Archive for the ‘branding’ Category

Charity brand positioning – why simple works

Tuesday, July 5th, 2011

Charities are often extremely complex organisations. Take Mencap for example, one of the UK’s leading charities for people with learning disabilities.

So just how complex could Mencap be? Well, here goes, they run…

– The Learning Disability Helpline – a telephone helpline, community- based advisers and online information
– Education and learning – Support for school leavers into adulthood
– Support services – including brokerage, family support, specialist care and a carers network
– Housing – helping people with learning disabilities to rent or buy their own homes
– Jobs and training – several schemes to get people into the workplace
– Leisure and sport – everything from  adventure challenges, to national sporting events.

Not to mention ICT skills networks, health information, music events, work with young offenders…

So try marketing that lot: ‘Mencap the charity that helps people with learning disabilities by doing this, that and the other, not to mention…’
Mencap solve the complexity of their offering by focusing on their main mission. In a nutshell, they help people with learning disabilities. Whether you are young, old, have a learning disability, are a family member or a professional in social care, the positioning is simple:

We support people with a learning disability to live their lives as they choose.

This translates into a very powerful and authoritative strapline – The voice of learning disability

The same principal of focusing on a core proposition, allowing all services and products to sit underneath it, works equally well for the likes of Macmillan, Barnardos, Shelter, Mind and Unicef. Of course this approach may not work for every organisation, but the general principal of communicating your message as simply as possible is always valid.

So, if you are responsible for marketing a charity and you are staring at a muddled web of diverse services, audiences and propositions; take a step back and distill everything down to the essence of what your organisation is, why it exists and what it believes in. Or better still give Remedy a call and we’ll help you.

The great wall of inspiration

Wednesday, June 1st, 2011

Our wall is bursting with inspiration yet again. This means it’s time to pull it all down and start over again…

Wall number 3 features Audi, Yorkshire miners and some lovely pink paint.

We’ve enjoyed collecting these nuggets of inspiration. If there is anything you’d like us to add next time then please send it to us:

The Wall,
Remedy Creative
17, Mount Ephraim,
Tunbridge Wells
Kent
TN4 8AE

Or email us: inspiration@remedycreative.com

If you’d like to be refreshed, you can check out the original wall here. Also, it’s sister, wall number 2, here.


Extra-curricular creativity pt.2 – The Green Party

Friday, June 4th, 2010

If you saw our blog post of 30th April, you’ll understand the premise of this. If not, please check out ‘Extra-curricular creativity pt.1′ here
Anyway, brief number 2 was nice and tricky:

A new logo and slogan for The Green Party.

Aimed at young and first-time voters, the brief was to raise the party’s profile as a real contender. ‘The only party that has a real environmental agenda to help make everyone’s future better. A force for positive change’. Sam came up with three cracking logo concepts…

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OK, so it’s a visual cliché, but it’s spot on for the message of positive change.

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Is it a key hole? Is it a tree? There’s a smart idea in here and it’s bold and simple.

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A little more sophisticated, and we loved the lotus flower analogy – it grows in muddy water and rises above the surface to bloom, untouched by the impurity of its environment… (who says you can’t have graphic design AND philosophy).

The second part of the brief was even trickier – a slogan that ‘passes the T Shirt test’. Not just a strapline, but something that could be the party’s rally cry.

There are a few strong contenders:

ONE WORLD, ONE VOTE

Conveys the idea that The Green Party is more globally focused than other parties. It also underlines how important your vote is ie. use your vote to make a difference to the whole world.

GREEN NOT GREED

After the shambolic mess that the banking crisis has left the country in, there’s a whole section of young voters who think politics is all about fat cats getting fatter. The implication here is that The Green Party is the only party that bucks the trend. Not to mention the fact that it would sound great shouted at a political rally!

GIVE A DAMN, VOTE GREEN

A line to shake the young voter out of their lethargy. If you give a damn, get off your backside and vote for a party that gives a damn too.

Out of the shortlist of slogans, came a couple of lines that felt more like straplines than slogans, but both feel like they’re worth a mention:

SUSTAINABLE POLITICS and COLOUR YOUR FUTURE

Both snappy, both seriously on-brand and in our humble opinion a bit punchier than their current line – ‘Fair is Worth Fighting For’.

And we just keep piling on the pressure; Sam’s next brief is to create viral ideas for insect repellent, Jungle Formula!

Working with animals and children – Remedy loves a challenge

Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

We have been working with Pet Works since October ’09 on a major re-working of their brand and marketing communications. A key part of the new messaging is communicating the special bond between people and their pets. So some bright spark came up with the idea of photographing pets with their owners on location.

Over the years we’ve photographed all sorts of exotic creatures – ostriches, panthers, bees, swans, piranhas, koalas… But this shoot was different – pets with amateur models including kids. This was going to be more challenging than photographing an 8 foot crocodile and not getting eaten (which we have managed)…

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Either Sam and I were helping to set up shots or our pets have escaped!

We organised a three day multiple-location shoot in Sussex with photographer, Nick Parker with 4 labradors, 2 spaniels, 3 rottweilers, 2 terriers, 3 bull dogs, 2 boxers, 2 retrievers, a husky, a cavapoo (no really), various cats and kittens, horses, rabbits, donkeys and even an alpaca.

It was good fun, challenging and exhausting, but the end results made it all worthwhile. Pet Works now has a large bespoke image library, and we have a very happy client!

The images feature on the new Pet Works website, literature, exhibition stands and point of sale materials – take a look in our online portfolio.

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A big thanks to all at Pet Works, and all the wonderful pet owners and (mostly) well behaved pets – we had a great time.

High Street Dreams – Design Nightmares?

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

We’ve been gripped by the BBC’s latest Apprentice-style series ‘High Street Dreams’. If you’ve not seen it, the basic idea is that Jo Malone (fragrance entrepreneur) and Nick Leslau (secret squillionaire investor) help wannabe successful businessmen and women to launch new products onto the market.

So far we’ve had Mr. Singh’s Hot Punjabi Chilli Sauce cooked up by a Sikh family in their shed in the East End; posh ‘Muddy Boots’ beef burgers made by equally posh Roland and Miranda from Daddy’s Aberdeen Angus herd; ‘Nutriyum’, a healthy milk drink, from newlyweds Paul and Maria and a children’s ‘Den Kit’ designed by teachers, Jo and Kay.

The show is by no means an original idea, but it’s absolutely fascinating watching home-grown ‘brands’ being given a million dollar makeover, ready for presentation to retail buyers. And this is serious stuff, we’re talking giants like Asda and Waitrose.

After pulling the products to pieces, London branding agencies are wheeled in to apply the necessary gloss and this is where it gets really interesting. No doubt the branding work is slick and visually impressive. However, because the agencies don’t have the time to really get under the skin of what the brand’s are really all about, so far none of them have got it quite right. The proof of this is when it comes to the big pitch. Every time, the buyers have been impressed with the passion of the people behind the brands and the products themselves, but the packaging and branding have invariably come in for a pasting.

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Mr Singh gets the minimalist treatment

Design aesthetic is massively important and the consultants that the programme have called on, have it in spades. But unless your design agency has the time to understand you, your brand and the marketplace, inevitably you will end up with a beautiful looking lemon.

We’ll definitely be tuning in for the next spicy installment – BBC1 24th May 9pm.

A premium re-brand for AMA Insurance

Tuesday, May 4th, 2010

When you’ve lived with the same brand identity for 20 years, it takes a brave client to change. So we were really happy when Ashleigh Mackay and Associates asked Remedy to give their brand a total overhaul.

AMA are high-end corporate insurance brokers and risk management specialists. Their key customers are large corporate clients such as architectural glaziers and electrical contractors with bespoke insurance needs. They also work with high net-worth individuals including premiership footballers.

At our first meeting, Managing Director, Gary Mackay, summed up the company’s ethos very simply: “We don’t sell policies, we buy them on behalf of our customers”. Understandably, he was still quite attached to the old logo that had worked well for them since 1980. However, they had decided it was “time for change” and that they were looking for a “sharp and clean” new brand identity.

With this as the brief, we presented four routes which were all loved by the client.

After some deliberation and a minor tweak, the new AMA logo was born and we are just about to make a start on their new website.

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OLD LOGO                                                                SHINY NEW LOGO

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This is what Marketing and New Business Manager, Anne-Marie Dickinson had to say:

“We were impressed with the way in which you approached us as new clients; you took the time to understand our current business whilst considering our future aims and presented a perfect pitch. It wasn’t easy to decide which of the four options we liked the most but once we did, you were happy to make a tweak to the design, with which we are now delighted. We look forward to seeing designs for our new website – we know it will reflect our business perfectly.”

Here’s to great looking brands and brave clients.

Extra-curricular creativity

Friday, April 30th, 2010

Being creative is both a blessing and a curse. Having a head full of ideas means there’s never a dull moment, but sometimes you just can’t switch it off. Any enthusiastic designer, art director or copywriter has always got some weird or wonderful creative idea hatching – that’s why most of us have dictaphones in the car and sleep with note pads next to the bed.

The other day, D&AD creative workshops cropped up in the studio banter. For the uninitiated, the basic idea is that young creatives are given briefs from top London advertising and design agencies and then have to present their creative concepts on a weekly basis. At each presentation, they are given the next week’s brief and they have 7 more days to crack it (down the pub, at 3.00 in the morning, at weekends… whenever they can fit it in between live client briefs). This set Jason off reminiscing with Sam (our junior creative) about how much fun it was “back in the day” to work on briefs where creative ingenuity was the only criteria. No existing brand guidelines, no budgetry constraints, just the chance to give the old creative noggin a massive work-out.

“Hey Sam, what if we conjured-up some briefs for you? Fancy an extra challenge?”

Funny, when you’re 23, you’ll say yes to anything. So we cooked up Sam’s first brief: coming up with brand names and top-line packaging ideas for a new biscuit, that no matter how much you dunk it, it won’t collapse into your tea.

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We loved the nifty stripes on the biscuits, perfect for gauging how deep to dunk and the ‘the unsinkable tea time treat’ is a winner. “Pass the Admirals”.

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Taking the nautical theme to the next level, Sam also came up with ‘U-Biscuits’, but we thought Submersibles was really quirky. A fun way of expressing their dunk-ability.

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The sign of a good creative. Take the brief, turn it inside-out and come up with something even better. Rather than a biscuit that won’t break, what about the most absorbent biscuit in the world?  Genius! A real USP, but because it will eventually collapse in your mug, there’s still a challenge – just how long dare you dunk? ‘Riskits’, now there’s a brand name waiting to happen.

In the spirit of the D&AD workshop, as soon as we’d reviewed Sam’s ideas, we gave him the next brief – a new logo and slogan for The Green Party. Watch this space.

By the way, just in case there are any biscuit technologists or marketeers reading this, the copyright stays with Remedy, but we’re open to offers.