Huddersfield Choral Society
How do you reposition a 150+ year organisation ready for the future?
The Challenge
Huddersfield Choral Society was founded in 1836 and has an international reputation for classical music. They’ve been featured by well-known media outlets such as Classic FM, Songs of Praise and the BBC.
We were asked to help them refresh their website. Their previous website was outdated, they couldn’t edit content easily, and they wanted to be able to be more agile in using it as a communications tool.
At Smith, we take a strategy before tactics approach and quickly diagnosed that it wasn’t a new website that they needed. They needed a complete rethink of how they marketed themselves.
What We Did
Huddersfield Choral Society needed a partner who would help them position them for the future, rather than a new website.
We challenged the society on their name. They were much bigger than Huddersfield, and Choral Society made them sound old and exclusive.
Several names were presented, including Choral of the North – which we felt captured their ambition. HCS was chosen as their new name, which retains their heritage whilst also helping feeling approachable to new audiences.
We’ve created a new brand identity, website and various advertising assets for the HCS team to reach new audiences.
A Dynamic & Responsive website to promote all up coming events.
The Thinking
Combining human insight, strategic creativity and technology we help businesses grow. We do this through commercial brand thinking, intelligent digital solutions and strategic communications.
Growing HCS
With the new name agreed, we built everything around it. A new brand identity that felt contemporary and confident. A website designed to be genuinely useful – easy to update, easy to navigate, and built to promote events and sell tickets without friction. Advertising assets that helped them speak to audiences who had never considered classical music before.
This was not a rebrand for the sake of it. Every decision was made to help HCS grow its audience, diversify its appeal and secure its future for the next 150 years.
HCS came to us thinking they needed a website. What they actually needed was the confidence to evolve. Repositioning an organisation with that much history is never straightforward - but when the strategy is right, everything else follows. HCS is a world-class organisation and now they have a brand that tells that story.
Oli Smith
Founder
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