How delivering one NHS consultation under pressure earned the next one: a longer-term mental-health programme across Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
Two major NHS public consultations, delivered back to back, on time, through a pandemic. The second brief arrived because of the first.
In early 2021, Sue Venables and Jit Parekh at the Leicester City Clinical Commissioning Group came back to us with a new brief: Step Up to Great Mental Health, a public consultation running from mid-March to August 2021, designed to help understand, plan and deliver improvements to adult mental health care across the region.
They came back because of how the Building Better Hospitals project had been delivered. There is no marketing in the world as effective as the last job done well.
New clients are won by positioning. Second briefs are won by performance.
Mental health was an acutely topical issue, sharpened by the Covid-19 pandemic, with the added operational demand of keeping key workers and service users safe while care continued.
Unlike the first project, this was built as a longer-term programme. The branding, logos, colours, and look and feel had to be designed not just for a campaign window but for a programme with a future. The use of colour to keep the message clear and concise for users was a particular focus.
We produced the full printed collateral: leaflets, the consultation document, roller banners, posters, labels, business cards and everything else the team required. We were also actively involved in creating the digital assets, including social media templates, presentations and letters.
Then came something that says more about the relationship than any specification list. The team felt confident enough to hand us some of the tele-support work, which stretched our knowledge and took us into a different area of expertise entirely. When a client trusts you with work outside your lane, it is because you have never let them down inside it.
The consultation ran its full course from March to August 2021, with branding, print and digital collateral delivered as one consistent programme. The longer-term brand identity we built continues to serve the mental health programme beyond the consultation window.
This case study is the Optimise pillar in story form. The first project established the baseline. The second extended the relationship, deepened the trust, and grew the scope, from print into digital and then into tele-support. That is what year-on-year improvement looks like from inside a client relationship.
Brand built for the long term, not just the campaign. Digital assets produced alongside print as one system. A supplier willing to extend into new service areas as the client’s needs changed. Modernising is a posture, not a technology project.
More stakeholders, more deliverables, more face-to-face coordination, and still one accountable point of contact for the whole programme. The complexity grew. The client’s burden did not.
If you are looking for a print partner you can grow with rather than re-tender every cycle, we should talk.