Where business breaks boundaries

Context

Quantum has come a long way since Einstein’s problem with ‘spooky action at a distance’, and the UK Government has publicly proclaimed that quantum technology is one of the keys to helping tackle the challenges of the future.

As a result, funding initially focused on research is now almost exclusively aimed at innovation and making this technology a reality within the UK. 

Objectives

The University of Bristol knew this was a huge opportunity to leverage its fantastic heritage in quantum and its culture of commercialisation to turn Bristol into the best city in the UK to build businesses with quantum technology.

There was now an opportunity to combine these disparate parts under one brand and digital presence. This brand would serve as a lighthouse for commercialised quantum within the UK and the world and act as a gateway and demand driver for existing and new commercial services from the University of Bristol and partners.

The final goal was clear. But how to get there?

Approach

Bristol could see the opportunity, but they wanted to ensure they knew everything about their audience's needs and current POV on the city before taking action. We, therefore, engaged in several significant pieces of research.

• Extensive quantitative study of 119 quantum academics and startup founders in the UK and Europe

• Interviews with 20+ leaders of the UK quantum category, including renowned academics, business leaders and government representatives

• Focus groups to understand the details behind Bristol’s quantum offering. Using their experience, we captured the best way to explain it to others

• Having summarised and shared our findings with the senior team, we ran a series of workshops to define the critical strategic decisions for the new identity

• From the outset we established a Navigator group drawn from experts across the client team including quantum academics and marketers

With these defined, we were able to create a clear and defined proposition for the initiative, ready to take to the Creatives to turn into a brand idea.

• Working in close collaboration with the Navigators we created a unique name for the initiative and a powerful brand idea

  Quantum Frontier – where business breaks boundaries

• We developed a cut-through visual style influenced by the concept of superpositioning and with colours inspired by visualisations of the hydrogen wave function

• And we worked with the team at the university and our delivery partners to create a launch plan to make the initiative unmissable in the quantum category

• This was all brought together in a Brand Narrative document and manifesto film (below)

Results

Quantum Frontier successfully launched in April 2023, and we’re still working hard to deliver the first year of communications activity. But beyond this frontier, who knows what exciting discoveries will be made?

“Firehaus instil trust and are sensitive to the needs of different stakeholders”

Tamsin Denbigh, Marketing Lead, University of Bristol