Three months in and we’ve just launched our first piece of work – a new brand spanning the highly competitive B2B and B2C delivery markets. The new business – Yodel – will be the largest home and business delivery company in the UK after Royal Mail. With 7000 vehicles across the country you’re going to see it pretty much everywhere in due course.

Since winning the work in our first two weeks of trading we’ve been working intensively with the Chairman, Chief Exec and Marketing Director of the new business formed from the merger between Home Delivery Network (HDN) and the domestic businesses of DHL Express (UK). And we’ve created the entire brand, from brand positioning and proposition to the name and visual and verbal expression in less than ten weeks.

The new company’s story is compelling. In one of the few sectors with double-digit growth (in spite of the recession) HDN was looking to grow. On March 1st this year it purchased – through its subsidiary Parcelpoint – the domestic B2B and B2C businesses of DHL Express (UK), with the aim of creating the most comprehensive product and service offer ever seen in the UK delivery market.

The challenge was clear from the outset: research showed that 95% of customers were happy with their delivery service. So why would anyone try to create a brand which could improve on that?

But scratching the surface it became clear that customers were only satisfied with what they got, not with what they really wanted – greater choice, convenience and efficiency of service. So the new business was designed to meet these needs and become the customer champion for home and business customers.

Our brief was to create a highly differentiated, memorable and emotive brand which could help the two businesses integrate successfully and become the challenger within the category. Perfect for us to deliver on our proposition to clients: clear, defendable territory for their brands.

We defined the brand promise as ‘Take it personally’ to reflect the determination and dedication of everyone within the business to deliver exactly what customers wanted – including tailoring service for individual clients. This turned the industry convention on its head, focusing the promise on people and service rather than purely functional operations.

We created the name Yodel by building on the brand promise and thinking about the service from the perspective of both business and home customers: ‘it’s your delivery’. So Yodel comes directly from the words ‘YOur DELivery’. And because the service is tailored for customers, it’s their call how it works – which perfectly resolves the name.

The name is highly differentiated within the sector – which is flooded with three-letter acronyms and descriptive names. And the personality of the brand overall avoids the usual speed/direction clichés of delivery firms.

Yodel vans will start appearing on streets across the UK from June 1.

And now it’s launched, we’ve finally had time to launch our own website. Welcome to The Clearing.