Rescued from the administrator Deloitte in April 2013, by the capital investment company Hilco, HMV had a huge task on its hands. Despite being a much-loved heritage high street brand, negative perceptions and significant competition required a brand re-think.
We partnered with the new management teams at HMV Retail, HMV Digital and HMV Online to define the umbrella brand philosophy and its relationship to each business.
The brand re-launch titled “home of entertainment since 1921” re-ignited the brand in-store (including way-finding and POS) and online and launched a new digital download offer. The ATL campaign launched in the the UK was subsequently taken up in Ireland and Canada and reminded customers of its core offer.
This re-positioning enabled HMV to capitalise on its USP: physical location. Live events increase footfall by 7.5%. Focusing on this has seen a year-on year rise in sales of 9.2% (Q2/FY14). Physical album sales have increased by 12% compared to the sale of digital albums, which slumped 17% as the download market battles with streaming services such as Spotify.
Another brand made better by The Council, or in Paul McGowan’s words (Chairman, HMV). “This business is flying”
We were briefed to create a name, brand and microsite to target “young career starters”.
We challenged the brief with a bigger solution which BAFTA embraced. We have been retained since since 2010. During this time we have overhauled their brand architecture, their digital engagement strategy and delivered a full suite of clearly named, branded and targeted channels through effective UI and UX design. In the process we have migrated dot org to open CMS, we've increased their brand footprint and developed a full suite of brand guidelines for international affiliates whilst keeping a member and governance board involved and onside with some major communications changes.
Recent projects include the new brand and website for Bafta 195, the social media campaign to launch and promote Bafta Breakthrough Brits in association with Burberry and the internal comms campaign to announce the new building plans to open up and extend Bafta’s flagship premises.
The channel UKTVG2 was virtually invisible. People didn't understand the name and spontaneous awareness was less than 2% and the channel had the highest misattribution of any of the ten UKTV channels.
A brand new name, a new positioning “the home of witty banter” based on consumer insight and a unique identity he first of a ten channel network re-brand, based on detailed consumer research and insight. “The home of witty banter” was born.
IPA gold winner 2008.
67% uplift in reach (Source: BARB)
71% uplift in pay TV (Source: BARB)
£4.5m additional profit in 6 months (or £3 return for every £1 invested in marketing)
With a new ownership structure and a new development strategy it was time for this award-winning television production company to upgrade its outdated visual identity to a brand.
Not just a new logo, but a brand. A brand that tells the betty story clearly and consistently. With a great set of values that are used not just as the benchmark for great story-telling, but also as a framework for recruiting, rewarding, and recognising staff contributions and delivering stand-out amongst their competitors both on-screen and on the desk of commissioning editors!
To refresh the off-air campaign brand and re-design the press and digital templates for BBC Worldwide’s Lifestyle channel broadcast across Europe, South Africa and Asia.
Our challenge was to find a level of regional harmony in the design whilst ensuring local appeal. This was of particular importance because the programming mix and local tastes are different, production capability varies, but the need for brand consistency was absolute.
Our approach involved a high degree of consultation with the regional teams and immersing ourselves with their particular challenges. This ensured all design templates, guides, press and digital applications met both regional and global needs.
We had just 8 weeks to get this brand new national Indian entertainment channel (owned by STAR India) on-air.
A graphic device enabling promotion of ITV network family
With a new corporate brand and a positively perceived new channel identity for itv, it was time to leverage the brand across the wider ITV family.
An elegant graphic device which houses content can promote the week, the channels, the platforms to inform and retain viewers within the ITV network.
The world’s biggest female entertainment channel was coming to the UK. Already present in most countries around the world, the brand had little or no awareness in the UK. Whilst the logo was being imported, the new on-screen identity had to bring relevance and pertinence to the UK audience.
Our ‘triptych’ creative concept ensured the highly visible content was anchored in and around the signature logotype, which itself became a playful, spontaneous agent provocateur within the identity.
With the loss of the 2016 Olympics to a rival broadcaster, we believed Yle needed to unite their individual sports programming under a single brand brand driving credit back to this respected Finnish public service broadcaster.
We worked with many stakeholders across the organisation and the in-house teams at Yle, both creative and programming to create the umbrella “Urheilu” multi-platform brand endorsed by Yle.
The global brand had been “diluted” over several years of “local” ownership. A re-think was required to ensure global consistency to drive credit back to the master brand.
A simple but elegant typographic solution provided a framework for “localisation” whilst building brand consistency. This initially European solution was taken up globally and the single toolkit worked across 28 languages. On air idents, an off-air campaign and comprehensive global brand guidelines were also delivered.
Conceived by James Patterson, author of more than 350 million book sales, Bookshots meets the modern reader’s desire for shorter-length ‘shots’ of action-packed entertainment that fit in with their busy lives, by offering them great stories in a more concise format. An entirely new way of reading.
BookShots is a truly revolutionary idea: potentially the greatest innovation in publishing since the mass-market paperback. With attention and time in decline and technology racing ahead of human behavior, the BookShots brand needed to capture this very essence and place the reader at the centre of this 21st century conundrum wherever, whenever and however they wanted to read.
Funded by four of the UK’s leading publishers including Penguin Random House and Harper Collins the objective of this consumer brand was to move Amazon book purchasers to a more trusted peer-endorsed supplier.
Using the book-club strategy, the functionality of this brand provided book-lovers with topics and groups of like-minded people to ensure any recommendations were real, valuable and not an algorithmic nuisance.
A “tired” TV shopping channel lost on the French EPG needed a complete makeover.
A new name and a new positioning which reflected the new product strategy targeting a more up-market, youthful demographic was our starting point. The end goal being a multi-platform shopping destination integrating complex sales data to new live streamed graphic information system across TV, web and mobile. Not forgetting a re-launch campaign.
Common with almost all European public service broadcasters is the aging audience profile and the reduction in relevance to the younger consumer. The primary objective of this brand repositioning was to address this issue.
Over a twelve month period, we worked collaboratively with Yle News, Yle Marketing and the in-house production teams to re-invigorate the news identity and revolutionise the presentation style and tonality of all bulletins. With 400 daily news bulletins in 7 languages across TV and radio, you begin to realise the scale and complexity of this project.
The result was a re-launch that generated significant earnt media coverage, trending on twitter during and garnering its own hash tag conversation.
With most M&A’s come brand hierarchy problems. This was no exception with RLJ Entertainment’s (itself A subsidiary of RLJ Inc.) acquisition of Acorn Productions, the proud owner of some of the world’s best known content brands including Agatha Christie.
With the 125th anniversary of Agatha Christies birth in 2015, it was time to solve the brand endorsement problems and create a new hierarchy for the organisation. With a multitude of stakeholders both UK and US, a broad range of products: B2B; TV end-boards; online; print; DVD and merchandise in different languages, a simple and elegant solution was required.
We worked with Star to bring a breath of fresh air to their Bengali general entertainment channel Star Jalsha.
Positioned as “Chalo paltai” meaning “Let’s make a change” , we brought an optimistic injection of gloss, glamour and excitement to the channel identity.
