We get you.
Through the tough bits of social housing comms.
Working in social housing comms is hard. You’re juggling building safety updates, damp and mould messaging, ESG reporting, tenant newsletters, colleague engagement – and that’s before the board asks for “just one more” campaign.
Your workload has exploded, your resources haven’t, and you’re still expected to deliver the day job.
That’s where we come in.We slot in alongside your team to take big, messy, high‑stakes projects off your plate – and turn them into clear, engaging communications your tenants, colleagues and stakeholders actually understand.
Trusted by social landlords across the UK
More than 90 organisations trust us with their brand and communications every day.
What we can take off your plate
We’ve spent years helping social landlords get the important stuff out the door – on time, on brand and with less stress.
ESG and Annual Reports
Design, layout, infographics and digital versions that make complex performance and impact easy to grasp.
Corporate strategies and business plans
Clear, engaging documents that bring your priorities to life for colleagues, boards and stakeholders.
Tenant magazines and newsletters
Printed and digital communications that tenants actually read – not just more noise through the letterbox.
Campaigns and engagement
Safety, recognition, recruitment and community campaigns that feel human, not corporate.
Office, vehicle and environmental branding
Bringing your brand into the spaces where colleagues and tenants experience you every day.
Digital reports and microsites
Online, interactive versions of key documents for stakeholders who prefer to scroll, not flip.
Anna Lambert, Communications Manager at Halton Housing explains why she uses Be Smart Design.
Why Comms Teams Like Working With Us
We understand the pressure on you and your team. We can plug in quickly to take the pressure off specific projects, so you can stop firefighting and feel confident everything’s covered – we can hear the sigh of relief now.
We've worked in social housing a long time
We’re masters at picking up the pieces and running with them. We’ve got first‑hand experience delivering everything social housing from annual reports, corporate strategies and ESG reports through to colleague engagement, office and vehicle branding, newsletters and recruitment campaigns.
We've been doing it for 30+ years
In nearly 30 years there isn’t much we haven’t designed – but it’s so much more than design. It’s design with real substance, not just pretty pictures. That substance comes from our experience, a high level of creativity and our “dig deep” approach to help create the right brief and the right outcome.
A Small Taste of What We've Created
From reports and strategies to campaigns and tenant magazines, here are just a few of the projects we’ve delivered for social landlords.
Peace of mind with our
Smart 5 guarantee
Working in social housing, you can’t afford for suppliers to drop the ball. Our Smart 5 guarantee is your peace of mind that your investment in us will be a wise choice.
1. On time and on budget
We recognise that if we don’t deliver on time and on budget this has the potential to cause you far more aggravation than mediocre creativity.
2. Sweetly challenging
We’ll always sweetly but constructively challenge your brief. Not just all guns blazing at the start!
3. Consistently high quality creative work
We guarantee consistent and high quality creative work. The word ‘consistent’ is important; there’ll be no dips in quality here.
4. Teamwork
We guarantee that we’ll not only work harmoniously with your marketing team but with other agencies of yours as part of a bigger team.
5. Brand and market understanding
We guarantee that we’ll always be looking to further our knowledge on your brand and your market to give you better results.
Want to dive deeper into social housing branding?
We’ve done so much work in social housing that we created a dedicated home for it – brandingsocialhousing.co.uk. It’s packed with sector‑specific case studies, guides and resources for comms and engagement teams.
