After five years in residence at The Tea Building, we have upped camp and moved into Sapling House on Worship Street. While still naked (without signage), it’s a lovely four-storey Georgian building on what used to be referred to as the ‘Old Hog’s Road’. Worship Street is the old dividing line between the civilisation of the old ’square mile’ and the region of uncivilised lands north of the city. We’ll let you guess which side of the road we’ve found our new home on.
.
As predicted, we lived through very different times in 2008. Many of us watched stalwart brands make the headlines for bailouts and bankruptcies. Belts were tightened, headcount was shed, fingers were pointed and dramas unfolded. No doubt, we will see this purge continue into early 2009 but likely not much beyond then.
While there is definitely a down-side to this downturn, the purge will be healthy for the industry. In many ways, we have been living in times of excess and as a friend of mine once observed: “I have seen many more companies die of gluttony than starvation”. Gluttons are now leaving the table and this can only be seen as a good thing. + Read the rest of this entry
It’s our first annual ‘feel good & waste time’ edition. Just in time for the slack holiday season before we all run off to our endearing but often trying families, immense sedative-like birds and the modern hell that is holiday travel. Sit back, tilt your monitor away from your colleagues, plug in the earphones and enjoy.
We introduce Al Wasl, fusing modern with traditional in a new city identity ; A presentation about emerging practices in branding: what does the future of branding work look like for clients and agencies ; An overview of our part in the Egage 08 conference and a certificate of excellence in type design for the Al Rajhi font.
Limitless, one of the largest property developers in the world, has just launched a new property at Cityscape in Dubai. The new property will be home to 220,000 residents near Riyadh in Saudi Arabia. Al Wasl, which translates roughly to ‘the crossroads’, will be the largest development in the kingdom and has been born out of extensive research with the local community.
Our consultant on the engagement, Nick Ranger, adds that “it is important to appreciate how the specific traditions and culture of the country require a different approach to building new communities. Everything about the brand, from the name, to the positioning, to the design concepts and communications have been tested again and again. Usually, this process drives a lot of creativity out of a brand, leaving a ’safe’ product. Thankfully, we were able to continue driving creative back into the process at each stage so that ideas which were not culturally appropriate could be replaced with new, but equally creative designs to support the brand.”
‘Where life comes together’ is the new slogan for the brand and speaks to completeness of the development - being a destination unto itself. The illustrations bring this brand to life, connecting various amenities from public spaces that weave through the development.
.
On September 25th, Uri Baruchin gave a presentation at the Strategic Branding forum in Romania. We used this opportunity to bring together some of our central ideas about how branding should be practiced in order to succeed in our rapidly changing world. This is an outline of the ideas the presentation touched upon…
Emerging practices in branding – a strategy for strategy
When asked to give a presentation with the title ‘the future of branding’ audiences usually expect to get examples from brands that innovate and point to the future. This time, we took a different approach. Instead of talking about branding as a noun, we decided to speak about it as a verb, about how branding is carried out. This is a look at emerging trends in branding as a practice. These are changes led by the people who lead branding programmes – usually branding agencies together with the clients who hire and work with them.
Our presentation looks at five aspects: methodology, relationship, culture, identity and engagement.
Aaron Shields and Sam Holmes will facilitating and exhibiting at Engage ‘08: the largest annual employee engagement event in the UK. We will be exhibiting in our big black inflatable igloo, so come by and grab a biscuit.
In article on the basics of shaping your corporate culture with your brand. Features on new work on a Hungarian bank, a Russian vodka, a Saudi property giant and an Italian pasta brand. A big hello to our newly designed website. Our favourite TED conferences and a little distraction on procrastination
Gone are the days when each function inside a company focused on its own work in isolation to the rest. It is widely accepted that companies that work together to achieve a shared vision are more successful.
Branding has a vital and major role in getting your people working together towards a shared vision. A brand strategy is not just about marketing a product or service. It is a statement about the company, what it values and what it aims to achieve. A brand strategy has much wider application than communication & design activities. In order to get maximum benefit, a brand strategy needs to steer all customer touch points, including how employees and customers interact. + Read the rest of this entry
