Launching a new scaleup business support service and generating leads

Two Zero is a specialist business support service for scaleup business leaders in Lancashire. Led by Lancashire County Council, its mission is to help and inspire business leaders to grow their business 20%, create jobs and develop the Lancashire economy. It runs scaleup business support programmes, delivered in small cohorts of ambitious leaders.

Our brief

Lancashire County Council’s business growth and innovation team called in Freshfield to help launch its new scaleup service in 2020.

The new service was created to help leaders of scaleup businesses to grow twenty percent year on year. Scaleup businesses have a huge impact on the economy, generating £1.3trn to the UK economy employing hundreds of thousands of people.

Our brief was to create a brand and communications plan that connected with the leaders of these businesses, generate enquiries for the first series of Two Zero programmes, and in the process help these businesses scale

What we delivered

The search for the stand-out idea took us to the numbers. What is a scaleup business? Technically, it is a company aspiring to grow 20% year on year. This took us to the name ‘Two Zero’. We used the percentage symbol (/) as part of the identity as another nod to 20% growth. As part of the rollout, our design and content team used inspirational outdoor pursuit images to visually represent the high energy of a scaleup journey.

Freshfield’s PR and communications campaign team helped set up a content marketing and a social media framework which included a new Two Zero You Tube channel, and new LinkedIn and X accounts, before launching the brand to the Lancashire business community.

Impact

The launch of the new service and its pilot programmes were a success. From a standing start, we built a LinkedIn community of over 100 business leaders and influencers within the first month, while securing launch coverage in a range of targeted business publications, as well as arranging media interviews for the service lead.

Two Zero’s three pilot programmes were a sell-out with a growing reservation list. During the first year, over 50 businesses took part in various Two Zero programmes, with many experiencing growth and job creation. Two Zero’s success has also been recognised by the UK’s ScaleUp Institute.