What working on the Royal Highland Show taught me about brand strategy

The Royal Highland Show is more than an event. For many across Scotland, especially in rural communities, it’s a defining moment in the year — it's a celebration of identity, connection, and legacy.

It’s also one of the projects I’m most proud of leading as a brand strategist — because it wasn’t just about ticket sales or creative assets. It was about helping a 240-year-old organisation rediscover its voice and bring its people together around a shared purpose.

When I was Head of Strategy at Lane, I was privileged to work across a suit of projects redefining the Show's parent organisation, the Royal Highland & Agricultural Society of Scotland (RHASS), including brand proposition and strategy, employee values, and campaign strategy (which just took Bronze at the Marketing Society Star Awards in the Tourism & Hospitality category). Here’s what it taught me about building a brand strategy that sticks.

Building a brand strategy that honours the past and inspires the future

When the RHASS first approached us, their brief was twofold:

1. For the Royal Highland Show, they wanted to attract new, younger, and more diverse audiences — without alienating the rural and farming communities at the heart of the event.

2. For RHASS itself, they needed to modernise. This was an organisation with a long and proud history — but one that wasn’t being fully recognised or understood, even by its own stakeholders.

The challenge was to create a brand strategy that could achieve both. It needed to be inclusive and outward-looking, but deeply rooted in the values that already existed across the organisation.

The power of a workshop: 80 people, one mission

At the core of this transformation was the employee values workshop: the biggest I’ve ever run, and one I’ll never forget.

We brought together all 80+ RHASS staff, from estates managers to archivists, fundraisers to events teams, admin staff to board members. Many were sceptical at first, and perhaps with good reason. The previous set of values had a bad reputation internally, often used as a stick rather than a tool for culture change.

But through a carefully designed workshop, we:

• Educated the team about what employee values actually are

• Created space for everyone to contribute and reflect

• Uncovered powerful, often untold, stories of how people already lived the best of RHASS’s values in their everyday work

As Alan Laidlaw, the CEO, said in his opening (paraphrasing):

“You might be sitting here wondering why we’re wasting our time. But I’ve been through a few of Sallie’s workshops now. That feeling might get worse before it gets better — but just when you think you’re in a black pit of despair, it will all make sense. And I think you’ll come out of today feeling motivated and inspired about the future.”

He was right. The energy in the room shifted dramatically — and the values we co-created that day became the bedrock of RHASS’s internal brand strategy.

From bridesmaid to bold strategic strides: redefining RHASS and RHS

Armed with a clearer, truer set of values, we reimagined both brands from the inside out:

• For RHASS, we helped move from a reserved, deferential tone to a confident and impactful voice. The “bridesmaid” identity gave way to a bold brand that embraced its leadership role in supporting rural Scotland.

• For the Royal Highland Show, we repositioned it as Scotland’s summer showstopper — still deeply rooted in agriculture, but with broad appeal to families, food lovers, young professionals, and cultural explorers.

We built an effectiveness framework to measure what mattered — not just footfall and revenue, but awareness among key target groups and long-term audience growth.

The results of a people-powered brand strategy

The 2024 Royal Highland Show was one of the most successful in its history:

• 220,000 tickets sold – up 2.5% on 2023

• £3.3m revenue – up 15%, closing the funding gap

• 17% increase in ticket sales from families

• 13% increase among young professionals

• Awareness among our core family audience rose by 7 points to 94.4%

Plus, you might have seen the campaign around again this year. It was so successful, it's being rerun (a recommendation I always make, to really embed and land a campaign, people need a LOT of time to land the message. It think the team will see the results improve even more this year).

These weren’t just numbers — they were proof that when you build a strategy that truly reflects your people and your purpose, momentum follows.

What this taught me about inclusive brand strategy

This work affirmed something I’ve always believed:

The best brand strategies are built with the people who live them — not just for them.

Too often, organisations hire external consultants who deliver polished, sparkly positioning strategies that don’t reflect the realities on the ground. They sound great in a boardroom but fall flat in implementation.

My approach is different. It’s why I developed The Conference of You — a facilitated, day long event that brings people together across departments and disciplines to uncover the insights, strengths, and sticking points already present in your organisation.

What you get isn’t just alignment. You get energy. You get buy-in. And you get a marketing strategy that actually works — because your team helped shape it.

ONE MONUMENTAL MOMENT

As the Royal Highland Show draws to a close this year, I’m reminded again of how powerful shared moments can be — not just for visitors, but for organisations.

The story of RHASS and RHS is a story of legacy, bravery, and inclusion. But more than anything, it’s a story of people... and what becomes possible when you bring them together with purpose.

If you’re thinking about brand strategy, culture, or audience growth, start by asking who’s already in the room. You might be surprised by what they already know.