BRAND & MARKET RESEARCH AGENCY

For over 5 years, Inkling has been a partner in the development of Accordwest, its brand identity and our service offerings, where their role and work have had a very positive influence on our culture.

Inkling respond and prioritise the requests we make when we most need it; they provide valuable context and content that we use and reshape in our campaigns and publications every day. We see significant value in leveraging the investments that have been made.

Simon Hart is a dedicated professional who lives the values of our organisation in the work we do together. He and the team are supportive, truly care about the community and the people we serve and that makes a big difference in the way we feel when we work on our challenges as a team, meeting the often-tight deadlines with limited resources. The communication and the trust we have established has been reinforced and built up with many of our people directly; the people we serve benefit from the compassion, kindness and generosity that comes through very clearly in our communications and campaigns.

Inkling will help you to tell your story to the people you serve, your employees and your partners in commerce and industry so they really hear you.

Evan Nunn
CEO
Accordwest

In starting this testimonial for Inkling, I was asked for a short paragraph. When you deal with Simon, there’s no such thing as a short paragraph, so this is payback time.

Hewshott is a small, specialist engineering consultancy firm, frequently flying under the radar, plugging away at what we do best, rarely being noticed. We knew that a repositioning of our business required some radical thinking and an unusual approach, otherwise we’d be the same as all the others. As we scoured the world and received pitches and proposals, all of them were engaging, but non really engaged. I returned to our brief – we needed to be different.

Imagine my surprise to find a small, niche company less than 300m from our Perth office.

The first thing you will notice about Inkling is that they test you on entry – are you right for us? Are we going to work well together? Are you prepared to listen, to be open minded and to step out of your comfort zone? And perhaps most importantly, good things take time. In our case, the desire was definitely there, but in reality it was a big step – a little daunting.

Throughout the process, I felt we were Simon’s only client. He was only able to be effective through immersing himself into our business, understanding not what we do, but how we do it and who buys our services and why. We’ve not turned him into an engineering consultant, but he’s turned our board into one that has depth and capability to look at our business, our clients and our approach in a different way. Words on websites are meaningless unless the culture of an organisation actually reflects what people read, and that single act is possibly the biggest change in our business.

So when engaging with Simon, pin back your ears. He has a lot of words in his head and is enormously skilled in getting them all out in the right order. His attention to detail, ability to immerse himself into an organisation, understand the barriers and support cultural changes are way more than he probably knows, and his engagement with Hewshott is a journey we’ve all travelled on together, and certainly one we have no regrets about.

Peter Hunt
Global CEO, Founder
Hewshott.

Rocky Bay commissioned Inkling for a visual brand update and a new website. What we got was an entirely new way of looking at ourselves, what we do and why, and a renewed focus on the most important people in our lives – the people living with disability who we support. Our stylish new logo and fancy website were a bonus!

Simon’s methodology was thorough. Delving deep into our psyche to extract the gold that only comes from asking the right questions of people from right across the organisation. In a competitive market with little differentiation between the major players, the Inkling team found and conveyed what makes us unique and why our customers trust us with their health. The perception switch of Rocky Bay as an old, tired brand to a modern, innovative health hub felt instant, with measurable results in multiple areas.

Working with Inkling is unlike working with any other agency. You’ll be asked the tough questions, urged to look inward with honesty and be challenged to think differently. If you see branding as an expense; a logo and some pretty brochures; you’re probably not in the right place. If you value how people feel when they interact with your company, give Simon a call.

Matt Ranford
Marketing Advisor
Rocky Bay

Inkling took us on a journey of our brand evolution - discovering what it is that we have always done. From starting out as a ma & pa business in New Zealand to owning offices in NZ, Australia, USA & South America, we had always been creating ‘Moments That Matter’ in our clients lives, we just did not know how to put this into words. Simon and his team did this and they understood us as a family business from the start. We had been looking for agencies in NZ & the USA and landed on Inkling as they truly understood a global market, our company ethos, essence and what it is to be a family business. Having our head office in Auckland it was never an issue for us working with a company in Perth as we work across multiple time zones daily. You know you are on to a good thing when they fly from Perth to NZ to meet when local companies can’t even drive 20mins up the road for a meeting. Inkling and Simon really do go the extra mile and I highly recommend them to anyone that is looking for a company to rebrand, redesign and market their business across the globe.

Simon is truly one of a kind! He will push you to look beyond the norm and take you on an amazing journey of discovery in the footsteps of your client and how the perceive your business/brand. Simon always challenged and pushed me to think outside the square

Trust the process and Simon as he will challenge your thinking. In the end you will see that Simon was right and always has your best interests at heart. Just let go and let Simon and his team work their magic. They are light years ahead of the game and truly inspire your customers to be part of a genuine customer journey that people want to experience and be part of your brands story and evolution.

Brent Imrie
Director
Tour Time

A few years back we were looking for a team to help us with our outdated website. Lucky enough we were introduced by a friend to the lovely people at Inkling. Upon our first visit we met with Simon and Nigel who were so friendly and welcoming, little did we know that after so many years we would become good friends.

From the get go they listened carefully to what we had to say and they even made a fun interactive activity to make the whole process so much fun. From this they were able to extract details we didn’t even think about. They came back and proposed so many good ideas to help us promote our products better and change the image of our company. We went in looking to upgrade our website but ended up changing the whole image of our company, this would not have been possible without the expertise and knowledge of the guys which surprised us so much we ended up doing everything they recommended.

Simon and Nigel including the rest of the team were made available throughout the process and that just made it so much easier if we had any questions.

If you’re looking for people wo really care about their work, listen carefully to what the customer needs and in turn provide us with the best outcome possible, we wouldn’t recommend anyone else but the team at inkling.

Mirzet Jusupovic
Accounts Manager
Fencing Supply Centre

Working with Inkling was an enjoyable and productive process from the start to finish. Their enthusiasm for the process was infectious. The process was disciplined in an effortless manner, and they were always willing to give beyond the immediate scope of their services to assist the deliverables and outcomes for us.

They captured the essence of what makes us tick and what motivates us to enthusiastically provide services to our clients. The positioning statement developed by Inkling of “MIND WIDE OPEN” captured our design philosophy precisely, followed by website words and equally exciting graphics for business cards and stationery.

So, based on our experience, if you are unsure of who to talk to about branding, positioning in your working world, a call to Inkling is highly recommended.

Greg Paterson
Director
Paterson Architects

We engaged Inkling to conduct qualitative research with the aim to better understand the changes in the market over the past 5 years. Our customer based is Australia wide and covers a multitude of professions within the construction and property industry. As a company that is 70 years young, and the publication in question, 40 years, we were keen to discover whether the publication was becoming redundant, how we can better serve our existing customers and ways to expand our reach.

To say we were blown away by the final report is an understatement. As novices to the qualitative research game, we were unsure what to expect but whatever expectations we had were soundly exceeded by Simons comprehensive 100-page report.

What stood out for us, aside from the details in the report, was Simons in depth knowledge into our industry and product. In the journey from first meet to final presentation, Simon had fully immersed himself in our project, learning about our niche and complex product to a level that enabled him to ask the right questions and delve into the responses.

Overall, it was a great experience where we feel we received value for money and a tool to move forward with.

Thanks Simon and the team, marvellous work!

Kirsty Maxted
Business Manager
Rawlinsons