One of the UK’s oldest and well-known brands, The Royal Mint, has appointed McCann Bristol for a two-year contract to help shape the historic brand’s future.
Considered a British institution with a 1,100-year legacy, The Royal Mint is most commonly known for making currency and its extensive range of collectable medals and commemorative coins.
Creating a brand that both treasures The Royal Mint’s important heritage and communicates its breadth is core to McCann’s brief. Adopting an integrated approach, McCann will work across core disciplines such brand strategy, creative development, digital marketing, and front-end website design to increase awareness, change perception of the organisation and drive sales.
The dynamic brand already has an extensive range of consumer products and services, including high-quality gifts and jewellery, precious metal investments, secure storage for personal items and even great days out. But its diverse offering is often overlooked.
In addition to appealing to new audiences and developing the brand, McCann will develop its online presence and introduce a new website. There will be an increased consideration for user experience to better reflect the brand proposition.
Jonathan McGregor, Chief Marketing Officer at the Royal Mint, says “Everyone knows our name. But for most, The Royal Mint conjures an image of a traditional institution, the coins and the significant commemoration we are involved with. We love this side of our business, as do many others, but it’s time for us to show off all that we do and create.
“We have many new products, services and experiences which lots of people just aren’t aware of. With the help of McCann, we want people to better understand what we do and when to consider us. We are all looking forward to what we can achieve with this plan, heading into an exciting new period for such an historic brand.”
Andy Reid, Managing Director for McCann, adds, “It is our privilege to be entrusted with The Royal Mint’s legacy and its evolving future. It forms part of the fabric of British life, we are all touched by it in a very obvious way with circulating coins, but its new product collections and experiences bring much more than this. The brand has the offering to remain a part of our lives for years to come.”
The contract cements McCann Bristol’s position as a leading integrated agency with the capability and expertise to take national and global brands into new territories and create new opportunities.
We create reach for brands with passion and purpose. In other words, we work for brands that we truly believe are making valuable positive change to the world and therefore deserve to be heard about for the benefit of not just the brand, but the people, too.
Let us introduce you to Hubba.
Hubba is the new kid on the block. With Clive and Adrian at the helm, Hubba is bringing a fresh approach to waste and recycling in three ways:
and what’s more, people are liking their style as they have just recorded the best sales growth for the past year to August 2019 – with an admirable 267% increase.
Whether you run your own office, shop, warehouse, manufacturing unit, hotel, restaurant, gym or racing track, Hubba should be your waste and recycling partner. Not only do you boost your environmental credentials (that are proven), your business avoids landfill tax too.
People are often sceptical about advertising and marketing because they believe it’s trying to ‘sell them things they don’t need’. Here at OggaDoon, we are very lucky in that we only shout about brands that we truly believe deserve the recognition we get them. Our work is purpose driven because of a genuine admiration for the clients we have the pleasure of working with.
Contact Hubba today for a free audit to identify the best cost effective solution to ethically manage your waste.
If you’re doing fantastic work that more people deserve to know about too, get in touch with us today to find out how we can help.
Digitally-centred marketing, shopper & sales promotion agency, Activation, has announced that it has appointed Claire Moyne as Client Services Director. Previously the Managing Director at Bristol-based Edo, a digital customer experience consultancy, Claire has joined to support Activation with it’s ambitious growth plans, leading and developing client relationships whilst heading the client services function within the agency as a member of the senior management team.
With 23% growth last year, and following a number of recent wins, Activation has a number of exciting brands on its books, and leading these relationships will be an area of focus for Claire. The agency also launched it’s reworked proposition in the summer, with a uniquely differentiated offering in digitally-centred brand, shopper and promotional marketing. This proposition is generating interest in the grocery sector, leading to a growing new business pipeline.
Matt Ramsay, MD of Activation comments – Claire brings with her a unique mix of skills with her experience in leadership, digital, customer and client experience and grocery brand promotions – we know Claire will be an asset to the business and we’re really looking forward to working together and introducing her to our clients, where her abilities will help us grow and improve our overall business. I’m delighted to welcome Claire to the A-Team
With this role, the agency has also embraced flexible working, with Claire also working the role around her recent purchase of a coffee shop in Bristol!
Kaleido Grafik have just launched new branding, art-direction and frontend and backend development of a new commerce website for HUSK – a Bristol based workshop who make beautifully simple custom-made fronts for IKEA cabinets. HUSK are a new company but aren’t new to this scene. Dave and Ross set up HUSK after successfully supplying bespoke furniture and joinery under Young & Norgate for over 10 years – they are a business built around quality. Now they are able to offer that quality to more when it comes to custom kitchens.
The site features a bespoke product selection tool to ensure the complex process of building your own kitchen remains as simple and intuitive as possible. In addition, there is an ajax bag and checkout flow (including the option to save your bag for later), integrated social feeds and is responsive across all devices.
Branded applications included workshop signage, environmentally conscious shipping materials and van livery.
Visit the new HUSK site here: madebyhusk.com
Founded in Zürich, Kaleido Grafik is a Bristol based branding, digital design and code studio. We’re known for our ability to develop and adapt brands specifically for digital and print applications. Our creative is lead by our Swiss principles: simplicity, beauty follows purpose, universally understood.?
“I hadn’t seen what they had done before, but what I bought into was their desire to do great work. Who doesn’t want to work with people who want to do that?”
–– David Hieatt, Founder of Hiut Denim Co
Discover more from Kaleido Grafik here: kaleidografik.com
We’re marking 10 years in business by rebranding to Loom, a name which better reflects how we integrate digital channels to help companies succeed online. Founded in Bristol in 2009 and still independent and owner-managed, we work with high-growth, entrepreneurial South West clients across a range of industry sectors. The last two years has seen our business double in size.
Did you know that the creative industries in the UK are now responsible for 8% of GDP? But what is it, this thing called creativity? And what does it mean to be a creative person? Why is it that agencies exist? What is it that (most) marketers cannot do themselves?
Hosted by Patrick Collister, ‘Getting the Big Idea’ is a one-day ‘how-to’ workshop for Creatives, Planners and Account Managers, designed to provide the necessary tools to generate ideas. What it is NOT is a session involving finger-paints, plasticine and connecting with the inner self. It will, however, provide the answers that teams need to understand exactly what it is they’re doing and how to do it faster, with more confidence and with greater expectation of success.
The day will be divided into three key parts:
Using ‘The Hierarchy of Ideas’ methodology, you’ll gain an understanding of exactly what sort of idea is being asked for to create successful paid-for communication by breaking ideas into three key parts: the business idea, marketing idea and creative idea.
The workshop also provides practical tools to help you generate strategies, creative platforms and creative ideas faster.
It’s designed to be interactive with a mixture of individual and teamwork where you’ll work together on a ‘live’ brief. As well as being stimulating, the session is intended to be energetic and fun so you’ll leave feeling confident and rebooted.
You’ll acquire real tools of real use which you can use the very next day to improve the creative brief, develop brand positioning ideas and generate creative ideas that will cut-through.
“A unique viewpoint derived from his years spent in both advertising and direct marketing; every person I have sent on his courses has emerged from the experience marvelously rebooted and re-energised.” Rory Sutherland, Vice Chairman, Ogilvy Group UK and President of the IPA.
The 1-day workshop is on Tuesday 8th October from 9.30am – 5pm at Zone, Bristol. Places are limited so book early!
Tickets are £245 (+VAT) for Bristol Media members and £345 (+VAT) for non-members. Lunch and refreshments are provided.
Patrick was the executive creative director and Vice Chairman of Ogilvy & Mather, London. Then executive creative director of the EHS Brann network of direct marketing agencies. From 2013 to 2018 he was the creative lead for Google’s creative think-tank The Zoo. He has won many awards, the most prestigious being Cannes Gold in 2013 with Cheil for Samsung. In his spare time, Patrick publishes Directory magazine and resource.
Patrick will also be joining Bristol Media for a lunchtime Vision keynote in September entitled ‘Permission Denied’ – get your ticket here.
Brand purpose is a hot topic, and not a day goes by without seeing some brand marketer or agency rep in the media announce the virtues of having a unifying brand purpose for your organisation.
Brand purpose is the reason your brand exists. It’s not to make money – that’ll be a by product of what you do. And it’s not to innovate – that’s just a method for getting an answer. Your purpose could be to make your clients wealthy, to cure cancer, or solve the energy crisis. It could be to make work better for everyone, make a home a home, or to provide entertainment. Your brand purpose doesn’t have to be cause led, but it does have to be case led. Your brand purpose is the reason you do what you do. It determines the way that you do it, and it is what makes you meaningfully different from everyone else. You have a brand purpose already, you probably live it every day, and it’s likely to be instinctive. But maybe you just haven’t given it any thought?
I mentioned in a recent post that in the majority of brands we engage with, their organisations purpose is already known but rarely recognised and never articulated. It’s a vital exercise that supports small companies as they scale, and large conglomerates to simplify in a smart and practical way.
The main problem with doing this is that most organisations are complex, and it can be notoriously difficult to simplify what they do. Many business leaders think their brand purpose should be a strap line. And brand purpose now sits squarely in the box of marketing hyperbole.
So we thought we’d help out by focussing on why having clarity around your brand purpose is useful and how you can go about defining it.
You can start by constructing your brand DNA. These simple workstreams provide a useful platform to capture the information. There’s a method to each one and you don’t have to undertake every part, but the more detail you feed in at the start, the more robust your future strategy will be.
1. Get your head out of the sand
Start by having a look around. Review your market. This can include:
You can conduct simple and regular research that informs your SWOT and PEST analysis in a more robust way. And you can do this in large scale tracking studies or using simple survey. As part of this you can find out what your competitors are offering their customers, and reference this against how you serve your customers needs. A simple matrix that is regularly updated and shared will uncover vital insights for future opportunities to grow. They’re easy to visualise, share with colleagues and use to inform your future NPD and proposition work.
Separately this work can also be an excellent foundation for plotting your customers journey which highlights every touchpoint in their buying cycle. For example we recently discovered that the average car buyer in the UK has 900 interactions digitally before making a purchase. This type of information lays out all the moments when you can engage with them, drawing them in by disrupting their decision path. You can chart this using empathy maps.
2. Work out who you are
I don’t mean give yourself a label, like car dealership or a cleaning company. I mean properly review what you do and how it serves your market. It’s vital when assessing the value your product or service brings people, and in turn helps you find out who your ideal customer should be.
Bringing this to life by creating pen portraits for your audience that can be distilled into persona’s for your customers is a really simple and effective technique. It helps your internal teams and agencies recognise your ideal customer. It also helps make communication planning much more efficient because you can reference each persona against their needs at every stage of the customer journey. This will enable you to stay on point when you’re presenting yourself, the features of your product or service and the benefits and value it brings. You can also learn from and improve your future offerings in context of your customers wants and needs. This is a really practical approach that will help surface your brand purpose from a place of realism and likely expectation.
3. Agree your purpose
Your brand purpose and all subsequent service and product propositions should fall out from steps 1 and 2 and you can summarise them on a page. It’s really simple to do, and you can road test it quite quickly with staff, customers, even in market. You can use workshops, focus groups, online surveys even pay per click ads if relevant.
4. Deciding how to behave
How far you wish to go in underpinning your brand purpose and articulating it will depend on the level of investment you want to make and the complexity of what you do and who you are serving. Archetypes are a great expression of you personality. Although high level, they can help you decide your place in the market, your tone of voice, your campaign tactics and content strategies. Supporting this with a useful set of brand values that are demonstrable in how you do business, as well as being a reflective articulation of who you are is a credible way to build your culture with your people on board and your customer at the centre of your organisation. Your brand values won’t be unique, but how you live up to them will set you apart from everyone else.
Thursday, 15th August, 2019
This article was originally posted on Media Post
A number of recent studies state that Millennials are more concerned about issues related to the environment, sustainability, and social justice than are their older siblings. As consumers, they are looking for brands that share the burden of social responsibility. A 2015 Forbes survey conducted with Elite Daily revealed that 75% of Millennial shoppers think it is very important that companies make a positive, societal contribution rather than profit alone.
As a response, an increasing number of brands are emerging with a do-gooder ethos. Millennials believe that brands, like themselves, can make money while making a meaningful difference. That said, there has been growing skepticism among Millennial shoppers of brands that “give back.”
Today, if a brand simply donates to charities, it is considered insufficient, made worse by bragging about it. Larger brands, whose established ethos is not inherently charitable, must be especially cautious. A 2013 University of California Riverside School of Business Administration and the London Business School Study found, “Companies that promote their corporate social responsibility are, in fact, more likely to become complacent and conduct themselves irresponsibly,” confirming Millennial suspicions.
Given these challenges, how do brands identify pro-social acts that align with their organizational values and create a stronger bond with Millennial consumers. Here are some examples of a few do-gooder models.
One-for-One Model
Brands like Toms, Warby Parker and Feed changed the landscape by prioritizing charitable contributions as a built-in, consistent element of their respective brand strategies. Toms’ one-for-one business strategy has had clear success (a Reuters report revealed the brand was valued at $625 million in 2014). Similarly, Feed, which facilitates 370 meals for school children in Kenya for every $250 spent on their burlap bags, reassures shoppers that their money is going toward a good cause. For every pair of Warby Parker glasses purchased, the $1.2 billion brand donates a pair to those in need in developing nations. To reinforce its commitment to charity, Warby Parker partners with nonprofit entities, which train locals in developing countries to give eye exams to those in need in their communities. Where companies can fail is when they don’t live up to their one-for-one commitments, causing a consumer backlash.
Local Community Model
Shinola, a Detroit-based watch brand, is among a new breed of company built with community in mind. Detroit, ranked the poorest city in the United States by the Census bureau with 39% of its residents living below the poverty line, has been in desperate need of employment opportunities for decades. Shinola prides itself on sourcing American-made materials, providing employment to Detroit residents, aiding local suppliers in expanding their existing operations and making an accessibly priced, handcrafted product. While this model is effective, not every company can give back to their local community.
Corporate Giving Model
Certainly, newer brands establishing their public identity and brand ethos have an opportunity to put their best foot forward. However, can larger, more established brands give back in a convincing way? The Tide brand is using mobile laundromats to provide free washes to displaced residents of natural disasters as they did with the recent spate of tornados in the South. This program aligns with their mission of caring for the clothes of American families.
Given present-day limitations, established brands can chart a way forward through small, genuine, incremental shifts toward walking the walk—from product manufacturing to packaging.
In order to connect with today’s highly discerning consumers and make meaningful change, we recommend that brands make an authentic, sustainable shift toward doing good for employees and communities, while getting involved in charities or giving opportunities that align with the business goals and brand DNA in a holistic way.
Leading Creative Communication agency, Quantock, launches new branding and website putting Natural Creativity™ at the centre of its strategy.
After undertaking an external proposition review Quantock introduces new branding to reflect our 30 year dedication to instinctive creativity.
Simon Mears, Creative Director and Founder of Quantock, said:
“We know that design and creative thinking will continue to shape brands across all sectors. Our new brand reflects the aspirations, growth and future development of Quantock. What we’ve always done really well is to encourage instinctive, brave, natural creativity to happen. We’ve now decided to celebrate it. I’m truly excited that we have defined our way of thinking”.
Managing Director at the agency, Mark Dalton, said: “The rebrand clarifies our proposition and helps cement our reputation as a creative agency that is forward thinking, and future relevant. Data is vital to continuous refinements but digital channels should never be a substitute for bold and brilliant creative ideas”.
For more information contact Mark Dalton
T. +44 (0) 1823 327532
M. +44 (0) 7468 491942
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Our Content Apprentice Izzy headed over to Bath for this month’s Featured Member to talk with Sue Bush, Creative Director at Touchpoint Design, and find out more about what they’re up to. Here’s what we learned…
Hi Sue, tell us what you do?
We are a brand design agency, we design brand identities, primarily for arts and culture and not for profit clients. We work across all touchpoints, which is where we got our name. The touchpoints are: digital, printed materials and large-format visuals. Ensuring a consistent brand identity across all applications.
Who are your team?
There are 3 of us in the production team, myself (creative director), Georgia (designer) and Ian (technical director). We are a small team, but we collaborate with lots of talented associates that we bring in on a project by project basis.
How long have you been a Bristol Media member?
We’ve been a Bristol Media member for 4 years I believe. We became members because I moved to the South West from London, so it was a good way to get to know everyone and join the creative community.
What’s your favourite place in Bath and Bristol?
In Bath, Solsbury Hill, it’s really invigorating up there. It’s a steep hill but a great place to clear your mind. In Bristol, probably the harbourside, a great place for people watching.
What are you most proud of as a business?
I love that we punch above our weight. We’re only small but we take on some really big briefs, size is not an issue. Our rebrand of the American Museum & Gardens was a great example of where we demonstrated what we can achieve with a complex and demanding brief.
Our favourite projects to work on are those where we get involved right from the brand discovery stage, researching, unpacking client vision and values, positioning etc. Going in deep from the start gives us insight and helps us to maximise impact and spark really effective creative solutions.
What exciting plans have you got coming up this year?
We are working on a website with Taxi Studio for the West of England Design Forum to help women in design. There’s a big disparity between women reaching roles of seniority so it’s great to work for something we’re passionate about.
We’re also a part of a ‘mastermind’ group of 8 agency owners. We’re small giants, like the concept developed in the book Small Giants by Bo Burlingham. Based around the idea of sustainable agency growth, rather than expand for the sake of it, to make a wider positive impact beyond simply our own financial gain. So we’re excited to see where this takes us in the future!
Whose work do you admire and why?
Marina Willer from Pentagram. We love her, she’s very humble considering how successful she is, and she works in sectors we work in (charities and creative arts). Her work with Amnesty International and the Serpentine Gallery in particular. She creates clear solutions that are bold and impactful. She is a stand out influence for us.
If there’s one thing we need more of in this region, what is it?
In Bath, it would be great to see a big contemporary art centre. Bristol has Spike Island and the Arnolfini, and while Bath has great spaces, like The Edge and 44AD, it would be nice to have a permanent space that can pull in some of the bigger high-profile artists and act as a creative hub across disciplines.
If you could sum up Bristol in 3 words, what would they be?
Vibrant, refreshingly diverse and fiercely-independent.
What’s the best tip/trick you’ve learnt as a business?
For designers, use a notebook! Don’t go straight for the computer, sketch ideas before you start pushing pixels around, it’s so much easier and quicker. Leuchtturm notebooks are our favourite! Our greatest tip is to really listen. Ask questions, then actively listening to the answers. Prompt and facilitate those conversations to get insight.
Keen to feature your business? If you’d like to be part of our Featured Member series, email Kirsty or Izzy for more information. See you in September!
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