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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Today it’s more critical than ever for businesses to differentiate themselves from their competitors and make memorable connections with their audience by creating unique, recognisable brands.

Colour in Brand Design
Every touch point of a brand plays a vital role in brand recall, but the brand mark is the heart and soul of a brand’s image. Whilst it’s the interplay between colour, typeface, and symbol that creates a brand mark, colour is registered by the brain before either images or typography. A University of Loyola, Maryland study recently found the correct use of colour could increase brand recognition by up to 80%.

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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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The Demise of Unique Brand Design
Sadly these days unique and fresh brand identity design is the exception rather than the rule. As more brands seek to become global, the trend has been for the visual language of their brand images to become more and more similar. Global branding firm Landor’s recent 2010 Trend Forecast agrees that ‘A global homogenization of design is taking place, with design blogs and online portfolios as the major culprits.’ They say ‘Companies need to rely less heavily on testing and research, which tend to nullify originality. Brands can’t just follow the herd and hope to succeed.’ And they predict ‘We’ll find larger companies willing to take risks, break the rules, and appear imperfect. Shaking up the status quo will be considered far better than disappearing into oblivion.’

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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 »

Creating Memorable Brand Design
As creative director of our brand agency I’m always being asked by our clients how to create the most effective brand identity or corporate image. The answer always begins and ends with owning ‘Unique Visual Properties’. Unique visual properties are visual elements of your brand identity that position your brand and its strategy in the hearts and minds of your target market, but just as importantly, achieve that goal with fresh and unique visual language. By consistently presenting your unique visual properties to the market, over time you will own them and their brand associations, providing you with defendable, bankable brand equity.

Brandable Type Design
Flicking through the web last week I came across this remarkable piece of typographic design by Paul Hollingworth. This type design struck me as it was both unique and filled with personality – two great attributes for a brand design visual property.

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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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Simply Stunning Animation
The BBC has built a reputation over many years for creating stunning station and special program promos. Their animation promoting the upcoming Vancouver Winter Olympics is no exception. BAFTA winning Director Marc Craste worked with designer Jon Klassen and Studio AKA in creating the stunning spot and several title sequences. The 40 second short animated film tells a rich fable of a legendary quest in which an Inuit hero retrieves a spiritual stone that has been taken by a giant bear from a mystical totem.  In the process of his mission our hero draws on his skills in a series of challenging & physically brutal Olympic style sports to recover the precious ice locked stone, thus restoring light and peace to his dark and troubled world.’

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Re-branding Recruitment

For four decades McAthur has forged an enviable reputation as a multi-specialist National recruitment company focusing on executive, permanent, temporary and consulting solutions for clients. As a 40 year-old business undergoing generational change, the time was right to re-frame the McArthur brand, its go-to-market proposition and its brand image.

McArthur as a business had evolved organically as had its brand visual language. The re-branding program was as much about creating a spirited and contemporary visual language as it was about developing systems to ensure a consistent and organised message unifying state offices and consolidating unified brand communication to the market.

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