Today, Lee Thawley & Vicky Pritchard, formerly part of the senior team at Sorted and AO.com, announce the launch of MuddyWellies, a new brand & culture agency.

Their aim – to create customers committed to buying from their clients, and people motivated to work for them.

Having spent the last month focusing on building out their model and approach, MuddyWellies is a powerful new agency on the North West scene with a very clear goal – to create destination brands for customers and employees alike. By putting brand & people at the forefront of everything, the North West based team believes they can ultimately bind, guide and attract people, business and partners.

With an already impressive track record, the new agency is set up to create cutting-edge experiences for clients, producing bespoke plans and building enviable initiatives that make a real difference to businesses, inside and out.

The new agency is co-founded by Lee Thawley & Vicky Pritchard, both formerly of Sorted and AO.com. Between them, they have experience working with some of the UK’s biggest brands across a variety of sectors including, Halfords, Green Flag, Mercedes-Benz, Authentic Food Company, and Royal Bank of Scotland.

Thawley & Pritchard met eight years ago on a project that would see Appliances Online relaunch as superbrand AO.com. Their paths continued to cross, and in 2017, they reunited at Sorted, with Pritchard as People Director and Thawley as Head of Brand. There, they built a powerful culture with purpose, through brand-driven experiences & initiatives.

Their new company aims to help businesses big or small, with the one stipulation that the senior leadership team must understand, or at least be prepared to understand, how brand and people combined is the key to a company’s success.

Thawley & Pritchard both believe that bringing brand and culture together is the key to engaged people and customers, and they will work together to create strong company cultures for each of their clients, putting this right at the core of each unique business plan.

This proves important for organisations of all shapes and sizes, from the well-established to the fledgling start-up, and can be achieved at any stage in a business’ journey.

While well-established organisations may need to review their position or vision, and start-ups may need to create a brand that can grow with them, MuddyWellies will work with businesses to bring people & purpose together. They will achieve this by bringing clarity & consistency to each & every business they work with; aligning employees, increasing internal efficiency, and therefore external outputs.

As well as re-engaging internal teams, and powering up both the employee & customer experience, MuddyWellies will help businesses to attract top talent & partners by building brand advocates.

Thawley & Pritchard describe themselves each as a welly, Thawley the reliable, tough left boot – a little bit of what you really need, & Pritchard the high gloss right, bringing the energy & sparkle.

Pritchard said “It’s hard work keeping everyone engaged within a business, it’s tough finding that point of differentiation, or the core purpose to our being and avoiding values being just words on a wall. But, when you get it right, it can create such great stories and memories – and deliver such a great business return.

Well, that’s where we come in. We dig deep, we get muddy, we focus on getting the wellies on the right feet – and your business going in the right direction.”

Thawley added “What you do internally, runs parallel to what you demonstrate externally. And that’s where the power lies. The greatest businesses – big or small – are built with brand and people at the heart of everything they do. So, we want to help more companies to build their perfect pair.

We want to create talkability. As we say on our site and our creds we don’t do dull, we create destination brands that stand out.”

The duo feel there’s a particular need to remember the importance of culture as many businesses go through a period of change due to the Covid-19 pandemic.

Pritchard commented “There is so much noise & opinion around returning to work, remote working, the ‘new normal’ at the moment but to be quite frank nobody really knows what is right or wrong.”

“Not only is every business different, but the people within the teams are too, and this will create new challenges as we reintroduce the return to the office. Getting it right will be driven by leaders who ensure that the purpose and people are still at the core of the business – it will actually require more investment and more concerted initiatives to actually work differently”

MuddyWellies launches today, with full details on the team & their services available on their website – www.wearemuddywellies.com