Truly Deeply/Madly

As a brand strat­egy and design agency we spend much of our lives work­ing in the front line of brands, defin­ing strate­gic posi­tion­ing and design­ing new visual lan­guage to launch them afresh in the mar­ket place. But often it seems though much energy and impor­tance is placed on the ini­tial brand posi­tion­ing, the task of actively main­tain­ing the brand’s posi­tion is given less atten­tion. To achieve the long term promise of the ini­tial brand work there needs to be an ongo­ing com­mit­ment to engag­ing in brand activ­i­ties that bring to life your brand’s essence and val­ues. To keep your brand vibrant and rel­e­vant the ques­tion you need to con­tin­u­ally ask your­self is; ‘what do we do next?’

St Ali’s Laneway Project in South Mel­bourne is a rich exam­ple of this ongo­ing com­mit­ment to brand devel­op­ment. St Ali’s has a strong brand posi­tion and has a large and loyal fol­low­ing who love them for their hip atti­tude and seri­ously good cof­fee. Stag­ing their Laneway Project event fea­tur­ing local street artists, DJ’s and fixie races has rein­forced St Ali’s cred­i­bil­ity as one of Melbourne’s coolest cafes, not an easy feat in a city that claims the best cof­fee and cafe cul­ture in country.

The Laneway Project took place at Yarra Place in South Mel­bourne an unlikely place for such hap­pen­ings, but this only added to the suc­cess. Through­out the day Street Art great like Benzo, Gimiks, Itch, Kid Zoom, Meggs, Mon­key, Otis Cham­ber­lain, Phibs, Reka, Sync and Drew­funk painted walls of the laneway. There was also ally cat races, fixie polo and DJ’s. Over the day there was an esti­mated 5000 peo­ple came to check it out.

What made it so right was not only activ­i­ties that where on offer but also the peo­ple who where involved. The event was curated by the much respected Drew­funk, a hero among the street art scene. I caught up with him in his stu­dio and asked him a few ques­tions on the event. When I met Drew­funk his pas­sion for paint­ing was sim­ply infec­tious. He told me that it was his first time curat­ing an event like this and had an absolute blast. He felt that the suc­cess of the event was get­ting the right artists and DJ’s. The artists where a col­lec­tion of well known street artists whom he had involved with before. This helped to keep the vibe nice and relaxed. He has already started plan­ing next years event, it’s going to be even big­ger. The event may have started a lit­tle art com­mu­nity in South Mel­bourne, St Ali’s is open­ing a stu­dio for prac­tic­ing artists in the adja­cent build­ing, which Drew­funk will take up res­i­dence after he returns from Sydney.

What was espe­cially good was the event that St Ali’s cre­ated was com­pletely on-brand. The Laneway project was a great way for them to fur­ther strengthen their con­nec­tion with the local com­mu­nity and with cre­ators of our city’s laneway culture.

I have come up with 6 Golden rules to great brand expe­ri­ence events.

• Get the right peo­ple involved. All brand events should be about authen­tic­ity and buzz — hav­ing the right peo­ple on-board will give your event a head start in both those areas.

• Make the event for and about your audi­ence. The event should not have to appeal to every­one, the more it does not appeal to those who are not your tar­get audi­ence — the greater the appeal to those who are.

• Use the event to express how you want your brand to per­ceived.

• Con­tribute to your cus­tomers expe­ri­ences. The event should be about a great expe­ri­ence for you cus­tomers and their friends first and fore­most. Brand events are about build­ing brand equity, not short term sales.

• Make sure you pro­mote the event. Firstly, there’s noth­ing like a crowd to cre­ate a buzz, but sec­ondly, with tar­geted pro­mo­tion you also get to talk brand with those who can’t make it to your event.

• Have fun. If bring­ing your brand to life through amaz­ing brand expe­ri­ences doesn’t excite you, you’re the wrong per­son for the job. Like all things in life, when you’re truly pas­sion­ate about your brand and the brand expe­ri­ences you cre­ate, you’re all-but guar­an­teed success.

If you would like to have a chat about cre­at­ing extra­or­di­nary expe­ri­ences for your brand, get in touch.

Lach­lan McDougall
Design Creative

Tags: Brand Design, Brand Strategy

This entry was posted on Wednesday, March 17th, 2010 at 9:31 am and is filed under Brand Design, Brand Strategy, Brand Voice, Brand-Storytelling, Creative, Experiences, Graphic Design Melbourne, Small Brands Big Personalities, Thinking, Visual Language. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.