A decade of design for West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA)

The West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) is the combined authority for the West Midlands metropolitan county in the UK. For ten years, Leopard Co has been the creative partner behind some of the West Midlands' most recognisable public-facing brands and campaigns.

From the launch of the Midlands Metro and the Swift travel card to the rebranding of the region's business support landscape and tackling health inequalities, our work with West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) spans transport, health and economic development — three very different worlds, each with its own audiences, pressures and measures of success.

What ties it all together is a single point: that creative work should do more than look good. Backed by insight and behavioural science, we've built brands that earn trust, campaigns that shift behaviour, and identities that hold up across every touchpoint — and across a decade of change.

Challenge

Over the past decade, WMCA has required distinctive creative campaigns across transport, health, and economic development, each of which must engage diverse audiences across multiple demographics and ethnicities. 

That scale is what makes the work challenging. A single organisation needing to speak convincingly to commuters, businesses, residents and partners, often at the same time.

Key challenges included:

• Shifting public attitudes and behaviours around transport, exercise, and health for Transport for West Midlands (TfWM)
  

• Rebranding the region's Local Economic Partnerships (LEPs) and launching Business Growth West Midlands (BGWM)
  

• Generating fresh, relevant creative concepts each year that delivered measurable outcomes and impact

Combined Authorities Programme

We established the brand identity for the Combined Authorities Programme (CAP), a Health Foundation-funded initiative managed by the West Midlands Combined Authority (WMCA) to address health inequalities.

This included:

• Developing a visual identity that communicated neutrality, partnership and positivity, while deliberately avoiding established NHS visual cues
  

• Conducting audience and sector research alongside competitor analysis to identify opportunities for a distinctive and credible position
  

• Exploring multiple creative directions through logo concepts and mood boards, testing different approaches to tone, visual language and brand expression
  

• Refining the chosen direction into a cohesive and flexible identity that could work across the programme's varied audiences and communications
  

• Delivering a comprehensive brand architecture, establishing clear relationships between the overarching CAP brand and its associated activity
  

• Creating a distinctive identity designed to support collaboration, communicate complex health issues positively and build confidence among partners and stakeholders

Health inequalities are a sensitive subject, and the identity had to carry weight without feeling clinical. Steering clear of familiar NHS cues allowed the programme to establish its own voice — collaborative, forward-looking and independent.

Transport for West Midlands

We created simplified messaging and creatives for Swift Transport for West Midlands' (TfWM) smart travel card, to help communicate the card's key benefits clearly and consistently across multiple channels and audience touchpoints.

This involved:

• Simplifying complex or feature-led information into clear, accessible and digestible messaging
  

• Creating a playful and engaging creative approach that made the benefits of Swift easy to understand and remember

• Developing a consistent suite of executions that could be adapted across digital, campaign and communications channels
  

• Combining clarity, consistency and personality to make Swift's proposition more engaging and accessible to customers

Smart travel products are easy to over-explain. Stripping the messaging back to what actually matters to passengers made the proposition quicker to grasp and easier to act on.

West Midlands Business Festival

We designed and developed the updated website for the West Midlands Business Festival (WMBF) as part of our ongoing work with Business Growth West Midlands.

This included:

• Managing the transition of the festival's digital presence from the Combined Authority to the West Midlands Growth Company, ensuring a smooth transfer and continuity of communications
  

• Developing an 'always-on' social media strategy to maintain momentum and engagement around the festival throughout the year
  

• Planning and curating ongoing content across Facebook and LinkedIn, combining content creation with active community management
  

• Growing the festival's social following by 3.63% across Facebook and LinkedIn
  

• Increasing LinkedIn engagement to an impressive 17.5% engagement rate, strengthening audience interaction and visibility

A festival can easily go quiet between editions. Keeping the channels active year-round with real community management behind them is what sustains momentum from one event to the next.