The Good Comms Edit - Issue 22 - 28.09.26

Show, don’t tell - three brands making the idea visible

There’s a common communications problem hiding in plain sight ... we decide what we want people to think about us, we care about craft, we champion small businesses, we believe good things take time, and then we put those exact words into our communications BUT the strongest storytelling rarely asks an audience simply to believe the claim ... it gives them something that makes the claim feel true.

That’s the thread running through this week’s Good Comms .. three recent campaigns that take an abstract brand idea and turn it into something people can actually see.

1. Burberry: let someone else carry the story

Burberry closed London Fashion Week last Monday with a collection created in collaboration with 84-year-old British textile designer Celia Birtwell.

Birtwell's hand-painted florals appeared throughout the collection, including interpretations of Burberry's famous check. The setting mattered too. The show took place at Chelsea College of Arts, close to Burberry's London headquarters.

It arrives as the company has been deliberately returning its attention to the things that make Burberry recognisably Burberry ... Britishness, outerwear, craft and heritage, while trying to make that heritage feel alive rather than preserved behind glass.

The Good Comms bit

Burberry could have produced another campaign telling us that it values British creativity and craftsmanship. Instead, it invited a British creative whose work already embodies those things into the story.

When another person, place or collaboration can demonstrate something about your organisation, they often communicate it more convincingly than you can yourself.

For smaller creative organisations, that doesn't require a fashion-week budget. A theatre wanting to demonstrate its relationship with its city could commission a local illustrator for its programme.

A musician talking about musical heritage could invite an older musician who influenced them into a piece of content.

A gallery that describes itself as accessible could hand its Instagram account to first-time visitors for an afternoon.

Don't only tell people what you value, find people who already embody that value and make them part of the story.

2. HSBC: make your customer the protagonist

This week HSBC UK launched Proud to Support Small Businesses, featuring ten real UK business owners but instead of producing the familiar bank advert, earnest entrepreneur at work, reassuring voiceover, logo, HSBC has portrayed the owners as monumental statues.

The people featured aren't actors, they're winners of HSBC UK's Small Business Growth Awards, held with the Federation of Small Businesses earlier this year, and include founders working across food, drink, design and manufacturing.

The visual conceit elevates ordinary business owners into the kind of heroic figures usually commemorated in bronze and stone.

The Good Comms bit

There's a useful storytelling distinction here ... Who is your story actually about?

Businesses instinctively make themselves the protagonist ... Look what we made, offer, achieved.

HSBC could easily have made a campaign about how much it supports small businesses.

Instead, the small-business owners occupy centre stage and the bank becomes the supporting character.

That move is particularly useful for service businesses and cultural organisations because the interesting story often isn't what you do, it's what becomes possible for somebody else because you do it.

A venue doesn't only put on concerts, it creates nights people remember.

A PR company doesn't merely secure coverage, it helps somebody's work find the people who might care about it.

A community organisation isn't really about its programme of activities, it's about what those activities allow people to experience, learn or become.

If you're struggling to find something interesting to say about your organisation, try moving yourself out of the centre of the story. Your audience, customers, artists or community might be much more interesting protagonists.

3. Charlie Bigham's: build the communications from the belief

On Wednesday, Charlie Bigham's launched a new brand platform called Slowly Does It.

Its starting point is the company's belief that good food shouldn't be rushed. That idea then runs through everything ... ingredient sourcing, preparing food by hand in small batches, cooking it and ultimately taking the time to sit down and eat it.

The campaign deliberately sets that against a culture obsessed with optimisation, productivity and speed.

The Good Comms bit

What I like here isn't really the advertising, it's the clarity of the organising idea.

“Slowly Does It” isn't simply a strapline attached to a product, it's a belief that the product can provide evidence for and that makes communications infinitely easier.

Once you know the idea you want to own, you suddenly know which stories belong to you.

For Charlie Bigham's, ingredients, hand-making, cooking and taking time over dinner belongs. A frantic five hacks to get dinner on the table in four minutes TikTok probably doesn't.

That's incredibly useful for small organisations because most don't have a shortage of things they could communicate but they do have a shortage of filters for deciding what they should communicate.

A clear brand idea becomes that filter.

Ask: What do we genuinely believe?

Then: What do we already do that proves it?

And finally: What stories can we tell that allow other people to see it too?

That's much stronger than deciding you need three Instagram posts this week and wondering what on earth to put in them.

The thread ... evidence beats adjectives

Burberry doesn't simply say 'British creativity' it brings Celia Birtwell into the room, HSBC doesn't simply say we support small businesses, it puts real business owners on pedestals and Charlie Bigham's doesn't simply say we care about quality, it builds the story around taking time to do things properly.

None of these lessons requires the budget behind the examples, in fact, they're perhaps even more useful when you don't have one, because when you're a small creative business, artist or cultural organisation, your greatest communications advantage is often that you're surrounded by real evidence.

You don't need to manufacture a brand world quite as often as you think, you need to notice the interesting things already happening inside yours and then let people see them.

That's Good Comms.