Keystone Marketing

Use the robots. Keep the weird.

Chantal Palmer — Tue, 20 Oct 2026 15:59:20 +0000

AI can make us faster. Let’s not let it make us beige.

Chantal Palmer | Head of Brand and Creative Strategy

Recently, Hayley was interviewed as part of a research project looking at the impact AI is having on teams. They talked about trust, psychological safety, leadership and team dynamics, basically, what changes when AI becomes part of the way a business works?

Oooh, lovely. Right up our street!

Having a little nosy into the transcript, I realised a thing. Although we’ve spent the last couple of years testing AI, building AI into our workflows and generally being gobsmacked at all the things it can do, the actual conversations we were having weren’t really about the technology but about knowing when to use AI and, perhaps way more importantly, when not to.

Begin at the beginning

The researcher mentioned that from the organisations she’d spoken to, Keystone seemed to be further along than many in the way we’d integrated AI into the business. Which was a surprise to me. I thought that we were probably way behind (imposter syndrome much) but as it turns out, we’re flying the flag!

However, we didn’t start with a masterplan for AI transformation. It started with me poking it with a stick to see what happened. There was no AI expert to explain it all, just me and my insatiable appetite for science fiction, realising the future had arrived in my lifetime!

To give that excitement a focus, Hayley and I went to an Agency Hackers event called The Robots Are Coming, which introduced us to just how enormous the potential of AI was. Exciting? Yes. Overwhelming? Also yes.

It would have been very easy to disappear down an AI-shaped rabbit hole researching everything without actually doing anything. Equally, “EVERYONE GO AND PLAY WITH AI!” didn’t seem like a particularly sensible business strategy either. Especially when you’re dealing with client information, intellectual property, strategy and ideas. We needed to learn to walk before sprinting enthusiastically into the robot-filled distance! At some point, curiosity needs guardrails.

We invested in a paid business version of ChatGPT, created an AI policy and agreed what information could go in, what shouldn’t and where responsibility sat. We started mapping where AI could genuinely help across the business rather than wedging it into everything because it was new and shiny.

AI became a team sport

I also hadn’t realised until reading Hayley’s interview that introducing AI from the bottom-ish-up rather than the top-down might have made us different from other organisations too. Our genuine curiosity drove adoption, we learnt together. Someone found something useful and shared it. Then someone else did. A prompt worked brilliantly? Shared. ChatGPT produced a really useful way of analysing something? Show everyone. Found a limitation? Talk about that too. For a while it was basically an AI love-in.

And yes, we gave our AI a name. Of course we did. She’s Nova. Champagne SuperNova if she’s in trouble. Her pronouns are she/her/overlord. Is anthropomorphising an artificial intelligence entirely rational? Probably not. But giving her a name made it easier to talk about how what we were asking AI to do and what role she should play.

Spaghetti brain.

I’ve learnt that my favourite thing about AI is getting through the messy middle. My brain is not naturally linear. There are thoughts. Lots of them (I’m not sure if you noticed : ) Bits of information. Questions. Connections. Something somebody said three weeks ago. An idea that may or may not be relevant. Another idea. Something shiny. Back to the first idea.

And this is where AI has been transformative. She can structure, research, analyse, challenge, remember, summarise and pull all the threads together.

I can give Nova the contents of my brain and ask her to help me corral it into something I can actually work with. What am I missing? Where is this argument weak? What assumption am I making? What would someone who disagreed with me say? Is there another way to look at this?

The more thoughts the merrier. She is a brilliant sparring partner in that process. But I don’t ask her to come up with the concept. Absolutely not. I think that’s what us humans are best at. Put people in a room to come up with a thing and they wander off topic. Someone says something ridiculous. That reminds someone of something apparently unrelated. Someone says, “Hang on…” And there it is. The big idea. We’re quite good at spotting the interesting turning three miles earlier that everybody else ignored. I’m not ready to hand that bit over.

The risk of beige

Competent is becoming super easy. AI can produce perfectly decent copy, imagery, research and ideas at extraordinary speed. That democratises access to skills in a way that I think is genuinely amazing. But if you’re asking AI to create something based on everything that already exists, unsurprisingly, it’s pretty good at producing something that looks like everything that already exists. Competent becomes much less distinctive.

Have we become so seduced (isn’t that a lovely word!) by how quickly it can get us to a decent answer that we stop asking whether decent was actually the thing we were aiming for?

Our value lies in what we refuse to hand over.

AI hasn’t made us less busy. Sadly, none of us at Keystone are now reclining on a chaise longue on Thursday afternoons being fed peeled grapes because Nova has done all the work. What she HAS done is remove some of the friction and give us more space for the bits of our thinking that is valuable enough to protect.

I don’t want AI deciding which thought has potential before we’ve had a chance to kick it about. I don’t want efficiency to become the objective when the actual objective was originality. And I definitely don’t want us producing perfectly polished beige stuff simply because we can produce more of it, faster.

To stand out, organisations will have to figure out when AI can help them steer the boat better and when they still need a slightly weird human being to notice the treasure that everyone else sailed past.

The post Use the robots. Keep the weird. appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Advanced Handling

Katherine Hesketh — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:36:34 +0000

From apprentice marketer to embedded team

Client: Advanced Handling

Commercial, Strategy

The challenge

Advanced Handling is a UK manufacturer of materials-handling equipment, working across specialist sectors including aerospace and defence.

When Keystone began working with the business, its in-house marketing resource consisted of an apprentice Marketing Assistant. As a solo marketer developing their skills and experience, they had no senior marketing colleague internally to provide strategic counsel, challenge or support.

The opportunity was not to outsource marketing, but to help Advanced Handling build its own capability: providing senior strategic support while establishing a more structured, commercially focused approach to marketing across the business.

Our approach

Over three years, Keystone provided the senior marketing thinking that Advanced Handling did not yet have in-house, deliberately adapting our involvement as the internal team developed.

We started with weekly support and introduced a regular monthly marketing meeting, creating greater structure around priorities, decision-making and delivery. We worked with the team to connect marketing more closely to business growth, including a stronger focus on priority sectors and audiences, and supported the development and launch of a new website.

We also challenged existing activity where we believed it could work harder. After assessing Advanced Handling’s approach to Google Ads, we recommended a more effective approach to digital lead generation. Keystone introduced a specialist partner and coordinated the relationship, while ensuring knowledge and capability were transferred to the in-house team. Advanced Handling subsequently became able to manage its digital campaigns internally, removing the need for ongoing external management fees and saving more than £10,000 a year.

As the marketing function matured, our role changed with it. Weekly support evolved into monthly meetings and, eventually, quarterly strategic sessions focused on bigger business opportunities. These explored areas including sector targeting, the customer journey, service engagement, Salesforce segmentation and how marketing could support customers more effectively beyond the initial sale.

The final phase brought that thinking together into a clear 2026/27 marketing strategy, giving the team strategic priorities to take forward independently.

Impact

Three years on, Advanced Handling has an established in-house marketing function.

Its original apprentice marketer completed their apprenticeship with distinction, progressed to Senior Marketing Executive and now manages a Marketing Assistant completing an apprenticeship of their own. Marketing also has a regular seat at the Senior Management table.

The business has strengthened its internal digital marketing capability, reduced its reliance on external suppliers and embedded a more strategic approach to marketing.

For Keystone, that evolution is an important measure of success: our involvement reduced as Advanced Handling’s own capability grew.

Services used

Fractional strategic marketing support
Marketing strategy
Team development and capability building
Digital marketing consultancy
Customer journey and engagement strategy
Website strategy and development support

“Keystone has been an instrumental part of developing our team and marketing efforts. They’re always engaged, informed and proactive, and care deeply about the outcomes. It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with them for these past few years, and we will always look to collaborate with Keystone on any new projects in the future.”

The post Advanced Handling appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Cambridgeshire charity

Katherine Hesketh — Fri, 09 Oct 2026 09:18:27 +0000

Turning isolation into strategic confidence

Engagement, Strategy

The challenge

Working as the sole marketer within an organisation brings considerable freedom and responsibility, but it can also mean having no other marketing specialist to test ideas with, challenge thinking or turn to when things get difficult.

For one marketer working within a Cambridgeshire charity, that was the challenge. With a broad remit spanning social media, campaigns, data, reporting and longer-term planning, they wanted to develop their strategic skills while having access to an experienced external perspective.

Writing a marketing strategy felt like a significant hurdle. There was also an opportunity to broaden the organisation’s approach beyond social media, make better use of marketing data and create space to step away from day-to-day delivery and think strategically.

Our approach

Over 12 months, Keystone founder Hayley Williams provided regular one-to-one marketing mentoring, creating dedicated space to explore ideas, work through challenges and build strategic capability.

Rather than following a predetermined training programme, the mentoring combined structured development with the flexibility to focus on the challenges and opportunities that mattered at each point in the year.

Our Wheel of Marketing concept firstly benchmarked the organisation’s activity and identified strengths, gaps and opportunities. From there, sessions covered developing a marketing strategy, identifying meaningful measures of success and reviewing campaigns, audiences, content, capacity and priorities.

A major focus was helping the marketer move from individual activities towards seeing how different elements of marketing could work together strategically. We explored opportunities including audience journeys, partnerships, referrals, campaigns and measurement, and how marketing could connect more clearly with wider organisational priorities.

The mentoring also provided an independent sounding board. Live projects and ideas could be discussed openly, assumptions challenged and difficult periods worked through without judgement. Across 12 months, more than 20 hours of mentoring and strategic support was provided; protected time to step away from delivery, think and build confidence in the decisions being made.

Impact

By the end of the programme, the marketer identified four significant areas of development: learning how to write marketing strategies, broadening understanding of impactful marketing beyond social media, developing a stronger and more critical understanding of data and increasing confidence in their expertise and the value of their work.

Having regular access to experienced external counsel also helped make working as a solo marketer feel less isolating, providing the space and perspective to work through challenges that might otherwise have felt overwhelming.

Crucially, the mentoring formed capability rather than dependency, developing strategic thinking, professional confidence and practical skills that could continue to be applied beyond the programme.

Services used

Strategy
Engagement

Testimonial

“Being on my own at times has been very stressful and can be isolating. Having someone there to not only talk through my ideas and projects, but to offer advice and guidance, as well as to give the perspective of an expert, has made things a lot easier to manage.

“Throughout the year, you have helped me to see that I am capable and that the work that I do holds value. I have taken big steps towards confidence in my knowledge, ability and in the work that I am producing.”

The post Cambridgeshire charity appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority: Inward Investment

Katherine Hesketh — Tue, 06 Oct 2026 13:24:51 +0000

Turning regional ambition into an investor-ready UKREiiF prospectus

Client: Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority: Inward Investment

Brand, Engagement, Public sector, Strategy

The challenge

Over three days, UKREiiF brings together over 16,000 senior leaders, investors and public-sector professionals from across the property, investment and infrastructure sectors.

For regions competing for attention, a printed prospectus is more than an event handout, it’s a tool to support high-value conversations with investors, partners and stakeholders.

Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority had a clear ambition: to present the region as one of the UK’s most dynamic and investable growth economies. Using the strong evidence base of its Local Growth Plan, CPCA asked us to create a UKREiiF prospectus that would:

stand out from the crowd
present a confident narrative that would resonate with investors
showcase a strong visual identity and sense of place

Our approach

The Local Growth Plan contained Cambridgeshire and Peterborough’s evidence, ambition and economic story. Our job was to translate that content into a prospectus that articulated the region’s proposition, not just its assets, to investors. Rather than simply describing what the region has, we shaped a narrative around why it matters to investors right now.

Through our discovery workshop, we surfaced the idea that investors have a strong desire to recognise momentum early and spot the right opportunity at the right time. So we built a narrative that emotionally and psychologically connected. Announcing the region as “Bold, Curious and Astute, just like you” we invited investors to recognise the region as sharing their values, their ambition and their appetite for growth. Flagging this “match” wasn’t just flattery, it was relevance. We weren’t just asking investors to look at the opportunity. We were inviting them to recognise themselves in it and to feel something. With an emotional connection in place, attention locks in.

Bold words deserved a bold approach, which we carried through into the design. Striking typography, image-led storytelling, bold section openers, interleaved with tactile, transparent pages and a more editorial rhythm created a prospectus that felt distinctive, confident and investor-ready.

We:

defined the core narrative and investor-facing positioning
translated the Local Growth Plan content into sharper, more accessible messaging.
developed a structure that moved from regional ambition to sector strengths and investable opportunities.
created a stronger visual direction, using real imagery and bold messaging to build a clearer sense of place.
aligned the prospectus with wider UKREiiF activity.

Impact

The result was a prospectus that felt distinctive, editorial and deliberately different from more conventional regional investment brochures.
The clear creative and messaging thread that we created went beyond the prospectus. It also featured within the UKREiiF pavilion design, and well subsequent campaign and investment communications.

The post Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority: Inward Investment appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Renovation Underwriting

Chantal Palmer — Mon, 05 Oct 2026 12:53:16 +0000

Turning specialist insight into broker engagement

Client: Renovation Underwriting

Campaigns, Commercial, Digital, Engagement

The challenge

Renovation Underwriting has a wealth of specialist knowledge to share with brokers, from market insight and product updates to the real-world risks shaping renovation projects.

The challenge was turning that expertise into a regular broker-facing event that felt focused, useful and worth attending. They needed a polished communications journey that could build interest, encourage sign-ups, support speakers and create a stronger live experience for brokers.

Our approach

Keystone identified an opportunity for RU to use its market credibility in a more direct and engaging way with brokers by turning insight into a clear, engaging and well-managed virtual event.

The twice yearly Market Briefing webinars were a strategic recommendation that created a new engagement channel between RU and its broker audience, and one that has gone on to generate significant value.

We work with the RU team to shape the agenda, understand what they want brokers to take away and structure the content around the most useful audience moments. From there, we create the wider campaign journey, including HubSpot invitation emails, reminder emails, registration forms, landing page copy, automations and supporting assets.

We also design and build the PowerPoint presentation for the webinar itself, bringing speaker content together into a polished format that feels on-brand, easy to follow and ready for the live event.

In the most recent Market Briefing, we helped RU evolve the format by making it even more broker focused. We gave the session a sharper editorial structure by reducing the number of internal speakers and introducing an external subject matter expert.

This gave brokers a clearer, more valuable experience: a market update from RU, an independent perspective on project risk and a more interactive discussion around the issues they are seeing in practice.

The change also created space for a more substantial panel discussion and Q&A, giving brokers more opportunity to share views, ask questions and explore practical challenges in greater depth.

Impact

The Market Briefings have become a consistent part of RU’s broker engagement activity, giving the team a structured way to share expertise, strengthen relationships and keep brokers close to the renovation risks, trends and opportunities shaping client conversations.

By combining strategic planning, content development, HubSpot delivery and presentation design, Keystone helps RU turn each briefing into a joined-up communications campaign rather than a standalone webinar with the value extending beyond the live sessions. Each briefing creates expert content that can be repurposed into follow-up communications, thought leadership articles, on-demand viewing and wider broker engagement.

The post Renovation Underwriting appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Before you promote your event, ask these five questions

Katherine Hesketh — Thu, 17 Sep 2026 09:35:57 +0000

Venue booked. Date set. It’s finally happening. After months of planning, it is time to start selling tickets.

Your next job is promotion. And tempting as it might be to fire up Canva and create something you can quickly share on social media, it is worth pausing first.

Because after spending so long immersed in your event, you may have become, in the words of the Febreze advert: noseblind.

We’re not suggesting your event stinks, far from it. But you may be too close to it to see it as your audience does. Rush to “just get it out there” and your promotion could miss the people most likely to respond, leading to fewer ticket sales than your event deserves.

Taking a step back can be difficult when you are fizzing with enthusiasm. But these five questions will help you find renewed clarity: who you need to reach, what matters to them, what information they need and where they are most likely to notice your message.

There’s no secret sauce here. The value of the exercise lies in its simplicity. When deadlines are tight and excitement is high, it is easy to skip straight to outputs. Focusing on your audience first could save time, sharpen your message and make every channel work harder.

Q1. Who are you really trying to reach?

You may already have considered this while planning your event. Now is the time to look more closely and map out three types of audience using this simple framework:

Core: the people most likely to attend
Growth: the people with the potential to become interested
Support: those who can influence or enable attendance

For each group, note down as much detail as you can about who they are.

The truth: Your event is not relevant to everyone. The more specific you can be about your audience targeting, the more relevant your promotion can become.

Q2. What might encourage them to take part?

The big thing here is relevance. If your event doesn’t feel relevant to someone, they’re not going to attend. Think about what your Core and Growth audiences will gain, as well as what might motivate your Support audience to promote the event. Does your event provide entertainment, connection, confidence, discovery, practical value or simply an enjoyable way to spend their time? If so, tell them.

The truth: People will not attend simply because your organisation wants them to. Show them what is in it for them.

Q3. What could get in their way?

Barriers to attendance come in three main forms – practical and emotional and social.

Practical barriers:

Cost: Can I afford it?
Transport: How will I get there?
Timing: Does it fit into my day?

Emotional and social barriers

Uncertainty: What should I expect?
Belonging: Is this event for people like me?
Confidence: Will I feel comfortable attending alone?

Address the barriers you can and explain the experience clearly. Practical information and welcoming, inclusive language can reduce uncertainty and help people feel more confident about booking.

The truth: Leave out a crucial piece of information and a potential attendee may walk away. Make the decision as easy as possible for them.

Q4. What is the clearest reason to care?

You probably have a long list of reasons why someone should attend. If you try to include them all, your strongest message could disappear into the noise. Focus on the one thing you want your audience to understand. Test it by asking: if someone remembered only one thing about your event, what would you want it to be?

The truth: Clarity beats completeness. Give people one strong reason to care, not ten competing reasons.

Q5. Where would they expect to hear about it?

You have identified your audiences, understood what matters to them and clarified what you need to say. Now you can decide where to reach them. Go to the places your audiences already use and trust. Think beyond social media. An email newsletter, a poster in a familiar community venue, a WhatsApp group or a recommendation from a trusted organisation could be more effective if that is where your audience looks for information.

Truth: It’s not about where you like to communicate. It’s about where your audience is most likely to notice and trust the message.

We originally developed these questions to help a group of young event producers turn their ideas into practical marketing plans. But they are just as useful for experienced organisations, particularly when enthusiasm, familiarity or pressure to launch makes it difficult to step back.

If your organisation has become a little “noseblind”, Keystone can bring the outside perspective you need. Through practical workshops and collaborative planning, we help teams understand their audiences, sharpen their messages and make more confident marketing decisions.

Whether you are promoting an event, launching something new or helping non-marketers communicate more effectively, let’s start with the questions that matter.

The post Before you promote your event, ask these five questions appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Cambridgeshire ACRE

Chantal Palmer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 15:54:57 +0000

Turning limited capacity into momentum

Client: Cambridgeshire ACRE

Nonprofits

The challenge

Cambridgeshire ACRE had strong expertise, established relationships and plenty of stories to tell. It supports rural communities across affordable housing, community buildings, health and wellbeing, environmental projects, volunteering and community development.

Our challenge was to create a more proactive, structured and focused approach to communications, aligned to their priorities but within an allocation of just a day a month. The charity needed strategic direction, but also dependable marketing expertise to help build trust and strengthen their position with their audiences as rural community specialists.

Our approach

We had already had a trusted relationship with Cambridgeshire ACRE through previous work, including the development of a practical tone of voice framework to help staff communicate more consistently and confidently, including the use of AI.

We began with an in-depth workshop to explore Cambridgeshire ACRE’s audiences, positioning, priorities, projects and communications challenges.

From those insights, we developed a structured and tailored communications approach combining strategic direction with practical delivery. Our support included content and campaign planning, organisational messaging, social media consultancy, content creation and copywriting, and practical guidance to help the internal team create stronger content.

We looked closely at how Cambridgeshire ACRE was communicating with its different audiences and recommended a more targeted to reflect that different audiences had different needs, motivations and relationships. We also helped the Chief Executive develop a more consistent LinkedIn presence, giving the organisation a stronger leadership voice and additional opportunities to highlight its work and impact.

We also created targeted content around key moments, including an article for Volunteers’ Week bringing together stories from across their projects, and presented at its Community Buildings Conference, sharing expert, practical advice to help volunteers increase visibility of the village halls they supported. As a bolt on resource, we also developed a closure and legacy content plan for the New Life on the Old West (NLOW) programme – designed to keep the achievements, knowledge and resources visible beyond the funding period.

Impact

The year-long retained partnership gave Cambridgeshire ACRE access to strategic marketing expertise, trusted advice and dependable additional capacity; creating an established communications rhythm and providing strategic confidence that helped strengthen the charity’s own internal capability going forward.

Across the retained period, Cambridgeshire ACRE’s combined social content generated more than 259,000 impressions and 5,500 interactions, while its website recorded 25,760 views. Its combined social media audience grew by 8.8%, including 13.7% growth on LinkedIn and 7.3% growth on Facebook.

Services used

Strategy
Campaigns
Content
Digital
Engagement

Testimonial

“The session at the beginning, working through our marketing strategy and thinking carefully about audiences, positioning and priorities, was incredibly useful. As someone relatively new in post at the time, it really helped me to cement my thinking and gave me confidence that we were heading in the right direction.

“We were supported thoughtfully and professionally, particularly through the transition of losing our in house marketing expertise. That continuity and reassurance meant a great deal and has helped us maintain momentum during a period of change.”

Hayley Neal, Chief Executive, Cambridgeshire ACRE

The post Cambridgeshire ACRE appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Keystone chosen to exhibit at HSBC’s national Women’s Business Growth event

Chantal Palmer — Tue, 15 Sep 2026 11:37:14 +0000

HSBC UK’s Women’s Business Growth Initiative two-year anniversary event takes place in London on 23 September, and we’ll be there.

This national event will bring together women business owners to celebrate two years of the initiative, make new connections and explore resilience, growth and the power of strong networks.

Keystone is one of six businesses selected from the Women’s Business Growth Initiative community to host a dedicated stand on the day. And rather than use that space simply to talk about ourselves, we want to use the opportunity to share something useful with the 120 guests.

Our Build Your Marketing Momentum stand will invite business owners to take a closer look at their own marketing through an interactive self-assessment, designed to help identify what’s working, what might be getting in the way and where to focus next.

And for anyone who wants to take that thinking a step further, we’ll also be opening up our Three for Free consultancy sessions, giving organisations an opportunity to bring a current marketing challenge or opportunity to the table and get some independent strategic thinking in return.

Keystone’s Managing Director, Hayley Williams said:

“Being selected to showcase Keystone at the anniversary event is a real privilege. But what I’m most looking forward to is bringing some of our thinking into the room and sharing it with other business owners.

“Whenever someone spends time with us, we strive to leave them with something useful, whether that’s a fresh perspective, a question that makes them think differently or a clearer idea of where to focus next.

“It feels very much in the spirit of an event that’s about celebrating business growth, sharing experiences and recognising the power of a strong network that we take this ethos to this special event too.”

You don’t need to be at the event to build your own marketing momentum. Our Marketing Momentum self-assessment and Three for Free sessions are available more widely too.

If you’d like a copy of the assessment, click the button below to download.

Or, if there’s a marketing challenge or opportunity you’d value an experienced outside perspective on, book a Three for Free session. You’ll get a focused 45-minute consultancy conversation with Hayley, followed by three tailored recommendations you can take away and act on, with no obligation.

The post Keystone chosen to exhibit at HSBC’s national Women’s Business Growth event appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Stop. Start. Strengthen.

Chantal Palmer — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 15:10:34 +0000

Taking a break and experiencing something different can give us a fresh perspective. September often brings renewed energy and the temptation to charge into the final part of the year with a longer list of things to do.

But progress does not always come from adding more. The final quarter of the year can offer a useful moment to reflect on your marketing and decide what to stop, start and strengthen, so your time, effort and budget are used more effectively.

Stop

What are you doing because you have always done it that way?

Businesses can easily become attached to the status quo. We have all heard the phrase, “But we’ve always done it this way.” There’s always an argument for not fixing something that isn’t broken. But what if the longstanding, familiar ways of operating are no longer producing the results you need?

Is the regular newsletter you started 3 years ago receiving little meaningful engagement? Are the right people no longer seeing the content you share on your LinkedIn channel? Do you devote regular time on recurring tasks that don’t deliver clear outcomes?

This is not about stopping activity for the sake of it. It is an opportunity to look at the evidence and decide whether the time, effort and cost involved are still creating enough value.

Start

What important activity keeps being pushed to the bottom of the list?

Perhaps you have wanted to gather more insight from your audiences, capture stronger stories, improve your follow-up or put the next stage of a plan into action.

These activities may feel less exciting than launching a shiny new campaign, but they can strengthen the foundations beneath your marketing and give future activity a better chance of succeeding.

Make September the month when one important idea finally moves off the list and into action.

Strengthen

What is already showing signs of working?

Take a closer look at what you are doing well and what is delivering as intended. There may be an opportunity to build on content your audience values, put more weight behind an effective communications channel or use strong key messages more consistently.

Where you identify something promising, consider what it could become with additional time, focus or support.

Whatever you choose to stop, start or strengthen, ask:

Are the right people paying attention?
Is the value of what we do clear?
Is there an obvious next step?

Our Marketing Wheel of Momentum can help you identify what to stop, start and strengthen, showing where small changes could make a meaningful difference.

The post Stop. Start. Strengthen. appeared first on Keystone Marketing.

Creative does not have to be complicated

Chantal Palmer — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 14:46:50 +0000

Complex isn’t the same as clever, so says Chantal, our Head of Brand and Creative Strategy.

A piece of communication starts life with one job. Well, it should do. There should be just one thing you want the person reading to think, feel or do. But we all know the temptation to make the most of that beautiful white space by oh, I don’t know, cramming in one more teeny tiny little message, just one more call to action. Before you know it, whatever that communication was, it’s bursting at the seams, it’s the Tardis, trying to be so much bigger on the inside than it is on the outside.

Complexity is so much easier than simplicity. The clever bit isn’t adding more, it’s knowing what to take away, stripping back all the other noise that you’re tempted to add.

Mark Twain probably said it best “I didn’t have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.” (although did you know it was actually written by Blaise Pascal in 1657? Who knew)!

Fight it, fight the urge young Grasshopper, to make your communication that much more complicated than it should be. Your reader will thank you for it.

Simple is not the same as basic

‘Simple’ means that whatever you’ve created is easy to understand. Think of your communication like a guided tour. You lead your reader around, pointing out all the fabulous landmarks, give them just enough information to interest but not overwhelm, and finally send them on their way with a hunger to find out more.

That isn’t basic, that’s hard to do. Just because there is less on the page, doesn’t mean it was knocked up in 5 minutes.

Your visual can be bursting with colour, it can be playful, interesting, expressive, cryptic even, but everything on the page has to serve the function of the communication, the concept of the message, not fight it.

As a designer at heart, I love the Bauhaus of it all. Big, bold graphics light my little designer heart on fire, but the temptation towards minimalism has also got to be fought. Too little information is just as bad. You’ve got to think like Goldilocks and go for ‘just right’.

The three-ingredient test for a better creative

While you’re thinking of Goldilocks, you can also think of your communication like a cake. It needs all the ingredients, in the right order, and the right amounts, to turn it into something you want to eat, and not bin!

01 Give your communication a job before you give it a look

I always witter on about ‘Needs not solutions’. Figure out first what your communication needs to do first, unencumbered by preconceived ideas about how it should look.

What does your reader need to notice first? What has to stand out more than anything else? What do you need to include to get the idea across? Is it the problem, the benefit, a question, or the call to action?

The ‘So what?’ test

Give your thoughts some structure. Write down the hierarchy, from top to bottom. Then ask, of every element: ‘so what’. Does it have a purpose? Does it help move your reader towards the conclusion?

If it doesn’t, cut it. Remember, if everything is shouting, nothing is shouting.

02 How do you want your reader to feel?

OK, ‘feel’ isn’t as fluffy as you think. By ‘feel’ I mean creating that little moment of recognition that tells your reader this is relevant to them.

Relevance comes from connecting the message to a problem, goal, worry, benefit or practical need they already recognise. The temptation is always to start with what you want to say. But that’s the catch, this isn’t about you. If you want your reader to feel something, you need to put them first.

Aim for eliciting the thought:

“That’s me.”
“Finally, someone gets it.”
“I should probably know about this.”
“That looks easier than I thought.”
“I trust these people.”
“I don’t want to miss that.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I can do this.”

You’re trying to give your reader a reason to care about what you’re saying. You can’t bore them into reading it : )

03 How are you going to make it easy for your reader to take the next step?

It’s the final ingredient in your communications cake. It isn’t just about what you want your reader to ‘do’. It’s also about how easy you make for them to do it.

The creative needs to have laid enough groundwork that the next step feels obvious, rather than a leap into the unknown. Few readers are comfortable with a leap of faith.

What happens when one of the three ingredients is missing?

Notice without feel
Gets attention but gives your reader no reason to care.

Think: clever visual, brilliant headline, no relevance.

Your audience: “I was briefly entertained, but I had no reason to stay.”

Feel without notice
Contains something genuinely relevant but nobody gets far enough to discover it.

Think: the important benefit buried halfway down the communication.

Your audience: “There may have been something useful in there, but finding it felt too much like hard work.”

Notice and feel without do
Gets your reader’s attention, they’re interested… now what?

Think: multiple CTAs, vague next steps or no obvious way to respond.

Your audience: “This feels relevant to me, but I don’t know what to do next.”

Do without notice or feel
“BOOK NOW!”

Think: Nope.

Your audience: “‘I hear someone shouting, but I don’t know who or why. And I don’t care.”

Passed all three tests? Lovely. Now you can go wild with all the fancy visuals.

04 Do one final test

Once you’ve got everything in place, take another look. If there’s something in your communication that isn’t helping your reader notice, feel or do, why is it there? And be honest with yourself. I know I’ve had to have a long, hard word with myself when I’ve been wedded to an idea and I’ve shoehorned it in just because I like it.

For every headline, paragraph, logo, icon, image, statistic, box, button, colour, graphic or piece of information ask:

Is it helping your reader notice?
Is it helping them feel something useful?
Is it helping them act?

If the answer to all three is a big fat no, get rid!

One cheeky disclaimer before designers everywhere start shouting at me: this rule doesn’t apply in every case. Branding, accessibility and necessary information still have jobs to do. But you get the gist.

Simple isn’t always the simplest thing to do.

It’s often the result of a whole boatload of thinking, not less.

You can still be bold, clever, playful and unexpected. Just make sure every creative decision is helping your idea do its job, creating a clear path that allows your reader to notice it, connect with it and know exactly what to do next.

The post Creative does not have to be complicated appeared first on Keystone Marketing.