Jo and Rachel

Online brand engagement. If there’s one thing that excites us most about this, it’s the idea of creating a game. 

Why? Well, it’s a rare chance to incorporate 3 major incentives – prizes, information and fun. As a result, there’s a lot more you can give to the audience through a game. They get more from it and you can get more from them. Everyone wins, so to speak.

It’s also incredibly mouldable to a specific brand. You can really craft which features to emphasise and which messages to relate so the game is doing exactly what you need it to. Such a bespoke asset means it’s extremely ownable. No matter what, it’s yours, it hasn’t been done before and it can’t be imitated. There’s no such thing as a stock game.

But there are certainly a few games out there that justify our lust for online brand games. For one there’s Adidas’ ‘#FASTORFAIL’. It’s fun, it expresses the brand’s message and there’s a chance to win a poignant prize. Plus it demonstrates the other thing we love about games. They can work to link multiple online channels. With an epic video to explain the game, the hashtag to spark social media conversations and endless material for eye-grabbing ads, this hits a flock of birds with one football.

Today an article caught our eye in the Guardian (I know) about the growing phenomenon of wackaging. Basically, a lot of people are getting pissed off with the attempts of brands to sound friendly, casual or ‘engaging’. Why? Because in general, this can read as babyish, patronising or irritating.

We get it. We were initially reluctant to create a ‘memorable’ tone of voice for our own brand. So many other creative teams come up with a wacky tone of voice to show how out-there and quirky they are. But in reality, it comes across as sickly or desperate. And definitely not original – there are thousands of teams who do this.

But then what’s the alternative? To sound dull or copy-and-pasted? I have to wonder if the fact that this language has lodged so well under some people’s skin, is a sign. A sign that the language is memorable. It’s made an impact. For some, it’s touched a nerve, but for others it must have left a positive mark. It’s a little different, an added extra of the product to experience.

‘I love it in the fridge’ might grate some, but at least it's different. It says something about who the brand is, what they stand for and how they want you to feel using it. ‘Keep refrigerated’ may be a missed opportunity.

Honestly, I don’t think it’s the messaging that’s the problem. It’s the jumping on the bandwagon. We feel like we’ve seen it all before and brands are just copycatting (namely from Innocent). Of course monotony does get tiring. But there should be an easy way to navigate this. Come up with something new. A medium between functional and characterful.  

This at least is what we’ve tried to put into practice. We didn’t want to go all out and copy the tactics of other creative teams. Often those extensive personas can detract from the overall purpose and message. So instead, we’ve focused on the points we want to convey and added the isms of our speech patterns and humour.

The result? Something that’s fresh and memorable. A halfway point between clinical and eccentric. Maybe the world of packaging could do with a pinch of the same.

Weigh it up for yourself: 

  It’s rather timely that one of us is moving into a new flat just as Dulux are championing their magnificent spot "Colour Prohibition" by BBH London. Regardless of the fact that my interest in wall paint has been slightly heightened anyway, I've enjoyed it every time I've happened to catch it on the telly, seduced by its epic, cinematic experience. Which made me think what a wonderful consumer brand Dulux is.

50 years of their iconic canine mascot, a super slick website and a highly successful, philanthropic "Let's Colour" program all contribute to its superior position among its competitors. Plus, the current commercial cements an underlying message that colour really can change lives. 

Which, after I've rectified the previous owner of my flat's decision to paint the kitchen a horrific shade of pea green, I reckon I'll begin to understand even better...

These illustrations really caught our eye. Yes, they focus on negative, depressing thoughts, but there's something uplifting in seeing these thoughts drawn out. It's a comforting reminder that everyone feels down sometimes and we're not alone. 

Such thoughtful and dainty little drawings still managed to put a smile on our faces. They've made the complex and heavy look clearer and less scary or taboo.

Well done imightbedeadtomorrow.tumblr.com Very well done.

Ah! St Paddy’s Day – an excuse to have a pint of Guinness at any hour of the day.

Inspired by the celebration of the Gaelic spirit, we thought we’d share our admiration of a thoroughly Irish brand.

Paddy Power – epitomising not only a National pass-time, but a National personality. It’s cheeky, risky and totally loveable. 

This is a brand that puts itself out there. It literally embodies an Irish lad you’d meet in a pub who says what everyone else is thinking, occasionally puts his foot in it, but is still like a funnily addictive car crash to watch.

Yes, it gets in trouble, but it certainly grabs attention and appeals to the risk-taking attitude of their audience.

From a Jesus look-alike in Italy to a vet tranquillising chavs at Cheltenham and even sending four chubby middle-aged men around London in nappies, they are pretty much always in the news.

Ok, we’ll admit we think this would be insane fun to work on. BUT, honestly there’s more to it than that. There is genius behind these antics.

Their real focus is on driving online betting, so creating consistently shareable content goes hand-in-hand with encouraging a quick whim on your mobile.

All this attention directs you to their crammed social media channels and regularly updated blog. Everything is conversational, laddish and seemingly amateur. It’s become a funny friend their audience will want to check in with regularly, and hey, while they’re there, they’ll probably have a quick bet too.

With a 3.5 million surge in online profits last year, it’s pretty clear luck has nothing to do with it.

Business spiel and buzzwords - do they have a place or do they just create confusion?

Leverage. Actionable. Level playing field. Deliverables. Buy-in. Bleeding edge. Scalable. Attitudinally. Demassification. Reconceptualise. The list is endless and growing everyday, but to be honest, it gives us a headache just thinking about them.

People tend to fall back on specific buzzwords and corporate phrases as a way of summing up a complex thought, but in reality when these sayings become so over-used, their original meaning can become lost. Do people think using them makes them sound more in the know than everyone else? Because really, it has the opposite effect - no one knows what they’re talking about.

Why not just use your own words? Be original and explain thoughts in your own terms - you’ll come across more clearly and far more articulate than stealing someone else’s bad idea from years ago. Explaining a complex process in layman’s terms is harder, but it will make you sound like you genuinely know your stuff. 

But does jargon ever have its place? There’s an argument that it’s easier to refer to something with industry jargon. Doesn’t everyone in the market know all of these buzzwords anyway? Can it be seen as part of a business language – a short hand?

Well, while industry insiders may well know what you’re referring to, you’re excluding anyone new and portraying yourself as narrow-minded. And it may be worth thinking carefully about how much longer it would actually take you to put something in your own words – the chances are it’s not as exhausting as you might think. It’s also refreshingly different. To read a piece of information that’s been put into natural, conversational language makes it more enjoyable to read.

A wee while back #DominoesMeltdown was trending on Twitter. What’s this about, we thought? And so there went an afternoon. We were hooked. Dominoes produced a fantastic interactive digital campaign that was, frankly, mesmorising.

It involved an ice sculpture delivery man holding a pizza. The more tweets the hashtag received, the hotter the sculpture got, until finally the hands melted and the pizza dropped. Audiences were asked to guess the time of the drop to win a year’s supply of pizza.

The way the campaign flowed across all channels meant that we were forced to trawl further into their funny and captivating Facebook page, Youtube channel and even Spotify playlists.

Thus a major brand crush developed. This is one pizza company that has seriously got their online presence game together. Entertaining, engaging and encouraging mass conversation all at the same time with a consistent personality and voice.

Are colours more powerful than we think? What does a colour convey about a brand and why is blue the most common colour for brands?

If you ask any level-headed, average Joe, they’re likely to tell you that colours are just colours and reading into them too much is akin to other make-believe gobbledygook like star signs or crystal therapy. But if you pay more attention to the colours brands choose, you’ll become aware of patterns - specific types of brands repeatedly go for the same colours. If huge corporations are paying so much close attention to what colours they use, then there must be something in it, right?

Apparently there is more to colours than purely meets the eye – your body can have a physical reaction to a colour and make you respond as a result. People are more relaxed in green rooms. Weightlifters perform better in blue rooms. Sports teams often paint the locker room of the opposing team pink, to make them lose energy.

So how can brands use the effects of specific colours to their advantage?Have you ever noticed how popular blue is before? Financial sectors, media companies, legal firms, health and wellness industries, travel companies, even social media…there’s barely a corner of business that blue doesn’t touch. But why is it so widely used?

Firstly, blue is a popular choice because it is perceived neutrally across a multitude of cultures. Physiologically, blue is calming as it slows the pulse rate and reduces appetite. Too much blue can encourage boredom or suggest a rigid outlook, but this can work well for conservative corporate businesses where trust, dependability and honesty are important.

Now, we could go through the entire spectrum of colours and systematically point out which colours should be used for all types of brands, but we’re not going to. The thing is, we’re really quite sick of seeing the same types of brands confining themselves to the same look. While it’s all very well that colours can produce a desired reaction in your target audience, standing out from the crowd can provide a much more powerful reaction.

We think the most memorable and impactful brands of today take risks. With the ever-increasing use of mobile digital devices, you’re having to compete against a constant blur of millions of other messages. So you need to make sure you have an appealing voice by staying relevant, having a sense of humour and demonstrating the human side of your business.

Maths has definite answers. Science has definite answers. Even Geography has definite answers. But design? There is no right or wrong – all we have are opinions. Everything we do is geared toward achieving the right reactions from the people we’re working for. And what appeals to one of our clients, you could put money on being a turn off for another.

Of course you could argue that we don’t just judge design on opinions, we judge it on how effective it is and ultimately how much money it can make. But it’s easy to get caught up in numbers and forget what powers them. Getting the right reactions from people is what makes design effective. If you want numbers to move, you need people to act, and they’ll act on their opinions.

So seeing as so much of our work hinges on opinions, it got us thinking…what exactly are opinions and what is it that makes us all form them so distinctly and differently from each other?

Apparently, psychologists say that an opinion is a learned tendency to evaluate things in a certain way. Often, it can feel like a gut instinct as to whether we like or dislike something. For example, the taste of coffee. Like. The smell of incense. Dislike. But while it seems it’s just part of my DNA to have these reactions, it’s not. Instead, all opinions are learned as a direct result of an experience. This can either be from personal experience or from observation.

So we could learn from positive or negative association. I might like the taste of coffee because I’ve learned to associate it with feeling re-energised and I might dislike incense because I associate it with funerals.