Fostering resilience with Mo Morris MBE

Being resilient is a must in the creative industry. The ability to overcome challenges, face changing work practices. The pressure to deliver. It sets us up for life.

We’re constantly developing our skills, our understanding and our relationships, in the studio and at home. But all too often, work, family and social pressures of modern life can drain a person’s motivation. It can impair direction and purpose.

With an abundance of information out there, it can be tough to know where to get the practical advice needed to develop resilience. So, where do you go when you are short on the confidence and techniques needed to inspire positive change and optimise performance?

Fortunately, our paths crossed with highly-esteemed Royal Marine, human performance coach and mental health educator, Ryan ‘Mo’ Morris MBE. He needed to communicate his coaching service that enables people to optimise their mental performance and build resilience throughout their life.

Creating communications for workforce resilience and producing the Rising Resilient report for world-leading professional services firm Aon, we were well versed in the topic of resilience and ready to help Mo share his great work through his brand.

With the force of military clout behind founder Ryan ‘Mo’ Morris MBE, we built a brand identity that would enable everyone – whether civilian, organisation or team – to build the ability to move forward.

Leveraging the precision and grounding in neuroscience gained throughout his military career, the brand needed to also balance the humanity of people’s lived experiences – to help bring down barriers to a topic that can render anyone feeling vulnerable or exposed before they’ve built up their resilience skills.

After Mo came into the studio to lead human performance sessions with our team, it was clear that building resilience is a daily learning practice. One that takes commitment, honesty and the will to move forward. But even with the right tools and a confident mindset, being human takes practice.

Developing human performance

As a military officer, Mo knows a thing or two about demanding situations. But as a performance coach and mental health educator, Mo’s brand needed to deliver bespoke training and interventions for people to develop their capacity to perform in all areas of their lives.

The brand had to be accessible to businesses, sports teams, individuals and corporate executives, reassuring people that they are able to access the techniques that would enable them to stay sharp and react with clarity when stressful situations arise.

A ‘Can’t/Can/Will’ philosophy influenced Mo’s original brand ‘CCW Coaching’, showcasing the founder’s mindset to overcome any obstacle through clear mental processes. But despite a successful CCW podcast, the eponymous brand name was missing the mark when it came to memorability. Mo needed something that would match his razor-sharp mental and physical ability, while also instantly communicating this proposition to his customers. It was the idea of well-coordinated mental agility that provided a new name for the brand – agile edge.

Building a brand of resilience

During our brand development phase, research into the often superficial performance coaching space, uncovered the need for an authentic hero message. It soon became clear that no matter the job role, the task or responsibilities of people who attend Mo’s sessions, the common link between their manifold experiences is ‘practice’. Building on the founder’s frank yet effective ‘say-it-how-it-is’ attitude, and recognising that challenges in life are ongoing, we led with the idea that Being Human Takes Practice.

The brand logo showcases the letter ‘a’, reminiscent of the shape of an individual’s head, with an ‘e’ that comfortably sits inside it, putting the literal mental edge inside the heads of those that use the service.

Agile edge’s logotype features sharp edges on selected letters, specifically on the ‘e’ crossarm and the descender on the ‘g’, visually drawing attention to letters that are emphasised when spoken. These ‘sharp bits’ introduce the focus and direct impact that can be felt by those who engage with agile edge services. But to avoid a brash bravado, a lowercase ‘a’ and ‘e’ is used in the wordmark, logo lock-ups and written text, to show that resilience is not about shouting the loudest, but about being consistent.

In reality, practice doesn’t always make perfect, but it can make you more resilient to the situations you face. Just as practising acts of resilience builds up layers of experience, we built the brand’s visual identity through a layered approach to defences. This utilised the military influence of navigation, equipping the brand with a deconstructed compass as a key visual device. Cool, calming and deep green colours personify positivity and a connection to the natural world, where people are directed to moments of calm.

Creating an anodyne yet captivating brand tone, we constructed a dynamic website for agile edge, complete with breathing exercise interactions – the most immediate way to lower stress and anxiety.

Mo, like many people, is all too aware of the stress that daily life deals out. But when those pressures are combat environments in places of war, split-second decisions are a matter of life and death.

The stark need for mental clarity and high-level performance has been on Mo’s agenda for the past decade, having served as a leader in the British Royal Marines in Kuwait, Iraq and Afghanistan’s Helmand province.

After helping amputee veterans compete in the Invictus Games and Paralympic Games, Mo spearheaded the first mental health support scheme in the Royal Marines.

As a creative agency that works with global clients to help them unite people, purpose and potential, we are proud to work with Mo and his values to support people to be resilient. If your business is facing a challenging situation and you want to know how building a brand can help overcome uncertainty, we’re here to provide the tools to do so – just drop us a message.