Monthly Roundup – May 2019

Welcome back to the Trident Monthly round-up!

The aim of these monthly posts is to keep you abreast of all the weird and wonderful news and insights to come out of the world of marketing. Every month, our team will pick our favourite campaigns, brand insights and marketing trends that you can use to enhance your marketing knowledge or even as inspiration to delight your audience.

So let’s get cracking with our top stories from May:

Halifax Rebrands

This rebrand caused quite a stir on our Twitter, with many divided opinions on whether this was a rip-off of the Monzo Bank branding or a great re-brand.

The 166-year-old high street bank has been given a new visual identity, which aims to “declutter” the brand and help it appeal to younger people. The new identity aims to humanise Halifax, and through using softer colours, flatter graphics and people photography, help it appear “more honest and democratic”, and enable it to stand out from high-street competitor banks such as Natwest, Santander and Barclays. “We want to make it feel less like an institution and more a bank of choice that is easy to engage with.”

Halifax’s new branding and ad campaign is currently rolling out across all touchpoints, including the website and app, in-store signage, and print and marketing materials.

Source: Design Week

Images can “give a voice” to protesters and cross language barriers to share messages about cross-cultural issues around the world, says political illustrator Edel Rodriguez. “Unlike words, imagery crosses language barriers, which means it can be understood by people across the world, regardless of what language they speak. Putting images out into the world can also spread messages and help “educate” people much faster than words, it’s much harder to ignore an illustration than writing, as it makes a visual impact.”

Cuban-born Rodriguez is best known for his work interpreting political subjects on magazine covers including Time and Der Spiegel, with a focus on criticising Donald Trump’s presidency. However, Rodriguez’s work managed to reach new heights in terms of reach, thanks to the use of Social Media.

In this era of short attention spans, having a strong visual impact is key to catching the attention of your audience, that’s why at Trident we are still big believers in the power of print marketing, especially when combined with modern tools such as social media.

Source: Design Week

Burger King – Unhappy Meals

Burger King wants to raise awareness to the fact that not everyone is happy all the time and that’s ok with a limited release of “Real Meals,” a set of meal boxes designed to represent various emotions, as part of a campaign they’ve called “Feel Your Way,” a take on their longtime slogan “Have it your way.”

The boxes’ release is timed to coincide with Mental Health Awareness Month, and the hamburger chain has teamed up with Mental Health America, a non-profit organization that seeks to address the needs of those with mental illness and promote the overall mental health of Americans. Of course, the brand has also managed to take a little swipe at their rival fast-food chain, McDonald’s. The boxes do not contain toys unlike the Happy Meal boxes McDonald’s offers.

We think this is a great tongue in cheek way to promote a great cause, in the typical Burger King brand voice, which often takes sly digs at their rivals.

Source: The Dieline

PepsiCo saw an opportunity to evolve the packaging and brand experience for this much-adored brand in an effort to improve the product position in the market for Walker crisps. Through understanding their history, they came up with ideas of elements to incorporate onto the pack, like things that are traditionally seen as British, such as rain, clouds, tractors, tea etc..

“Walkers has been a part of people’s lives as they’ve grown up, and we realized the brand had become detached from that. We wanted to connect the packaging back to what makes the UK distinctly different, including the quirky, strange things about British culture.”

We think they’ve done a good job of giving the packs a “British” feel, although some of the design elements incorporated can be seen as stereotypes of Britain.

Source: The Dieline

The city of Vienna rebrands

The city of Vienna has been rebranded, with a new identity that looks to put “humans at its heart” and aims to serve tax-paying citizens as well as tourists. Vienna, Austria’s capital city, is currently the best place to live worldwide, according to the Economist Intelligence Unit’s global liveability index conducted last year.

The rebrand aims to be “highly prominent in the lives of Vienna’s inhabitants”, and is being incorporated across touchpoints that are part of citizens’ “day-to-day lives”. This includes signage at public parks, buildings and universities, print materials for local services and governmental departments, advertising for museums, banners on public transport such as buses and tourism apps. It also brings the city’s 70 governmental departments under one brand, which previously used different, inconsistent logos.

We have previously written about rebrands of countries and towns, and this is part of a continuing trend which we are big supporters of. Cities such as Vienna are the business centres of their countries and should be seen as “brands”, to help give them a unique identity and attract more visitors, which ultimately helps generate more revenue for local businesses.

Source: Design Week