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”
With 84,000 employees and 32 million customers in 190 countries it is no surprise that this global healthcare brand had a wide variety of fragmented brand communications and needed our help to “clean up” their global on-screen expression and help them present themselves at their best.
We raised the bar creatively to create a coherent on-screen presence that minimises reinterpretation and reinvention. We thought beyond ‘end frames’ to create a cohesive ‘housestyle’ toolkit across all screens that is practical and flexible for all.
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.
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.
A brand loved by many Londoners that needs to communicate across a broad range of consumer touch-points whilst allowing flexibility for partners and sponsors.
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.
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.
With an increase in cyber attacks targeting the Media industry (involving stealing information, broadcast takeover and reputational damage), ITV wanted to raise awareness about the importance of information security.
Our fully integrated internal comms campaign reaching more than 6,000 staff in the UK and across the world provided clear instruction. It delivered the information and actions required to make everyone aware about the potential risks to ITV and its information in an entertaining and memorable way. It demonstrated how they could personally contribute to ITV security and how they could protect their work and ultimately ITV.
A brand strategy re-think and a new communications plan to facilitate the growth of this pioneering offer for real chocolate lovers.
The re-positioning led to a refreshed visual identity across all collateral including packaging, consumer communications and of course the website.
