Don’t make Chop mad – he’ll only turn green!

Part male model, part environmentalist, part man-child, Steven (Chopper) Barnes is a complex mixture of raw emotion and rock-solid dependability; and if you believe that lot, you’re no closer to understanding the complex make-up of one of Idealogy’s most popular, sensitive and hard working recruits – a character who embodies the spirit of this business’s customer experience and it’s responsibilities to not leaving behind a mess for others to clean up.

But for someone who harbours a (not so) secret desire to be a Transformer, Steve won’t change his unique approach to his role as Production and Traffic Assistant at Idealogy. If a project needs to ‘get out the door’ and there’s enough daylight left, it will get done. And if he has some new environmental targets to meet in his guise as Captain Planet, he’ll find innovative and compliant ways to tick all the boxes. And then there’s the modelling…….

He’s been the subject of countless photo shoots for some of our key B2B clients. The ladies say it’s his eyes. The guys suggest it’s because he’s cheap. Either way, his face has appeared on any number of campaigns for serious businesses and it hasn’t done the campaign response levels any harm. So, we’ll keep sticking him in fluorescent jackets, site helmets and rough weather gear to get the shot – unless of course he objects. Or he protests, “That’s not my best side”. But then we’ll just do it anyway!

This is a picture of a man who loves his work, quite likes a few of the people he works alongside, laughs even when the situation demands tears, and who lists music, film, playing the guitar, cycling and Star Wars as his main interests. And when we say film, we mean the real stuff – Steve is a Producer for two local Film companies one called Amber Pictures the other Steeple Productions, both have some heavyweight horror movies in their portfolio, and some interesting celebrities amongst their cast lists. They’ve even had screenings at the Cannes Film Festival.

So, Steve isn’t a person who does things by halves. His interests, like his work, get his full commitment, and to suggest otherwise would only make him mad. You see, with that kind of drive, it’s not easy being green!



Posted by Idealogy

Green Idealogy given a boost

The slightly better news for Mother Nature is that desire and virtue are no longer at odds in our minds. That said, the bandwagon effect of ethical consumerism on marketers is plain to be seen. It's obvious that ethics is affecting our culture - showing we care has become highly appealing as well as fashionable and brands ignore this at their peril. The problem is that not all embrace it fully. The resulting effect is higher prices, too much ethical noise and little substance to support it. This means that consumers get bored, feel patronised, stop listening and eventually stop buying. This is bad news for Mother Nature.

Along came New Earth, who not only have a very grown up and contemporary view of all things ethical, but also have managed to join profit and principles at the hip. Eco warrior Bill Riddle and investment guru Mark Scobie have invented a completely unique business model and radical brand architecture to go with it. Where have you seen waste treatment through composting (New Earth Solutions), the recovery of energy from waste (New Earth Energy) and an investment fund wrapped up by one brand?

These very clever boys have a very powerful proposition - so simple it hurts. Revenue stream 1: Local authorities pay to have waste biodegraded through very smart composting chemistry and technology. Revenue stream 2: the bi-product happens to be a really good fossil fuel substitute, but there's a problem; to enable the conversion of waste-derived fuel into renewable energy you need a power plant in the first place!...and these plants are capital intensive a pop so Bill and Mark have set up an investment fund so they can do just that – build their own - and they've already predicted a return of 12%-16% on the investment.

Don't you just wish you'd thought of that!

As brand consultants on the Investment side, we are very privileged to be advising on and producing collateral for the launch of the Eclipse and Premier funds. This is a great addition to our green credentials, already strong with Biottle, a bio-degradable and crushable 500ml water bottle, already attracting interest from some very big and scary brands. Right on.

Posted by James Surridge

This time it's personal

Flash is great. It's come a long way since it was first released as piece of vector animation software over 10 years ago. It's still great FOR animation - probably the best, but now developers are using it to build whole applications for on-line use.

When The National Skills Academy asked Idealogy to develop a way of NSA website users being able to customise and save personalised versions of their 'Smiles-Of-Britain' campaign logo then we knew Flash would be the right tool for the job.



A mini Photoshop would have been near impossible for on-line use only a couple of years ago - but not now - we could be prototyping the functionality within a couple of days - the hardest part was deciding what functionality we needed; what was logical and what was feasible for the application to run efficiently as a web application.

We decided upon giving the users the ability to choose from a selection of 'Smiles' logos to which they could draw on with a pencil tool. They would be able to choose from a range of colours and change the stroke width of the pencil too. We added an eraser and an undo function as well as having the ability to completely clear the canvas and start again.

So it was all very well being able to scribble away, but to give the option for greater personalisation we decided to include an upload facility, enabling the user to upload a picture of their own into the application - they could then scale, skew, rotate and re-position it to their hearts content and to cap it all off they could enter a line of text to the logo which could also be positioned where they pleased.

So there were three parts to this application in reality: the User Interface - Flash took care of that, the functionality and interactivity - Flash took care of that too and the storage of a users brand new logo creation - after all, it would be no good creating a logo if you couldn't use it! So every logo created would need to be saved as a JPEG in a database of users, that way you could always load your logo back into the application and change or update at a later date.

So there you have it, a neat little application that would have been pretty unfeasible a few years ago made very real today.

Next?

Posted by Paul Skinner

Great customer service starts with a smile

This summer is set to be the UK’s biggest ‘staycation’ ever (Yes! That’s a real word – just look it up on Wikipedia) as the British public resolve to spend their summer holidays on home soil. So the National Skills Academy for Hospitality is launching a campaign to celebrate the very best of British hospitality.

The Smiles of Britain campaign encourages members of the public to be on the lookout for the nation’s warmest and most welcoming smiles on the faces of people working in the Hospitality industry. And, when they see one, to snap a picture and share it on the Academy’s campaign website (www.smilesofbritain.co.uk)

But as well as helping to highlight Britain at its hospitable best, there is also a serious commercial message underpinning the campaign. As David McHattie, chief executive of the National Skills Academy for Hospitality, explains:

“The role of the Academy is to seek out the very best training, development and education programmes in hospitality, to recognise and celebrate that excellence, and to lay down the gauntlet for the whole industry to follow their lead.

“As part of this process we want to shine a light on those in our sector who are leading the way in customer service.”

Idealogy worked hard and fast with the NSA Hospitality team to achieve almost unprecedented deadlines, in order to get the campaign – a combination of ‘YouTube’-esque web site, social networking, personalisation tools and powerful merchandising – launched and active by late May 2009.

Idealogy developed the Smiles of Britain website as a navigational addition to the current National Skills Academy website, as well as encouraging all Smilers to visit though the more conventional URL. And the response has been extraordinary, with an almost ‘word of mouth’ fervour attracting thousands of unique visitors, and of course Smilers, during the month after launch, supported by a moderate social network prompting program via Twitter. However, this was more judgement than luck because the web environment was designed to provide a ‘social networking’ ambience for new talent within the Hospitality industries – a place to share views, images and other content with like-minded colleagues.

In addition, Idealogy developed a “Draw a Smile’ personalisation tool, to encourage members of the network to create more individual images, rather than de rigeur Facebook style snaps, and to reproduce them for their working environments, common areas and homes.

Additional campaign elements included lapel badges, branded balloons, T-shirts and campaign cards.

Visit either www.excellencefound.co.uk/Smiles-Of-Britain or www.smilesofbritain.co.uk to see what’s putting a smile on the face of customer service across the UK.

Posted by Simon Johnson

Calling all Project Managers!

We are looking for a confident, hard working project manager to work with us on a strong portfolio of digital projects. On top of good PM skills, a good all round knowledge and experience of the Internet is essential; with basic HTML experience a plus...interested? Then find out more here


Posted by Idealogy

A Leap of Faith

The Lifetime Leap - An evolution of the Lifetime HF brand to widen its appeal



For the past year, Idealogy has worked alongside Lifetime HF, one of the UK’s fasting growing training consultancies for the leisure industry. Founded in Bristol in 1995 by Heather Frankham, Lifetime HF specialises in working with national and multi-national leisure organisations. Their values focus on excellence, professionalism and commitment and these values permeate a holistic approach that progresses all the way through to the achievement of desired standards and results at a company and individual level.

Much of the training that Lifetime provides is work-based-learning and, as such, takes place within workplaces throughout the UK. Lifetime delivers Apprenticeships, Work Based Learning NVQs, in-house training and open courses including distance-learning courses across the fitness and leisure sector.

The Lifetime brand already has an enduring appeal for its existing customers. Therefore, Idealogy’s aim was not to instigate revolutionary change, but to ensure that the brand appeal was extendable into new markets and sectors, without stretching it beyond its core competencies. The new brand identity and hierarchy was designed to reflect this.

James Surridge, Director for Demand Strategy at Idealogy commented, “The founding principle was about supporting fitness businesses to perform better – providing consultancy and training to deliver outstanding fitness programmes. It was also about simplicity – finding the things that really made a difference and acting on these as well as presenting training information in a way that was easy for students despite the complexity of the subject. The Lifetime name was originally chosen because it meant more than just fitness – it encapsulated lifestyle and wellness and had the health agenda of longevity linked in.”

The overall proposition also changed from ‘delivering outstanding training’ to ‘delivering the most work ready people for your business’. This works not only to differentiate the brand in the marketplace, but appeals beyond the fitness arena and into active leisure and beyond.

In the refreshed visual identity, ‘The Lifetime Leap’ replicates the first movement of the original Lifetime brand. It represents a dynamic step onto a springboard and then makes a confident leap forward, connecting more positively with the Lifetime word mark. ‘The Lifetime Leap’ not only depicts a journey that embraces change, but also achievement. This aspect is more literally brought to life in applications such as websites, collateral and exhibitions.

Within the new hierarchy, the creation of an Awarding Body presented a new opportunity for Lifetime to enhance its credibility. Whilst the connection with the existing brand was maintained, there is a distinct difference in the offering and business structure and this was reflected in a new ‘Lifetime Awarding’ Brand Identity

Idealogy are now implementing both internal and external programmes to relaunch the Lifetime brand, working alongside Lynda Brown, Lifetime’s new Head of Marketing We would welcome your comments on the developments Idealogy has made to the Lifetime Corporate Identity and Awarding body. Please use the slide show to view the completed visual presentation.



Posted by Anna Ecuyer

Don’t like yours much

Simple recently asked Idealogy to come up with a campaign to promote the benefits of it’s products in fighting the signs of ageing, so we started thinking and bounced ideas around in one form or another for over 6 months.

From our initial ideas the project went through several iterations; we finally decided upon illustrating how someone with a poor quality lifestyle would age quicker and more harshly than someone with a healthier lifestyle. Simple products would obviously help this improvement too of course and we would promote the New Repair Anti-Wrinkle Range.

Then someone came up with the idea of showing a young, beautiful woman ageing (time-lapse style) from 25 to 75 very badly. We could do a quick rewind and then show the young woman ageing more ‘gracefully’. Some shock-factor tactics that we could use on the Simple website.

So about a month ago we started to put the piece together. The first thing to do was to cast two models who could feasibly be the same person at different ages of their life. Once chosen we arranged for them to attend a photo-shoot on the same day, enabling us to have the exact same lighting and feel for both.




Some additional Photoshop and a couple of pieces of animation software later it was looking pretty scary; a time-lapse video with 2 very different endings.

Initially the video was promoted through the national press (Heat magazine doing a massive article showing celebrities aged badly), health & beauty blogs and traditional PR via press contacts. Secondly, Simple’s quarterly email newsletter had a feature on it which also tied into a competition to win a photo of yourself aged. Then finally a version was seeded via a network of social media sites, blogs, forums and of course YouTube.

The Simple website itself had special landing pages that traffic was driven to and an interactive version of the video that allowed the user to pause the ageing process whilst reading skincare do’s and don’ts

First responses are good, with traffic up 800% on the first day of release and 1700% on the second and holding steady at 1700% on the third.

Take a look and tell us what you think – we’d love some feedback.


Posted by Paul Skinner