skills, key people and / or order book is the penultimate strategy. The ultimate strategy is what you do with it once you own it.

An opportunity arises when an existing supplier or competitor becomes available – maybe through a retirement, or financial struggles they can’t deal with alone…

In either case:

Bringing the acquired business up to your image level, or
Taking the opportunity to lift your original brand at the same time,
or
Creating a diverse family of brands to make full use of each market position – as part of a Group, professionalising a portfolio of several businesses / new divisions

Are all projects we are well versed in achieving.

GROWING BUSINESS through SUPER GROWTH PARTNERSHIPS:

If your partnership with another company, possibly an associate provider of complementary products or services, where you have an informal reciprocal new business arrangement, it may be more fruitful or more effective – if it was more formal and exclusive than it is.

There are many concepts and structures that can be used – the most popular being Partner Led Growth (PLG) Ecosystems.

Whether you want to create something which only includes two independent businesses or establish a bigger network, we can help with that synchronicity, saving both companies money through aligned creative, co-opted procurement, joint planning, and increasing revenue by being prepared for new opportunities.

CONSTRUCTIVE CALMING

We can also “pour oil on any troubled waters”, using the things you can all agree on and providing new impactful tangents and compromises you can all get behind.

This constructive calming method can also be applied to Federations and Organisations with semi autonomous arms or divisions.

Creating harmonious joint purpose and fading out the restrictions to growth caused by each autonomous operation being too busy protecting their fiefdoms to see the bigger picture.

HOW WE DEFINE YOUR ARCHETYPE.

As a preview of how we might start a Deep Dive; (the more in-depth consultancy you may want to investigate before a pixel is moved) – could be discovering what type of company you are.

What is your business culture, how do you operate?

Naturally – having slipped into that method organically, or by historic habit from previous experience?

By a previous structured and systemic plan?

We call these “Archetypes” – and they are found in every single sector.

Helping you define your Archetype gives us the first clues to what you might really need and helps you to understand how you can make the most from what we offer.

In any new relationship, being on the same page (as early as possible) always helps…

How we discover which Archetype(s) you are:

Over all these years we have discovered two things:

Every business, group or organisation is different, and,
Every business, group or organisation is the same.

The Basic Archetypes.

Every business, group, organisation is the same because they all fall into one of these Archetypes:

THE BASIC ARCHETYPES:

Strategic

tactical

Trategic

DEVELOPING YOUR ARCHETYPE.

In “The Art of War” Sun Tzu never said:
“Tactics without Strategy is the noise before Defeat”

Possibly hundreds of sales and marketing self help guru books in the 80’s and 90’s had some version of the sentiment, and half of those probably used it as a quote from Sun Tzu – but no. A lesson in taking credit for your own thoughts and claiming them – so you get quoted instead of some ancient Chinese General – who no longer cares.

Lose your inhibitions tóng zhì

Meanwhile the fullest version of that thought that AI can find is:

“Strategy without Tactics is the slowest way to victory. Tactics without Strategy is the noise before Defeat.”…

Author unknown but probably hive mind.

ANYWAY – just proves our point…

Once we have agreed which Archetype is closest to how you operate, or what you want it to be, we have another insight into discovering what kind of partnership you want and which services we need to provide.

We can then start creating concepts and begin the work of which Creative Tools we need to produce them.
At this stage we will have already started drilling down into your Story(s).

There’s always more than one story, and THIS, the stories, are where we find all the good stuff, the tacit knowledge and history that makes you different from your industry colleagues, associates and of course competitors in the same sector.

Translation: “I NEVER SAID THAT!”.

THE IMPORTANCE OF STORYTELLING.

There are Sales Gurus out there who will tell you no one is interested in your story.

They will say the customer has a problem; you sell them the solution.

End of.

Two issues with that approach – unless you’re selling dodgy “Polex” watches down the pub.

If your solution is the same as your competitors, you’d better be fast on your feet and hope the customer is desperate.
If your competitors are selling on quality, experience, expertise and trustworthiness all made credible by a great back story – you’re screwed…

SO… STORIES!

We humans speak at 7,600 to 10,000 words per hour.

Two average 4-hour meetings; at maybe 70,400 words – to allow for the hospitality of the host and non-consequential chat – is the equivalent of a serious novel.

WE WERE MADE TO TALK.

But strangely we don’t.

We prefer websites and emails and social media to do our talking for us – but what are the consequences of this historic shift in human connection and communication?

Quick Tangent for What If’s to think about:

Communication isn’t just any bunch of words and pictures.
It’s Character – body language, enthusiasm, “clicking” with your customers.
Are you losing business simply because they’ve never met you in person?
Do you think Face to Face meetings may be worse for sales?
Do you think your competition isn’t doing anything different than you?
Do you think your competition is definitely doing things differently from you.
Could your Company Character – the one we can communicate (or build for you) become the real difference between you and them.
What if your remote marketing felt as authentic as a face-to-face conversation? So, customers felt they knew you personally, despite never meeting you in person?

That’s where story telling comes in.

By this stage in the conversation we will have:

Agreed your Archetype; we would know whether you are stuck with that, or if you are happy with it.
If you want to change it up, to clarify what type of business you are;

STRATEGIC | TACTICAL | TRATEGIC

THEN we can start writing your story.

How much digging, research, consultation do we need to do?

You’ll only discover that by speaking to us, but that’s ok because…

YOU WERE MADE TO TALK!

AUTHOR'S NOTES:

In the beginning, we knew this website would be a sizeable undertaking; unlike any self-promoting website made by any other design or creative marketing company in the Whole History of the Universe.

And not just because we aren’t any other Design and Creative Marketing company.

But mainly because there is a lot not being said in business, either professionally or personally these days. So we wanted this to be less about self-promotion and more about sharing.

Sharing our experiences, which may align with Fellow Travellers, as much as sharing our experience.

There’s a difference.

Before we started this build – we interrogated every job and every project for every client we could remember – going back 30 and sometimes more years.

We tried to apply a flame thrower of honesty towards our clients many glorious victories and take a realistic view of our part in those wins. But also, the always worrying, no matter how rare, failures.

We all have them – every day’s a school day.

Then we took that research further – looking at what was missing, what more could we have done and what stopped us doing it.

How often did “Scope Creep” leave us short of budget, and how often did we take a loss if it meant the client gained what they needed?
Regardless of the level of appreciation.

In those cases what didn’t we say when we should have said it – and what should we have repeated – to make sure the messages were heard?

How often did victories come at the loss of a relationship because the result wouldn’t have been achieved without a lot of pushing? Was that us? Or client’s that were overly sensitive / inexperienced? Or a bit of both?

What had we got so right when victories came, and the relationships remained for many years / decades.

Were our clients just as determined as we were and never offended.

Some of our best relationships came out of the fires of honest and vocal disagreements.

In the Process section there are more words about Creativity and its “nebulous nature”

If you have the good fortune to run a business where everything is tangible; you buy this, you make that, you deliver what your customers need and compete on provable levels of quality and price, you may not understand what Creativity, Design, Tangental Concepts can bring to your bottom line.

Some client’s readily admit that lack of understanding – it’s not their job – others think they have a good idea what it is all about.

Either way – imagine yourself trying to explain what Blue Strawberry Elephant “sells”.

Can you picture that? Tough isn’t it. This website is attempting to explain the full landscape of what we do.

It’s taken a long time – trying to cover this many bases – all the things you need to know or check in on – but you don’t have to read it all before you contact us.

ENOUGH now, enough of this navel gazing!

We want you to enjoy the content here; we hope it will at least confirm what you already know or lead you to find out how to gain glorious victories of your own.

We’ll put the kettle on.

our