Brown & Brown Architects are known for their beautiful, thoughtful and contemporary houses in sensitive and picturesque locations across the Scottish Highlands. Office D.SHARP worked with Brown & Brown to develop a highly crafted approach to its marketing and communications.

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Over the course of our three-year collaboration, Brown & Brown saw a significant increase in awareness and recognition. The practice won sought-after commissions from a number of high-profile clients; the team grew from six to ten members; and website traffic and Instagram followers both doubled. Brown & Brown also received significant press coverage, including project features in Enki, The New York Times, Wallpaper, Dwell, Dezeen, Elle Decora­tion and The Times, and was awarded Practice of the Year at the 2022 Scottish Design Awards.

Andrew and Kate Brown approached us in 2021 to advise them on their marketing strategy and planning. Their main objective was to shift the primary focus from generating leads and securing new work to building the Brown & Brown brand and solidifying its reputation for design excellence. 

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Brown & Brown’s ideal clients are high-end, design-driven and well-researched. While the studio practices from Scottish highlands, their clients are primarily based internationally. Reaching this competitive and remote target audience presented a marketing challenge for the brand, which their new marketing strategy would need to address.

While our scope and objectives evolved over time, our marketing response remained the same and consisted of two focus areas. First, to refine the practice’s presentation, imagery and messaging to underscore the quality and ethos of the studio’s work. Second, to develop a marketing and communications strategy designed to increase brand awareness among both design focused  residential clients and the studio’s architectural peers.

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To support this work, we also developed a written marketing strategy and plan containing concise, measurable objectives to be reviewed annually, clear brand positioning and a visual palette, detailed recommendations for a considered selection of marketing channels, and a budget and implementation timeline for the following year.

Elevating Brown & Brown’s brand image – the perception and presentation of the practice – was fundamental to demonstrating the studio’s commitment to design excellence. We worked with the team to develop new positioning statements that convey the studio’s sensitive and considered approach to homes, landscape, making and heritage.

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We provided guidelines and creative direction for project imagery to ensure the qualities of Brown & Brown’s work would be expressed effectively. These conversations led to the practice working with Jim Stephenson, Richard Gaston, Edmund Sumner, Mart Goossens and Gillian Hayes for photography, accompanied by evocative films by Euan Robinson at Wilding Film. We assisted with the image selection and curation, and provided careful critique during post-production.

As part of this broader repositioning, Brown & Brown undertook a rebrand in 2022. Serving in an advisory and support role, we assisted with the preparation of the brief, scope and budget, and with the selection of a branding agency, providing feedback, review and guidance throughout the process. The new brand identity and website, designed by Studio.Build, launched in October 2022.

We developed a media strategy to target publications that appealed to sophisticated, design-driven and aspirational clients based outside Scotland. 

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Brown & Brown managed their own media outreach for most of our engagement. We provided guidance on media strategy and selection, how best to prioritise publications and approach editors and journalists, and how to navigate the complexities of exclusivity and embargoes. The practice also engaged the services of publicists at various times, and we provided advice around selecting the right publicist and reviewed their work to ensure the results met expectations and aligned with the studio’s broader goals and objectives.

In addition to media strategy, we consulted on a range of carefully selected marketing tactics, providing detailed recommendations and hands-on support when required. This included assisting with the development of journal article themes for the website and newsletter; content strategy and guidelines for Instagram; and commissioning films to showcase the practice’s new projects and broaden its reach internationally. To date, the film of Arbor House has had 71,000 views. When new pieces of content were released, we also helped the studio set up highly targeted Instagram advertising campaigns to ensure the new content reached its intended audience.

Underpinning each tactical decision was an in-depth analysis of Brown & Brown’s most loyal and ambitious clients. In 2023, Rolf Nielsen joined the practice as its new associate director. One of Rolf’s first undertakings was to conduct interviews with a handful of the studio’s ideal clients. Following a carefully designed structure, our interviews focused on the client’s past experiences with architecture, attitudes toward the role of architects and awareness of current architecture media. We examined the client’s research journey and decision-making process, from how they shortlisted architects for their project to the priorities that guided their final decision. We also discussed their initial impressions and brand associations of Brown & Brown to better understand how the practice’s image is perceived by its target client. The valuable insights collected from these interviews then fed directly into the practice’s marketing strategy.

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The recognition and success Brown & Brown has generated over recent years is testament to its commitment to a considered and highly crafted approach to marketing and communications. We are proud to have been involved in the studio’s journey and to watch the scale and ambition of its projects increase with every new commission, becoming even more renowned for beautiful, thoughtful and contemporary Scottish architecture.

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Images by Jim Stephenson, Mart Goossens and Gillian Hayes.

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