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What’s best for Bankside

 We don’t often show work that hasn’t won a tender but we were so pleased with our thinking for raising awareness of Bankside that we wanted to share it, with the kind permission of our friends at Better Bankside and their partners. No prizes for second place but hopefully our work impressed a few of the many judges that were there for the presentation at Southwark Cathedral last week.

We were asked by Better Bankside to create a campaign concept that conveyed the ‘Bankside story’ which had been developed to address the lack of awareness of the Bankside name and area, as highlighted in the 2016 Bankside visitor survey. This story had been formulated from research and stakeholder engagement and concluded that it should be built around four key themes that make up the unique character of Bankside. These themes were entitled Cultural, Chaotic, Industrious and Connected.

 

 

We needed to create a campaign that encapsulated Bankside’s unique personality and energy, its world-renowned attractions and history and to tell a story that was consistent for visitors, employees and employers. Bankside also had a much bigger global ambition, on the same scale as ‘I love New York’ and the City of Melbourne’s ‘M’ campaign, which was to create an instantly recognisable concept that reflected the character and personality of the area.

 

 

Our solution was to encapsulate the many different personalities, and huge choice that Bankside offers, with a simple phrase: ‘Discover the many sides of Bankside’.

Our concept allowed us to tell stories from many perspectives, whether historical, contemporary, cultural, industrial, light-hearted, or even dark, all underpinned by a clever use of wordplay. In its most simplistic form we combined imagery and words ending in ‘side’, lifted from the word Bankside, that helped communicate the breadth of stories. Words such as funside, darkside, flipside, dockside, upside, downside, inside, outside, ringside, courtside, broadside, graveside, gave a flavour of the many words that could be used.

 

 

We then interpreted these stories through posters, social media, environmental graphics, anywhere where we felt it would be most visible. We also showed how there was potential to have fun with the concept, whilst being informative for visitors, employees and employers.

 

 

Our research showed that other destination concept campaigns of this nature tended to be driven by structure, rules and familiarity of the materials as a means of creating an instantly recognisable visual language. We felt it was important that our concept was a little more anarchic, representing the energy and versatility of an area that is constantly evolving and adapting.

 

 

Our final proposal was flexible, educational, intellectual and witty. It informed the audience of Bankside’s four core themes, but it also told real, human stories, some of which are the same today as they were 500 years ago. Stories of chaos, culture, industry and connections. And we enjoyed the creative journey and finding out even more about this amazing area we have worked in for the last 17 years!