In a world of everything is potentially ‘fake news’ where can we find meaning?
We depend on our own finely-tuned radar of ‘emotional resonance’.
What feels true?
‘Truth is stranger than fiction” because it can’t be contrived. But how do we tell the difference?
Much of the power of non-fiction storytelling lies in its claim to ‘authenticity’. And with authenticity comes the potential for ‘emotional truth’ and ‘meaning’, what stories are supposed to deliver.
Documentary’s promise of ‘authenticity’ rests in its unique ability to express the spontaneous. That moment of revelation might be an action. It might be spoken. It might be in silence. But it’s always unexpected.
In the midst of Russia’s material collapse in the 1990s, ‘A St. Petersburg Symphony’ explores the power of music in a time of crisis.
After 2 weeks of filming inside The Russian National Library, the brilliant Ukrainian conductor, Vasily Zvarychuk, invited us back to his home.
This excerpt, from the first film I made in Russia, shows the film’s emotional turning-point, an unplanned moment caught by DoP David Katznelson.
This chance moment reveals Vasily quite unexpectedly, in all his vulnerability, beauty and love.
It shows not only how we use story to find meaning, but more specifically how story works as a means to discover who we are.
In the words of Matt Hague’s alien explorer from his book ‘The Humans’-
“It takes time to understand humans because they don’t understand themselves. They have been wearing clothes for so long. Metaphorical clothes. That is what I am talking about. That was the price of human civilisation – to create it they had to close the door on their true selves. And so they are lost, that is how I understand it. And that is why they invented art: books, music, films, plays, painting, sculpture. They invented them as bridges back to themselves, back to who they are.”
Bristol-based brand consultancy, Mr B & Friends, has unveiled a vibrant new look for cyber security and Cloud IT specialist Kocho, bringing the two established businesses together under one name.
Kocho is the company formed from managed services provider TIG, and identity and cyber security experts, ThirdSpace. Backed by the private equity house, BGF, they’ve come together to harness the benefits of their separate strengths, making them a leading provider specialist for Microsoft Security and Cloud Technology. The distinct combination of expertise will enable Kocho to help grow ambitious companies in a truly sustainable and secure manner.
The brand has been designed with transformation front of mind, and the name ‘Kocho’ comes from the Japanese word for butterfly. The logo features a crest-like butterfly symbol with a star symbolising the transformation and protection the new business provides its clients. The brand positioning is anchored by an organising thought of ‘Become greater’, demonstrating how Kocho enables every client, colleague, and partner to flourish.
The sector that Kocho operates is crowded, so it was vital to develop a brand that was distinctive and had clarity at its core. The entire branding system, including iconography, type, colour, photography and moving image, all ladder back to the strategy. The design system features a series of illustrated patterns and ever-changing shapes that suggest the fluid motion of wings. The tone of voice shows the humility and confidence in Kocho’s ability to deliver greatness and commercial impact at both enterprise and mid-market level businesses in the UK and beyond.
Steve Richardson, Executive Creative Director at Mr B & Friends says, “From our workshops with the client team ‘Becoming greater’ was our statement of intent. The identity and tone of the brand had to represent this, but also had to stand apart from its competitive set. What client doesn’t want to be greater today than yesterday? Huge thanks to the brave client team, who embraced this bold approach from the off.”
As part of the brand relaunch, Mr B & Friends worked on a light art launch film with Sola Lightbombing. This used Pixel stick light typography combined with real-time generation of light art both in a studio and in cityscapes. The light trails tell the story of transformation and innovation, creating a fresh way to build the Kocho narrative.
Gareth Rees Jones, Director of Marketing at Kocho says, “Mr B & Friends really captured the vision that we were trying to achieve. The new brand celebrates our people, our expertise and the outcomes that we achieve for our clients. We’re delighted to be launching our new combined business under the Kocho brand.”
As part of their ‘better business’ product launches, Six has released a CX Mapping product to help businesses focus on the people who matter most: their customers.
The product
Working together with Six, businesses are guided through the process of insight gathering (both internal and external), CX mapping distillation and visualisation, and playback workshops with key stakeholders to explore the map and to determine quick-wins to longer-term priorities. Businesses are given the chance to see what their customers see – the good and not-so-good – and supported by Six to turn this human-based insight into real-world action. This programme can be completed in as little as 6 weeks.
Why invest in CX?
The line between B2B and B2C customer experience (CX) is blurring. B2B customers are now looking for more than just a good product or service – they want to buy into businesses. And they expect consistent, personalised, and human experiences when they interact with organisations.
Getting CX right is about building insight across the customer lifecycle and creating the right business ecosystem to deliver against customers’ evolving needs. Once it is known what customers feel about a business and why, changes can be identified that will seriously improve their view of a business. And where customer satisfaction leads, business growth nearly always follows.
Better business
CX Mapping is the first in a series of offerings that Six are launching. Each one will answer a specific industry need to help brands and businesses connect with their customers on a more human level. After all, whether businesses are talking to an individual or communicating with an organisation, they have one thing in common: people sit at the heart. And this is just one of many ways Six is inspiring brands and businesses to be more human.
A strategic creative partner
Over the past 28 years, Six has partnered with local and global organisations to help grow and deliver value for their clients. And they’ve been doing it in three ways:
It’s this strategic, creative capability, coupled with their CX experience with the likes of bp, Lloyds Bank and St Modwen, which makes Six the go-to agency for customer and user-focused expertise.
Ready to start your CX Mapping project? Or want to find out how Six can partner with your business? Get in touch with [email protected]
Some of the most creative and inspiring projects we work on are with start-up brands. We love collaborating directly with founders whose passion for their brand and products is contagious.
Working with start-ups also offers a unique chance to measure the real impact that design has on consumers. When there is no, or very little other marketing activity going on, everything rides on the power of the packaging design.
Noto Gin is a perfect example.
The enigmatic founder, Yuki, is so passionate about his distinctive product that he wasn’t looking to sell it just in his home country of Japan, but simultaneously launch it 6,000 miles away, here in the UK, into an established and highly competitive Gin market.
Always ready for a challenge, we loved bringing Noto Gin to life with an authentic, provenance-led design that could appeal seamlessly to consumers in both countries.
And the power of the packaging design? More than 600 bottles sold in the first two weeks, with very few people having even tried the Gin!
This is just the beginning for Noto Gin. Follow their journey on Instagram @noto.gin
And find out more about this project here
Dear Storyteller,
That means everyone reading this.
We all use stories in search of answers, looking for pattern, shape and meaning.
Who am I?
Where do I belong?
Where have I come from?
Where am I going?
And why?
Everyone of us is hard-wired for story.
Stories act as bridges to the experience of others. They connect us through our shared humanity. They are about the emotion of shared experience.
Films are powerful vessels for story because they can communicate all the complexity and subtlety of emotion quickly. Through the curious alchemy of sound, picture and time, they can enable us to feel what it’s like to be someone else.
Every story we tell is an experiment that furthers our knowledge of how this chemistry works.
This post is the start of a story about story based on my own experiments and encounters.
I hope it will work as a starting point for a conversation about how stories work, with a community of people also fascinated by their magic.
Why are particular people such powerful vessels for story? And why do some moments resonate with ‘the truth’ so strongly?
I started out as a ‘picture editor’.
This is about as far from being a storyteller as it’s possible to be. I worked in the story equivalent of a factory- a processing plant for the industrial standardisation of reality into uniform ‘products’. These ‘stories’ were methodically stripped of meaning and emotion, to make each one feel the same.
This was ‘the news’.
And so, as an escape, I started wandering around with a camera.
I was stunned to discover that the camera acted as a catalyst. It gave me an excuse to talk to strangers. And because someone was listening, they were willing to talk. It was a good combination.
And this is how I chanced across Doreen Thomas, on a deserted beach, under a nuclear power station in Kent…
https://vimeo.com/sashasnow/review/699091269/91d2c31fbf
In this moment of clarity, Doreen taught me some invaluable lessons-
Sometimes, in the moment, people will say things that resonate. They are often things that they’ve never said, or even thought, before. Everyone is caught by surprise.
Their words carry the weight of ‘emotional truth’. This is a ‘truth’ that defies categorisation or analysis. You can’t prove it or check it. We just know in our heart that it is ‘true’ because it taps into our innate sense of universal human experience.
“The Eyes are blind. To see things as they are, you have to use your heart.”
–Antoine de Saint-Expery’s ‘Little Prince’
And this kind of truth is not something to be found like a lost penny.
It has to be ‘created’ or, to put it more accurately, it has to be ‘nurtured into existence’.
Got a story to tell? Or purpose to communicate?
Need some friendly advice?
📣 Introducing The MUZA Collective for Bristol & Bath-based Creatives 📣
Did you know the Creative Industries is one of the fastest-growing sectors of the UK economy, contributing over £111 billion every year? That’s almost £13 million every hour! But despite this impressive growth, work in the creative sector can be extremely precarious… especially for freelance creatives.
Sick pay? Holiday pay? Income security? IR35? Taxes? etc.
As part of our fourth-year innovation project at the University of Bristol, my co-founder and I (Harry Ellis) set about changing this narrative. We immersed ourselves in the region’s vibrant creatives communities, collaborated with experts from Nesta, The RSA and Creative UK, and have developed a solution that provides the necessary securities that freelancers typically miss out on. Introducing… The MUZA Collective.
🚀🚀🚀
The MUZA Collective is a social enterprise concept to support Bristol and Bath-based creative freelancers by combining cooperative principles with the protective salaried status provided by a formal employment contract. Importantly, while our freelance members benefit from improved social security, automated tax/insurances and statutory employment rights, our shared enterprise does not sacrifice their autonomy as they are still in control and work on their own terms.
Our unique offerings:
⭐️⭐️⭐️
Sound interesting? Please register your interest today (it’s free, quick & easy!)
In order to move this project from concept to reality, we’d like to invite your support. By expressing your interest today, you can provide us with a valuable proof of desirability, which is vital for the next stage of our project: development!
Please express your interest at: https://www.muzacollective.uk/expression-of-interest (simply your name and email!)
If you have any questions or would like to find out more, don’t hesitate to get in touch!
– Harry and Frankie
JonesMillbank, Bristol-based video production company, went stateside with their content last week, featuring on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert.
Last month they captured the session performances of three tracks – CRAWL!, CAR CRASH and THE NEW SENSATION – at The Barrowland Ballroom, Glasgow.
The subsequent edit of CRAWL! was picked up by The Late Show ahead of IDLES’ appearance at Coachella, part of their US-wide tour, with notice and the recording delivered to CBS the day of the broadcast.
“Our portfolio of work across music has developed somewhat alongside the commanding ascent of IDLES” said Rob French, Senior Creative at JonesMillbank.
“We have collaborated with them for a few years now and have established a relationship built on trust and integrity – key when an artist has a distinctive ownership of their brand.”
“The band brought such a beautiful energy to these sessions, bearing in mind it was mid-tour and in the middle of three sold out shows at The Barrowland Ballroom. We could barely communicate or see the stage, the light and sound was so intense but it was such a privilege to capture such raw energy so intimately.”
You can watch the feature and the session at https://jonesmillbank.com/work/idles/barrowland-sessions, with the releases of CAR CRASH and THE NEW SENSATION coming in the following weeks.
***
JonesMillbank are a passionate full-service video production company
They work exclusively in-house with a talented team of multi-disciplined creatives, all the while telling authentic stories long before it was cool for a range of clients such as University of Bristol, Battersea, The Royal Mint, IDLES and randstad.
jonesmillbank.com
01173706372
[email protected]
Fiasco welcomes new Associate Creative Director, Chris Tozer to the team. With ambitions to grow the agency this year, Chris brings a wealth of experience from working at some of London and Bristol’s top agencies.
“We’re really excited to welcome Chris into the Fiasco team. His wealth of experience in the industry, strong focus on ideas and leadership qualities were what convinced us that Chris would be a great fit for the agency.” – Ben Steers, Co-founder and Creative Director.
Chris adds: “Fiasco hasn’t hired at this level before, which is exciting because it means my role can be shaped quite organically. I’m looking forward to surrounding myself with the best talent out there and being part of an inspiring network of creative minds who collaborate to do great things. It’s that simple really. ” – Chris Tozer, Associate Creative Director.
Fiasco is a brand and digital agency that builds modern brands with heart and spirit. The 18-strong team of creative thinkers and doers work out of their Bristol studio, where they partner with businesses of all sizes, around the world. You can read more about Chris and his journey to Fiasco over on their site, here.
It’s hard to think of a brand subject to as much controversy as BrewDog lately. A recent BBC documentary brought a fresh raft of accusations against the company – off the back of which, it has emerged, boss James Watt hired private investigators to scrutinize former employees. Here, AgencyUK’s Sammy Mansourpour digs into what brands can learn – good and bad – from BrewDog’s stratospheric rise and tumultuous second phase.
There’s only one thing that makes a brand brilliant and that is meaningful difference – meeting consumers’ needs while successfully standing out from the crowd.
Kantar and Millward Brown have been testing this out for over a decade and the numbers are in. Brands with a quantifiable meaningful difference can grow 207% faster than the rest.
Never has this been so brilliantly showcased than by BrewDog, the punk beer brand imploding in front of our eyes. But let’s look beyond James Watt, the sometimes-ridiculed book he wrote and all the reasons why BrewDog is in such a pickle. Let’s look first at what made BrewDog so brilliant.
No one can say building BrewDog was just blind luck. Look at BrewDog’s ability to define itself precisely, then talk about it. The core of its image is ‘punk’. You might think building out an anti-establishment vision based on troublemaking would be easy, but the alcoholic drinks market is highly regulated and getting a foot in the door is expensive. To dodge those rules you need to know them – particularly the ones you intend to break.
To build an establishment-challenging brand, you need mass and movement. BrewDog delivered both in spades. It quickly grew a following into a sizable community.
BrewDog seized on every challenge it faced, using them to talk about how industry titans (and regulators) leveraged legislation, introduced red tape and increased cost. This messaging made the small but growing BrewDog community feel duped and enraged. This galvanized them around the BrewDog brand and started to distance them from other beers.
With social media in hand, Watt (and co-founder Martin Dickie) were able to start a revolution, then get their revolutionaries to pay for it. Their crowdfunding investment gathered millions before private equity got involved and these investors are the same folks buying the beer.
If you read Watt’s book, you’d believe this would never end. But for anyone with a grasp of social media and a flair for stunts, this is where the lesson begins.
Harry McCann famously said that advertising is “truth well told”. But did BrewDog always stick to the truth? Some of its social media marketing has been called out as false or misleading. The promotions team pledged to plant trees for every investor and drinker of Planet Pale Ale. The land they bought reportedly remains empty and an application by BrewDog for a Scottish grant to pay for the trees has now been made public.
And with all the attacks on beer brands and the need to fight the good fight – even blowing up cans of rival products on Facebook Live – it turns out Watt invested in Heineken.
Oh, and did anyone mention the reported non-disclosure of banned additives present in BrewDog beer that may have rendered some shipments illegally imported into the US?
Through all of BrewDog’s punk rule-breaking, no one asked why the rules and regulations existed until they came crashing down around them. If they did, the media gave them little airtime.
No one seemed to adequately explain the reasons behind regulating a market and constraining companies from acting so freely. BrewDog stuck with its belief that the consequences were always minor when compared to the commercial advantages of a breach – until it was no longer possible to keep telling that story.
Building a brand that is meaningfully different is the key to success and that success can only be realized for the long term if you’re not lying about it. So perhaps authenticity is what makes a brand brilliant. But who wants an authentic brand that nobody wants?
Sammy Mansourpour is co-founder and managing director of AgencyUK.
Fiasco Design have partnered with Bristol-based natural wine purveyors Native Vine, to produce a charismatic brand and website that re-imagines the experience of wine selection.
Native Vine champions exciting natural and biodynamic wines, stocking a range of unique, organic and vegan wines from small-scale producers. Specialising in wines from lesser-known regions and independent winemakers, they are passionate about strengthening the connection from vineyard to glass. With ambitious plans, Native Vine approached Fiasco with the challenge to make them more accessible to a wider audience.
The new brand identity builds upon the human stories of the wines, strengthening the connection between winemaker and drinker. It aims to cut through the elitist jargon that traditionally surrounds wine and put the fun back into wine buying.
The wonderful array of colour hues that characterise natural wines is celebrated via a dynamic palette that is broad, vibrant and reflective of a diversity of colours and flavours. The hero font ‘Blazing Sun’ captures the imperfections of organic wines and the hand-crafted feel that carries through the branding. Fiasco customised the font to ensure it fits Native Vine’s international roster by building a full suite of accents. The new logo alongside chunky typography and Matisse-inspired paper-cut graphic shapes, feels characterful, unpretentious and oozing with character.
Through photography, colours of the wine are captured either mid-pour or via reflections of the glass. These images pepper the new site and echo the Native Vine shop interior in terms of light and texture. Including hands in the photography reinforces the real-world experience of enjoying wine and brings the site to life. Online images have a playful hotspot feature, encouraging you to click to reveal more information, akin to Instagram’s shopping functionality; bringing wine buying to a younger, more digitally-minded audience.
An interactive wine finder tool re-imagines the in-store experience for a digital space. The online journey allows the user to discover their ultimate wine match based on colour preference, occasion and food pairing, to create a flavour profile that matches them to 3 bottles with a varying price range.
With most of the wines being from small-scale makers, the titles of the wines have very little weight. So instead, emphasis is placed on customer reviews. These were framed to be like how you might describe a wine to a friend, breaking down any preconceived notions of stuffiness associated with a sommelier.
You can view the project case study here: https://fiasco.design/project/native-vine
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