February 2011

We’ve just won GOLD for the Balfour Beatty WorkPlace rebranding at the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards – proving great design directly correlates with business success.

The Design Business Association (DBA) works to promote the central role of design in business to achieve commercial growth and success. The annual DBA Design Effectiveness Awards are influential and authoritative, the only UK based awards scheme that uses commercial data as the key judging criteria. Judges are exclusively brand owners and this year included senior marketers from the BBC, Eurostar, confused.com, HSBC, Sony, EDF Energy, Royal Mail, Yeo Valley and GlaxoSmithKline.

This was not just a name or logo change. It was a fundamental rework of the brand’s positioning and identity to firmly set the brand promise ‘Freedom to Perform’ at the centre of Balfour Beatty WorkPlace’s business strategy.

One year post rebrand the results speak for themselves:



“The DBA's recognition of the importance of commercial impact dovetails perfectly with our own aspirations for our clients’ brands, and ultimately, their business. As our aim for all our work is to be creatively, commercially and globally effective, this is the highest accolade in our industry. We’re thrilled that Balfour Beatty WorkPlace has truly put its brand at the heart of its business and that the results prove that great branding and design directly impact business success.” Brigid McMullen


See the DBA Design Effectiveness Awards 2011 website


Download PDF of our DBA Design Effectiveness Awards entry
See our full Balfour Beatty WorkPlace case study
Download PDF of CorpComms magazine article
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