brandcatalyst

Brand strategy: Go Ape

The need: Go Ape is the UK’s leading ‘high-wire forest adventure’, which involves following a course in the tree-tops including walkways, tight ropes, Tarzan ropes and zip wires, while harnessed onto a safety line. When we started our conversation with Go Ape in 2006 they were a relatively new business, showing very rapid growth but lacking in some of the more formalised aspects of their brand marketing. The Go Ape team had decided they needed a new identity but were perhaps less aware of the management and development advantages of a more tightly defined brand.

Our work: We met with the Go Ape management team to understand their business and of course to experience the offer. We looked at the competitor’s offers and marketing and went on to define the Go Ape brand, including a brand template and personality.  We encapsulated the brand idea as Serious Fun, supported by the brand coordinates: Wonder, Communion and Rush. We also developed a number of visual concepts that explored different approaches that could be pursued in developing the new identity.

The result: This strategic brand work was used by the Go Ape team to brief a design agency for the new brand identity and more broadly when making strategic decisions about the business. A new identity was launched in 2010.

Go Ape won the SME  category of the National Business Awards in 2009. There are now 26 Go Ape sites in the UK and the first has been launched in the USA.

Tristram Mayhew, founder and Chief Executive of Go Ape said: “Brand Catalyst’s work awakened in our minds the value of our brand and clearly defined what it should mean to our customers. This insight makes it easier to make the right decisions about the direction and development of our offer.”