Behind the Brand: A Q&A with Reading Room MD, Polly Lygoe

We sat down with our Managing Director, Polly Lygoe, to talk about the thinking behind Reading Room’s refreshed brand and new website.

In this candid Q&A, Polly shares why now was the right time to evolve, how the new brand reflects nearly three decades of heritage while looking firmly to the future, and what this milestone means for our clients, our team, and the next stage of our growth.

Q: What inspired the decision to refresh the Reading Room brand? 

A: We never had a discussion that we needed to look at the brand but it kept cropping up in subtle ways in terms of how the existing brand wasn’t keeping up with our growth and evolution: we never thought, “oh this isn't working” but it was more “how do we make this work harder and better reflect who we really are today, now, as well as where we’re going”. I really love our brand and who we are but it felt like that wasn’t coming across with the current assets that we’d defined to work with so far – they needed refinement to properly reflect who we are now.

Q: How does the new brand reflect where the company is today, and where it's going in the future? 

A: One of the things that I'm proudest of is our heritage (we were founded in 1996) and our strong independence that continues today. At the same time, you don’t stay competitive for nearly 30 years without keeping pace with the evolution of technology and user and business’ needs. Our brand is intended to reflect this modernity while creating real impact – mirroring the difference we aim to make every day.

Q: How do you see the new brand helping us stand out in a competitive market?

A: Having worked for so long in digital, I think the reality is that a lot of digital agencies seem to sound the same – our brand refinement has been a purposeful act of intentional positioning, recognising that our clients need and want us for our technical prowess and we really excel in that space. Of course, we have to have great customer and user experience around that and it’s a huge added value that we can also support our clients with content marketing services and driving people to their sites via SEO services and PPC management services – but we wanted to really step away from the “full service” notion. I think the idea of full-service is great and perhaps some agencies truly are fully balanced full-service but I find the term so vague and lacking in humanity, so I hope we’re clearer in what it is we really do. With our refreshed brand, we aim to be much clearer about what we really do, and where we deliver the most impact.

Q: What were the main goals behind creating a new website, and how will this benefit out current and potential clients? 

A: As many others can likely attest to, internal projects are often the most taxing – and we certainly have upheld the adage of “the cobbler’s shoes” trope. If anything, there was nothing inherently wrong with our old brand or site but it had started to feel dated and no longer fully represented the current, or future, Reading Room. So namely, we wanted to ensure that our external presence felt true to who we are and also to the types of clients that we know we do great work with. And of course, like many of our clients, our site is about lead-generation and ensuring that our own prospective clients and colleagues not only can understand what it is we do, but also crucially, see the stories and real-life impact behind it.

Q: How will the brand and website evolve over the next few years?

A: We’re really only very early-days for our site – we have tried to do what we so often recommend to our clients and that is to get a minimum viable product live to build upon. We have worked as an Umbraco web design agency for many years and are excited to be using the Umbraco Engage suite to ensure the site stays responsive to user needs and expectations. This will guide and shape how we continue to evolve the brand and website over time.

Q: What's the next big step for the company now that this milestone has been reached? 

A: This is a small initial step in our ongoing growth plan – we have spent the last 12-15 months not only making sure that we are getting the basics right across our business but that we’re also supremely clear on the value that we bring our clients and how we continue to elevate this. Our refreshed brand and digital presence will support our continued international growth, our ability to scale alongside our clients, and our ongoing work to help them with security, infrastructure, sustainability, and the adoption of evolving technologies like AI.