Everything’s Rosie
Rosie has just joined our account management team, bringing with her experience of integrated campaign planning and delivery, across print, digital, video and social.
After completing her History degree in Bristol in 2014, Rosie embarked upon her first role in a marketing agency, where she quickly found herself successfully delivering regional and global campaigns for a range of blue chip tech clients.
Account management is the perfect fit for her, as someone who loves to organise, plan and strategise: working with the team to devise creative solutions to all manner of client problems.
Consistent Brand V Boring Brand
As a branding agency we both create and apply brand guidelines on a regular basis. So we fully understand their value (when done well) in creating consistency and ease of use for implementation, as well as their perceived shortcomings (when done badly) when restricting creativity, flexibility and freedom of expression.
Whenever we generate guidelines for brands we have created at tothepoint we check their appropriateness by asking the following simple questions:
- Are they easy to use and apply?
- Do they establish a set of clear, concise rules, values and, when required, ‘templates’ that facilitate consistency to ensure a look of professionalism is achieved across all touchpoints?
- Are we providing enough tools/elements (a graphic toolkit) that enable a degree of creative freedom in order to stimulate the designer who has to apply them and more importantly to prevent the brand from looking bland and dated too quickly?
Gone are the days when large corporations would have created printed brand bibles that were as thick as a breeze block, which in reality could often have been distilled down to 20 to 30 key pages. Although we still receive thud factor guidelines for brands we have been asked to generate materials for, they are in the minority. Today’s guidelines need to be lean, to the point (no pun intended) and accessible for the users and the client. They also need to demonstrate their effectiveness, value for money and flexibility for the brand so they can evolve with the fast paced changes that are now so much part of our everyday life.
We often use the phrase ‘brand personality’ as a means of conveying the consistent ‘look and feel’ that should be achieved across all touchpoints by using brand guidelines – from print and digital to workspace environments and even how staff should engage with customers and colleagues. To see a couple of overviews of brand guidelines and materials we produced for identities we’ve created click on the links below:
Tony Cragg at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park
Our intrepid northern explorer James repeated his annual visit to the Yorkshire Sculpture Park, this time to see the UK’s biggest exhibition of works by leading sculptor Tony Cragg.
Mind-boggling objects wrestled from wood, bronze and stone are used to mimic natural forms and almost human-like shapes. They range from a few feet across to several metres high. Walking around from room to room (and outside) it’s hard not to be impressed, not only by Tony Cragg’s imagination but also the range of techniques. You can’t help but think ‘how does he do it?’
It’s not until you see Cragg’s working models and sketches that you realise how you thought this was all done was probably wrong. .. or is it? The exhibition manages to give just enough away to continue the intrigue without revealing any of the artist’s secrets.
Sage Summit UK
This month Simon followed up his interview with Sage CEO Stephen Kelly by visiting the Sage Summit UK held at ExCel London.He wanted to get a deeper understanding of the brand, their people and this key event in their diary as tothepoint has been in discussions about helping with the interior branding of some of their offices. It was also a chance to find out a bit more about their products, especially as this year we’ve changed over to use Sage One for our accounts. He certainly ‘enjoyed the conversations’ with the sales team who showed how he could keep an eye on his accounts while mobile. This was only topped by the excellent keynote speeches, including an inspiring talk by Kelly Hoppen on her career and diversity.
Tom
Last month we wrote about how our MD’s son Tom Hutton was going to run the Paris Marathon with a small team of friends on the 9th of April, just 9 months after a serious cycling accident…
Well, he finished with a personal best time of just under 3hrs 40 minutes and to date the team have raised over £1,750 plus gift aid… not bad considering the target was £1,000. Thanks to everyone who donated and supported but if you haven’t and would still like to help them hit £2k+ for their chosen charity then the giving page is still here at: uk.virginmoneygiving.com/team/LondonParisians2017.
As a reminder, he and his friends are raising money for the Essex and Hertfordshire Air Ambulance, who scooped him up and helped to save his life. As an emergency service that is not funded by the government, they rely on public donations to keep helping those in need.
Veg Patch
So this months #ttptryit is still in its early stages but the frost isn’t helping!
MD Simon’s old veg patch was crumbling and rotting the neighbours fence…#ttptryit to the rescue…with some help lifting 9 x 2.4metre sleepers he’s created a two tier patch ready for this years attempt at organic vegetables. We’re hoping for an invite to the BBQ to sample his efforts – he’s no Titchmarsh but we will keep you posted on his progress in future updates.