Digital Somerset DS20: Brand, Channels and Trademarks in a Saturated Digital World

Digital Somerset’s DS20 landed in Yeovil last night, and it was an evening built squarely for the digitally curious. As ever, the format brought together people from across the county to learn, share and connect, with the roadshow concept doing exactly what it sets out to do: take Somerset’s digital community on the road and seed knowledge wherever it goes.

For anyone new to the series, Digital Somerset is a quarterly event that moves around the county, supported by corporate partners including Barclays Eagle Labs, The Realm, Lendology and the Firepool Innovation Centre. The board team (myself and Jenny opened the evening, with Lizzie, Barry, and the team in the room helping things run smoothly) keeps the whole thing volunteer-driven and community-first. We also flagged the fantastic work of Donate IT, a local charity that takes old technology, services it, harvests parts and puts devices back into the hands of people who need them. If you have kit you would otherwise bin, drop it at Teapot or bring it to a Digital Somerset event and we will get it where it needs to go.

Tonight’s theme was digital marketing, and the line-up gave us three very different but tightly connected angles on it.

Daniel Cooper, Queen’s College: Standing out in a stale, saturated space

Dan opened the evening as our main speaker, and he set the bar high. He is Head of Marketing at Queen’s College in Taunton, and he walked us through the thinking behind a recent rebrand he described as brave, a little bit different and genuinely cut-through in a sector he characterised as “stale”.

He framed his perspective honestly. He spent seven years at Somerset County Cricket Club before moving into independent schools, two famously traditional sectors, and admitted up front that he is not a natural creative. His background is data and email marketing, and his comfort zone is systems rather than stories. That self-awareness ended up being one of the most useful threads of his talk.

The scale of the noise

Dan grounded the problem in numbers that are difficult to argue with:

  • The average person scrolls 300 metres a day on their phone. That is roughly the height of the Eiffel Tower.
  • Around 17 sessions a day.
  • Roughly 4,000 adverts seen daily.

That is the environment every brand is now competing inside. As he put it, you can’t force creativity and boldness into systems that don’t allow them. You can paper over the cracks with clever design, but the cut-through has to start somewhere structural.

Systems and stories

One of the most useful framings of the night was Dan’s “systems and stories” scale. On one end you have people who think in structure, clarity and control. On the other you have people who lean into emotion, narrative and connection. He invited the room to mentally place themselves on it, and the point landed clearly: most marketing teams skew one way, and the magic happens when you create deliberate tension between the two.

He doesn’t try to be the most creative person in the room. He surrounds himself with people who balance the scale, and he leans on three trusted voices outside his marketing team for honest feedback: the finance manager (because finance teams talk to customers far more than marketers admit), a health-and-safety lead with strong middle-ground instincts, and the head’s PA who throws blue-sky ideas his way. Bringing those voices into the conversation is, in his view, where genuinely distinctive work starts.

Wabi-sabi and the trouble with perfect

Dan introduced a Japanese concept I keep coming back to: wabi-sabi, finding beauty in imperfection. He drew the analogy to handmade ceramics versus machine-perfect ones. The handmade ones are slightly wonky, but they connect. The same applies to brands. Over-engineering, over-polishing and over-using AI to smooth everything out can quietly strip a brand of its personality. The little rough edges are often the bit that people connect to.

His worry was that marketing today is so optimised, so tested and so AI-polished that it is increasingly easy to lose character in the pursuit of safety.

“Open Any Day in March”

The clearest practical example was Queen’s “Open Any Day in March” campaign. Independent school open days, he argued, are the ultimate over-engineered marketing exercise: red carpet, fruity water, croissants, a perfectly rehearsed pupil script. None of it is the actual school.

So they put a calendar on the website with no limit and let people book in whenever they liked. People turned up unannounced. One family caught the headmaster mid-bike-ride in Lycra. The point was that the school was confident enough in its day-to-day reality to let strangers walk in and see it. His challenge to the room: if someone walked into your workplace tomorrow with no advance notice, would you be pleased with what they saw?

Indifference is the real enemy

A line that stuck: indifference is the most dangerous brand position. The previous Queen’s identity (gold and grey, no stretch, no creative range) wasn’t wrong. Their research showed 30% felt it aligned with the school, 10% were critical and 60% were neutral. Sixty per cent neutral, when parents are making the biggest financial commitment of their lives outside buying a house. That, Dan said, is “a silent death in a shrinking market”.

He shared the broader sector context to make the point land:

  • 95 independent schools have closed since 2020
  • 80 of those closed in the past year following the VAT change
  • Pupil numbers down 3.6% across the board (around 25,000 children leaving the sector against a predicted 3,000)
  • Average price increases of 22%
  • Taunton itself is the second most competitive independent school market in the country

The rebrand and the backlash

Queen’s partnered with Teapot Creative (more on Teapot shortly) after Dan put the brief out on LinkedIn and had over 100 agencies come back. They interviewed six, picked one based on cultural fit as much as creative chops, gathered 2,000 pieces of audience research, and pulled the trigger on a rebrand that introduced more than two colours, a yellow goal, purple as a contextual counter on the colour wheel, and a much more elastic use of their wyvern.

Dan was completely transparent about the reception. The early feedback included some bruising lines: “Bad on so many levels,” “Take it down, start again,” “Doesn’t fit the Queen’s ethos." He compared the moment to Jaguar’s recent rebrand controversy and admitted real self-doubt. But the point of moving away from indifference is that you accept some people genuinely won’t like it. That is the price of being remembered.

The numbers

The results, six months in, are worth reading slowly:

  • 48% year-on-year increase in admissions
  • Three additional class sizes added, with two more confirmed for September
  • 39% increase in enquiries, with admissions outpacing enquiries (meaning the sales team is converting more efficiently)
  • 100% increase in younger-year enquiries, 80% in middle years, 20% in senior years
  • Total spend on the rebrand: just under £10,000
  • Estimated lifetime value generated: £2.5 million

He was honest that the £2.5 million figure isn’t a flex. It is there because brand work is a long-term, lifetime-value play and the only way to win senior-leadership backing is to translate that into numbers they can act on. Two tactics he uses to get leadership buy-in: ask the leadership team directly whether the brand is strong enough to deliver their objectives and let the silence do the work, and build a “culture of winning” through small, trackable wins before asking for the brave decision.

Parting thoughts

Dan closed with two:

  1. Ask whether your goals are any different to your competitors. Usually they are not. What separates organisations is the internal system for making brave decisions and the people you bring into the room.
  2. Don’t chase perfection, don’t play it safe, and show up as yourselves. Build a strong frame (logos, fonts, colours, guidelines) but let the picture inside tell the true stories from the centre of your organisation.

Genuinely one of the more thought-provoking marketing talks I have heard this year, and the kind of session that makes the whole Digital Somerset format worth running.

Alex Mercer, Teapot Creative: Omni-channel marketing as a relationship

Alex picked up the baton with a lightning talk on omni-channel marketing, and credit to him for following Dan and then immediately admitting that Dan had already done the Teapot plug for him.

His framing: omni-channel marketing is the way every serious brand is going to operate, especially with budgets under pressure and efficiency becoming non-negotiable. He has worked with O2, Emirates, Nando’s, the RHS, HSBC and VW Group, and every one of them has been doing omni-channel for years. It is now squarely on the agenda for SMEs.

What it actually means

Coca-Cola was his anchor example. From the can on the table, to the Christmas advert with the polar bears, to the high-street signage, to the moment you order one in a bar, the brand is consistent everywhere. You can show people a fragment of the logo and they instantly know it is Coke. Omni-channel is not “be on every channel”; it is making sure every channel works together to deliver a single coherent experience.

He broke it into four areas:

1. Customer experience

If your website says A and your social says B, you have a disconnect, and a disconnect is the fastest way to lose trust. Tone of voice, image style, logo placement, language: all of it has to align. Big brands have spent billions getting this right. SMEs can do it on a fraction of the budget if the discipline is there.

2. Personalisation through data

Every channel produces data. Pull it together. Compare your Google Analytics audience with your social audience. If the website is telling you 65+ males and your social is telling you 35-year-old females, you have a problem and an opportunity. Looker Studio is a useful place to consolidate the picture.

He told a brilliant story about a luxury concrete brand whose stated target was tradespeople and architects. The data showed the actual buyer was women coming through from Good Food Magazine looking for kitchens. They retargeted everything off the back of that finding.

3. Convenience

People are lazy (his word, not mine, though he is right). You will be inside two brand interactions within ten minutes of waking up. People interact through their preferred channel, so be on the channel that fits the audience, not the one that fits your habits. 18-to-25-year-old men? Reddit and Twitch, not the Daily Telegraph. Henry’s? Maybe the FT.

4. Increased sales

Done well, omni-channel reduces churn, increases lifetime value and improves conversion through a more frictionless experience. As soon as there is a disconnect (an extra click, a mismatched message), people drop out.

The dating profile exercise

Alex’s standout takeaway was a practical exercise: build a dating profile for your audience. He used himself as the worked example. Age 32, head of marketing, based in Somerset. Three pieces of demographic data right there. Then likes and dislikes, where he hangs out (Amazon Prime Video, YouTube, LinkedIn, Instagram, IMDb), what he reads, where he ignores. Build one for your audience, then build one for your brand, and see whether they actually match.

Some incidental gems along the way:

  • Email is one of the most undervalued marketing tools out there. The people on your list are a hot audience, and the ones who unsubscribe make the rest more valuable.
  • Amazon Prime Video advertising is more accessible than people think; you don’t need a giant budget, and one creative can run on Amazon and YouTube simultaneously through a single Google campaign for a meaningful uplift in reach.
  • Native advertising on news platforms is worth a look (he flagged Readpeak as a recommended platform).
  • Don’t forget traditional media. Billboards and flyers may sit on his dislike list, but for the right audience they still earn their keep.

His closing message was the same as Dan’s, just from a different angle: understand your audience, choose the right channels, integrate your data, keep messaging consistent but personalised, then measure and optimise.

Olivia Richards, Stephens Scown: Trademarking your brand in the digital space

Liv took us into territory most marketers avoid until they have to: the legal protection of the brand they have just spent all that effort building. She’s a UK-qualified trademark attorney at Stephens Scown, and she does this work day in, day out for digital agencies, talent agencies, food and drink companies and start-ups.

What a trademark actually is

A trademark is one of the most valuable tools any business has, and it comes in more forms than people realise:

  • Names (McDonald’s)
  • Logos (the golden arches)
  • Slogans (“I’m loving it”)
  • Sounds (the 007 theme is registered)
  • Motion marks (Cole Palmer’s celebration and Usain Bolt’s lightning-bolt pose are both registered)

Why they matter

Trademarks are enforceable. Liv’s firm recently took Aldi to the Supreme Court and Court of Appeal on behalf of Thatcher’s, over Aldi’s similar-looking cloudy lemon cider can, and won. That precedent matters for every smaller brand that ever thought it couldn’t push back against a giant.

Beyond enforceability, trademarks have value. They are intangible but they are real assets that form part of a business valuation, can be licensed and can be sold. Once registered, a trademark lasts indefinitely provided it is renewed every ten years. And having registration in place means you don’t have to fall back on a “passing off” claim, which carries a much higher evidential bar.

The five mistakes she sees most often

  1. Failing to do a clearance search before committing to a name or logo. It is a step plenty of people skip, and it is the cheapest piece of the whole process.
  2. Confusing a Companies House registration with a trademark. Topshop’s registered company name was Arcadia. A Companies House search won’t catch what someone is actually trading as.
  3. Choosing a descriptive name. KFC literally describes the food it sells. Descriptive marks are hard to register up front, but you can get there over time by building reputation, or by registering a stylised logo version instead.
  4. Assuming that paying a designer means you own the copyright in their work. You don’t. Unless your contract explicitly assigns it, the copyright sits with the designer. Get the assignment in writing at the start.
  5. Forgetting that trademarks are territorial. A UK trademark is a UK trademark. If you want to trade in the EU or US, that is a separate process in each jurisdiction.

The takeaway

Liv was clear that this isn’t a sales pitch, but the practical message is that trademarks are not as expensive as people fear, and they are dramatically cheaper than the cost of having to defend yourself when something goes wrong. Talk to a specialist early, even if it’s just to scope out where you are.

What’s coming up

We closed the evening with a few dates worth getting in your diary:

  • Friday 8 May: FutureSkill Yeovil networking breakfast at Taunton Conference Centre.
  • Tuesday 9 May: Community Somerset Climbing & Beach Clean.
  • Friday 8 May (Yeovil): A free half-day workshop at the iAero Centre in Yeovil, run by Somerset Innovation Hub in partnership with Exeter University, for anyone who has done some AI training and wants to take an idea from ideation through to planning and implementation. Fully funded by the council. I’ll be supporting this one.
  • End of April / May: Digital Hub returns in Yeovil, with Shane Evans (qualified hypnotist and life coach) talking about something we are not talking about enough: AI amplifies everything, the good and the bad, and people are starting to burn out as their output capacity triples overnight. How do we keep AI as the tool and not let it run us?
  • 1 June and 1 July: Automation Fundamentals at iAero. A new one-day course we are launching after surveying Somerset businesses on the skills they actually want to retain and grow. Most of the answers came back as automation, not AI. We’ll cover the language (triggers, loops, the lot), get hands-on with brand-new officially supported AI and automation LEGO, and every attendee will leave with AutonoSim, a new tool we have built for designing and emulating automations agnostically across Google, Power Automate or Make before you commit to building them for real.
  • 30 June: The next Digital Somerset event, an AI Challenge (a Taskmaster-style format, although after Liv’s talk we are being very careful with that comparison). Bring a laptop, build something, get judged at the end. More details to follow.
  • Women in Digital (DS19): Rescheduled after the floods earlier in the year forced us to cancel. Dates to follow, and yes, DS19 will run after DS20. We have not gone mad.

Closing thought

What I took away from DS20 is that the three talks lined up almost perfectly. Dan made the case for being brave and human at the centre of your brand. Alex showed how that bravery has to be expressed consistently across every channel where your audience actually is. Liv made sure you can protect what you build once it starts working. Strategy, execution, defence. That’s a complete picture, and it’s exactly the kind of evening Digital Somerset is built to deliver.

Thanks to Dan, Alex and Liv, to the partners and the board, to everyone who turned up on a Yeovil evening to talk shop, and to Yeovil College for hosting us.