BAA

BAA carshare

Our work on the BAA Carshare initiative has won recognition from the Association of Commuter Transport as a benchmark example of how to market a Carshare programme. It was awarded the top prize in its annual round-up of best practice. It's not just theory, registrations are well ahead of target and BAA's programme is now the most successful of its type in Europe.

Our contribution started with an identifying mark that encapsulated the idea of sharing. The key device has been used to brand the scheme in a variety of media from key fobs to reserved car parking spaces.



A series of 48 sheet posters in staff car parks launched the campaign.



DL leaflets extending the sharing theme were available as take-one's and mailed out to employees and the wider airport community.

A2 and A3 posters reinforced the message in staff areas around the airports and alongside ads in 'house' magazines, helped to tackle common misconceptions.

This poster, for example, using a pastiche of typical car bumper-sticker humour, helped make a serious point about participation.



Early success could be measured by the increasing number of empty parking spaces and by the number of registrations which now number more than 2,ooo.





BAA Uni

We developed the original identity for BAA's Virtual University and two year's on were invited back to refresh the site to reflect developments within the Uni programme. This is one of half a dozen lateral thinking puzzles that featured on the homepage of the relaunched site.

CitySounds

A new identity for CitySounds and after 26 years it's still vinyl. That's a long haul for any business and City's has lived through good times and bad. But there can be few in the music business that are having a brilliant time right at the moment with illegal downloading representing such a significant proportion of music consumption. Even an established independent like City Sounds - which regards itself as the home of House and Garage - will be concerned as CD continues to replaces vinyl on DJ's decks, and analogue's last bastion gives way to digital.

Chevron

Chevron UK's first environmental report was an integral part of the documentation in support of their best practice policies for exploration in the North Sea and an important part of any applications for new licenses to explore and develop resources. We were given the job of taking information from a variety of expert sources and marshalling the arguments into a format that even the layman would understand.

Lighten Up

A logo for a television lighting company. In this digital age an aerial may be something of an anachronism but it still provides a strong visual mnemonic for TV. Swapping the bulb's element for an aerial was too good an opportunity to miss.

Herts TEC

An identifying mark for Hertfordshire Training & Enterprise Council that captured something of the spirit of rejuvenation it aimed to bring to businesses in the area. Apart from a basic range of stationery elements we also produced templates for regular newsheets and the first annual report following rebranding. I remember that our preferred choice for cover treatment shown below was rejected because many felt that it harked back to a bygone age of heavy industry and engineering - something Hertforshire hadn't seen in a while.



Instead something rather more prosaic was chosen with the numerals of the previous year cast in the shadow of the current one.

Convergence

Headed up by the same people that brought us Lara Croft, Convergence was intended as a melting pot for investment in new and convergent technologies.

We were involved in giving this company a visual presence in anticipation of a market listing which turned out to be one of the more successful at the time.

Sainsbury's

Having decimated the independent bakery business in the 70's, the multiples only had themselves to blame when they found themselves without enough bakers to go around. Sainsbury's invited us to help them attract school leavers and career changers into the bakery business. This slim volume was part of a larger campaign to help them achieve just that. It pulled no punches in setting out the downsides as well as the varied options open to trainee bakers within the Sainsbury's stores.

Vauxhall Motors

Our work for Vauxhall goes back to The Fine White Line - then a part of Collett Dickenson Pearce and Partners (CDP). We worked with Mel Nichols to produce a wide range of marketing material for the car manufacturer. Shown here are a few pieces that give a flavour of a much larger body of work.


Traffic

Traffic was a monthly newspaper designed to be an honest, warts-and-all, portrait of the organisation and the markets it operated in. It's distribution coincided with the monthly SMMT figures (sales to you and me) - so punctuality was important. It replaced a full colour 'glossy' that lacked editorial credibility - sales were always soaring and it seemed to occupy a world in which no other car manufacturer existed.





By contrast Traffic told 'home truths' gave useful information back to the dealerships and encouraged a two way dialogue. Its success can be measured in part by feedback that resulted in a doubling in the print run due to dealer demand.


'Lifting the lid' and 'Driving with style'

'Lifting the lid' and 'Driving with style' were advertorial pieces that piggybacked appropriate host magazines. They successfully built footfall in dealerships and resulted in significant increases in requests for test drives.





The magazines were further supported by a kit of parts designed to help the dealerships maximise the media potential generated by the core piece.




The Paint Plant - Ellesmere Port

The final piece shown here was a brochure promoting what was, at the time, a brand new paint plant at Ellesmere Port. It was used as a promotional piece for visitors to the plant and as part of a body of communications material for use in the local community.

Transport for London

The Tate by Tube

Something of a milestone in poster advertising for London Underground. This poster has received numerous accolades both in the UK and internationally. Shortly after its release in 1988 it was nominated as one of the ten best posters in the world and subsequently earned a place in Campaign's top 100 posters of the 20th century. When I recall working on the poster with David Booth and Siobhan Noonan all those years ago, I remember it as a modest brief from London Underground with equally modest aspirations; something decorative to cover up the empty advertising spaces on the Underground. Fortunately, the small scale of a project has no bearing on its enduring value and more recently it was particularly gratifying to see it included as part of REWIND, a celebration of 40 years of D&AD.

See also the entry from Latest news: Dark Art, True Colours.

McDonald's

A brochure that attempts to capture the spirit of what being a McDonald's franchisee is all about.

What does it take to be a successful McDonald's franchise? This booklet attempts to set out the pitfalls and benefits using the direct experience of recent franchisees. In the process it underpins McDonalds core values and shows how the most successful franchisees have benefited from strong ties with the local communities in which they operate, have an unexpected degree of autonomy in managing their businesses and receive continuous support in achieving their goals. Library shots from McDonald's archive were joined by original photography of franchisees set alongside a narrative telling their story.

Scottish & Newcastle

Becks

Award winning press and poster advertising for this famous Bremen brew. These Becks Bier ads, for Scottish & Newcastle, first appeared in 1986 in a larger-than-broadsheet magazine called 'Manipulator'. They also featured in a number of other fashion and style magazines and caused something of a stir both here and in Germany - a country that wasn't even on the media schedule. Having made it into the D&AD annual that year, they enjoyed a brief reprise at the beginning of 2003 in REWIND at the V&A - a celebration of 40 years of D&AD. Not surprisingly we've included the book of the same name on our bookshelf.

IBM

Made to measure

Graduate recruitment is more often than not handled by specialist agencies. Nothing wrong with that, you might say, but IBM decided that it would be interesting to see what a bunch of generalists who specialised in nothing more than compelling storytelling might make of things. While we had no prior experience in recruitment, we had already cut our teeth on a wide variety of other projects for IBM through a central communications department based in Basingstoke; so it wasn't a risky decision for HR in Portsmouth. On the other hand, the suggestion that they replace a brochure filled with black and white pictures of computers with one that didn't include any, was bound to raise the odd eyebrow. However, it did more than that and was voted by the undergraduates that year as the best of the year's crop of graduate recruitment literature. It also impressed Abbey National and British Aerospace who invited us to work on their recruitment programmes in subsequent years.





Training to be Top

When we were brought in to help with the promotion of IBM's training courses they were at a low ebb. Widely viewed as a cost centre, there was a distinct danger that unless the courses started to 'wash their face' they would be cut. We proposed treating them much more obviously as a perishable product - if seats weren't sold by the due date then it was more than a learning opportunity lost. The once a year catalogue was replaced by a year round programme of direct mail - clustered courses being actively promoted within an eight week window before the course date. This allowed sufficient time for internal assessment of the need, candidate selection and budget approval. It also meant that general awareness was much improved.

The look and language was completely overhauled - out went a rather drab maroon folder, in came these beautifully illustrated course flyers. A fabulous bestiary thematically linked to each topic. Talking parrots adorned the cover of a course on 'Telephone Skills', cat and mouse illustrated a session on 'Building Better Relationships' and a peacock showed off 'Presentation Skills'. My personal favourite was the dog chasing his tail to illustrate a course on 'Time Management'.

The effect was startling. Take up improved dramatically and although designed specifically for the UK market, the package was adopted by France and Germany. I'm not sure our idiomatic approach crossed these cultural borders but the unusually colourful designs seemed to overcome any possible shortcomings.




Plan for Life

Plan for Life was developed as an extension to IBM's occupational health programme. We helped package and promote the service to IBM's employees through posters and brochures initially aimed at explaining the new scheme and what it's adoption would mean for everyone.

The heart of the publishing element was a comprehensive health manual written in two gender specific versions. Each contained individual diagnostic reports alongside generic information covering a wide range of health related issues. This was designed to be given to employees as part of their medical check-up.

A significant part of the project was creating a consistent narrative and common signposting from the various drafts written by different medical experts.

In addition we created an initial raft of 35 leaflets freely available though the healthcentres.

All the material picked up on water - a universal symbol of life - as a connecting theme.

Historic Royal Palaces

The Crown Jewels

A souvenir guide for Historic Royal Palaces, printed in six european languages. It was also printed in Japanese and, of course, the Queen's English.

21 nights spent down in the vaults of the Tower of London is not easily forgotten. Shooting the Crown Jewels for the first time in 26 years was definitely exciting and made more so by a tight schedule geared around the imminent move to a new jewel house. Such priceless props could only be touched by David Thomas: the Crown Jeweller. This added an extra pressure to events. Much time was spent saying, "left a bit, left a bit, right a bit...." when all one really wanted to do was pick up the crown and move it.

Still, in spite of all precautions, the Koh-i-Noor nearly came a cropper - a story for another time.

David Chalmers and his 10 x 8 plate camera captured all the pieces at their very best in spite of the constraints of time and space. The end result was a beautiful 52 page book that sold significantly better than its predecessor in spite of several raises in cover price.

BAE SYSTEMS

The Chairman's Awards for Innovation

BAE Systems' Chairman's Awards for Innovation is a peer group recognition scheme. We developed a year round campaign to market the initiative to employees worlwide. It was based around a call for innovative thinking. This took the form of posters posing a problem that were answered, by another poster, the following month. Alongside the answers was a listing of that month's nominations.

It's a rolling programme that nevertheless calls 'time-out' once a year to celebrate that year's achievements. We produced the souvenir guide for the event which also incorporated everything one needed to participate in the coming twelve months. Well almost everything - you still needed the brilliant idea.

RHM Granary

Brand development for the UK's leading brand of malted wheatgerm bread.

Many years ago we took Granary from this sorry and neglected state:



to this:



Apart from a significant and sustained hike in sales, RHM won an award for 'Best Brand Repositioning' that year.