Branding for Local Government
We’ve been recently working with a regional Victorian Council, over the years we’ve worked with Local governments all over Victoria, from the City of Melbourne to the Moira Shire Council. We’re working developing their brand, evolving the brand mark, creating a visual language. and creating a brand system, they can use to easily communicate on brand. It reminded me of the key steps we’ve taken over the years, with our Local Government clients, that have delivered a successful branding project. I thought it’d be good to share them.

Working with Local Government has it’s challenges, but so does working with any organisation. They have no market, no competitors, you can’t pick another council to empty your bins or maintain your park. But they have a vital need to successfully communicate their brand to all their constituents. They need to clearly communicate where every dollar of rates has been spent. These are my 5 keys for successfully branding a Local Government, but they could apply to any organisation.

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We all love a unique brand expression and I can’t help but acknowledge one of the most remarkable brand expressions I’ve seen in recent times (albeit dating back to the late 1970s) from one of the most iconic and well know fashion brands in the world – Gucci.

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This week I had the pleasure of joining in the celebration of 50 years in the property development industry by one Bert Dennis, founder of Australian property group, The Dennis Family Corporation. I have always found Bert an inspiration and it was a delight to hear him in full flight reflecting on his time in the property game. He came from very humble beginnings and through his talents, resilience and integrity has created a very successful business turning over $300 million plus annually with an exemplary model of an enduring family business.

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London’s aBuzz About ‘Unpackaged‘
London has long been one of the worlds greatest retail cities – a place where new concepts are launched and sunk every day with barely a ripple to mark their passing. As they say in the classics – ‘If you can make it there, you’ll make it anywhere…’. Into this buzzing retail landscape, old school food store ‘Unpackaged‘ was quietly launched four years ago as a market stall and over the ensuing years has grown to become a much loved and powerful little retail brand in a charming shop at 42 Amwell Street, London.

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Like bumping into an old friend
Currently I’m in the market for a new TV, so last week whilst I was shopping at Victoria Gardens, I popped into Dick Smith to see what they had on offer. On the way in I was greeted by a familiar face, Dick himself. See they’ve yet to rebrand this store with the new identity. As you may know, last year Dick Smith rebranded (some stores anyway). Now much has been said about the design of the new brandmark and I don’t mean to get into the issues it may have or lecture the designers who created it – what I do want to talk about is the brand personality and what I see as a missed opportunity. Seeing the old identity in all its glory reminded me of what has been lost.

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Working for a creative brand agency I’ve always valued remarkable advertising and marketing. One particular stand-out for me was Veet’s “Goodbye Bush” ad that ran as a quarter page in Sydney’s Daily Telegraph and Melbourne’s Herald Sun in January 2009. The ad was forwarded in a viral frenzy to family, friends (myself being one of them) and colleagues around the globe, by 3pm the same day had made it’s way back in the in-boxes of staff where the campaign had started – Euro RSCG’s Sydney office.

So what was it that made this ad so remarkable it created a life of its own?

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The Code of Great Annual Reporting
For 20 years we have been developing corporate brands and communications. Our work has seen
us decode much of the brand and corporate communication landscape, working for businesses across all sectors operating in national and international markets.

AR:ReView is the culmination of us turning our decoding methodology towards defining the a market oriented criteria for creating annual reporting content to global best practice standards.

As we lead the thinking for our clients on their brand definition and communication, we see AR:ReView as a natural extension of how their brands connect with their shareholders and stakeholders, answering the questions:
• How can shareholder reporting be more informative
and accessible?
• How can we best provide the information investors and the market value, in a format that is more engaging, more functional, and easier to understand? Read the rest of this entry »

All Brands Have Meaning
Whether carefully and strategically considered or by default, all brands hold associated meanings in the market place. Well considered brands establish a competitive brand proposition (their brand strategy) with layers of meaning to both differentiate themselves from their competitors and to connect with their audience. These brand reinforce their meaning through all of their actions or brand touch points. As a brand agency we help brands to define their meaning and create the brand design for all their communications in order to create a consistent association with these layers of meaning in the minds of their customers.

A Snapshot of Brand Association
The clever people at Brand Tags have been busy collecting a comprehensive  list of more than 1.7 million associations that people have with brands. The result is a unique opportunity for those brands to compare the meaning and messages of their brand communication strategy with the brand associations of a cross section of the market.

Audi Vs BMW
Today we compare the brand associations of German Luxury, Automotive brands Audi & BMW.

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Branding a place or a region is no different to product or service branding – you have to own something that is distinctive and compelling to your target market. However, when it comes to regional branding there is an added complication. You have to balance the competing needs of a diverse set of stakeholders because the people and businesses that make up the region simply do not always see the world through the same lens. Different mental models, different types and sizes of businesses, different levels of self interest and all that before one even layers in the different egos at play.  A lot of stakeholders and lot of emotion makes for interesting branding.

With such a diverse range of stakeholders, the developers of regional brands need to adopt a strategic and pragmatic approach. For a start there needs to be recognition that not all stakeholders will be of equal value in building a world famous regional brand, that the 80:20 rule is well and truly alive. Certainly the team we worked with on the Eyre Peninsula in South Australia understood this point. Led by the regional Development Board, the regional branding process started with identifying those businesses that were considered mission critical to being on-board. Clearly your preference is to have everyone on board, but it can also be a very liberating feeling if instead you identify the 20% of stakeholders who will give you 80% of the bang, you can then immediately narrow your focus. And of course the law of attraction always works, enlist the shakers and movers and others will want to jump on board anyway. Once you have the right people involved there is a need to explore what makes up the region, what makes it a special place. Is it nature’s gifts, is it food producers, is it the unique experiences on offer, is it wine, is it a combination.

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A New Model of Talent Management
Forum5 represents the next generation of artist and talent management company founded by Mark Richardson in collaboration with global media company; Fremantle Media. Mark’s background was in running some of the biggest record labels in the world, representing
many of the biggest names in music internationally. Mark’s vision for Forum5, was a new kind of talent management based on the understanding that in the age of shared and social technology, the talent creating the content holds the power, and the ideal management relationship is an entrepreneurial partnership. With Fremantle Media’s backing,
Forum5 was launched in 2008 and has found much success with the new model of talent partnership, quickly growing to represent local talent from the television, music, food and lifestyle industries.

A New Level of Brand Clarity
We worked with Mark to help Forum5 develop absolute clarity around their brand definition and differentiated market proposition. We designed a brand story book and helped form a new language to communicate the new Forum5 offer to market, staff and potential talent partners. Forum5’s brand essence of ‘Partnering to Build Talent Equity’ focused on Marks unique value proposition and formed the starting point for our creative brand expression.

A New Brand Identity
The Forum5 brand mark locks the number 5 within the word ‘Forum’ to illustrate the focus on talent partnerships in a simple and memorable form. The word-mark is simple and graphic allowing it to work across many different applications and to be ‘dialed-up’ or ‘dialed-down’ in prominence depending on the piece of communication and the talent brands it would be appearing with.

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