Wayne Hemingway MBE
Last night, 20th October 2011, we had the privilege of meeting and listening to Wayne Hemingway at a Creative Bedfordshire seminar. He talked about innovation and creativity in business, starting small and working your way up, identifying opportunities and taking risks, breaking into new markets, and networking with other businesses.
It was a real thrill to meet someone so influential in our industry; someone who has had so much influence and created a enviable legacy in fashion, design and now a more sustainable community based genre he describes as ’social design’. For those not in the know, Wayne built Red or Dead into a fashion label that received global acclaim, resulting in him winning the prestigious British Fashion Council’s Streetstyle Designer of the Year Award for three consecutive years.
Wayne also set up Hemingway Design in 1999, which specialises in affordable and social design. The highest profile project is The Staiths South Bank, which has won a series of high profile awards including Housing Design Awards (best large project) and Building Magazine’s “Best Housing-Led Regeneration Project” as well as a Building For Life and the highest rating of any large scale scheme in the CABE National Housing Audit.
We hope he returns to Bedford again – we left feeling totally inspired and I think it’s fair to say in awe of Wayne’s achievements.
Keech Hospice Care, our chosen charity for this year’s CSR programme, is set to benefit from an increase in our donations, thanks to the creation of a new font.
Keech Hospice Care is a UK charity that runs two hospice services – one for adults and one for children. Its aim is to help patients enjoy the highest quality of life, while providing vital support for their family and friends throughout their loved one’s illness and in their bereavement. All of the charity’s services are offered free of charge, every single day of the year. For more details about Keech, visit 
Whilst everyone else was Christmas shopping and indulging in a mince pie or two, the Bonfire team gathered at Bedford’s embankment on Sunday 5th December in support of local charity Keech Hospice Care. Donning Santa suits and beards the team, including family, warmed up before braving the winter weather and running 5k.
The Bonfire Creative Intelligence team proudly supported the first ever Miracle Children fundraising event on 12th November 2010 in conjunction with The Beds Downs Syndrome Association. The evening, hosted by Paris Taylor, proved a resounding success with over £7,000 raised through ticket sales, donations and charity auction.
Keeley Farrar, Admin Support, moved staff as she introduced Maisy-Anna Roberts. A close friend of Keeley’s, Paris Taylor, had a vision of launching her own charity after her experience following the news that Maisy had been born with Down’s Syndrome. We were all quite shocked to hear how little support and advice was readily available to Paris at this life-changing moment.
When Jason and Steve were just 10 Jason had been ‘made’ to have his first kiss and Steve was making pea-guns out of pegs, elastic bands and wood.
One of our budding designers has had his work acknowledged in a new book entitled ‘How to Design a Typeface’ by the Design Museum, published by Conran Octopus.
Andrew Foster has designed two fonts to date Mister Loopy (which has had an amazing 78,000+ downloads since its release in January 2009), and Spud AF. You can check out Andrews font creations using the two links below.
Branding and design agency Bonfire Creative Intelligence is celebrating being highly commended in the ‘Business to Business’ category of the New Media Age Effectiveness Awards 2010 for its strategic brand review for British textile business A W Hainsworth & Sons. The agency just missed out on the top prize which went to the recent work for internet giant Google.
A brand isnt just for Christmas…
Tuesday, November 15th, 2011We’re all consumers of brands and whether we’re buying business or consumer goods and services, we still make decisions based on the same triggers, experiences and perceptions, regardless of whether we are buying for home or business.
Christmas is a very revealing time of year for consumer brands, providing an instant barometer for customer loyalty. People tend to base their buying decisions on:
- brand experience
- emotional attachment to a brand
- similarity and familiarity to their lives
- trends
- recommendation
- how they want to be perceived by the people they are buying for
In short, the ‘gift’ test is: do you feel good enough about a product to buy it for someone else?
The same rules apply to business. Although business-to-business brands don’t necessarily have the luxury of Christmas for a sales spike, the lessons of consumer brands can still be learned from. What connections do your customers have with your brand and what makes them loyal?
All too often businesses are too afraid to spend money in order to make money and branding is done ‘on the cheap’; that isn’t to say it can’t be done cost effectively. The focus tends to be on the visual components and not the actual brand or strategy behind it. I hate to point this out, but you can tell. Consumers of your products or services can also tell, so it may be time for a re-think.
To create an income-generating brand, you need to create something that is unique, that delivers true competitive advantage for your business based on a good solid strategy, and clever and effective implementation. Branding isn’t just about memorable logos and design, it’s about the experience you offer at every touch-point of your business.
Think beyond the old-school methodologies of ‘business-to-business’ and ‘business-to-consumer’ communications to working on a more holistic, up-to-date personal level – we call this ‘business-to-people’.To do this you have to forget about ‘what’s gone before’ and challenge ‘process’. Don’t focus on the channel or what everyone else is doing – focus on the needs of your business, staff and customers.
Create and develop a set of messages that mean something, that come from a honed and representative brand proposition and real point of differentiation. Brands are built on personality, stories and truths; you might need help in capturing this for your business, and it is achievable, effective and needn’t break the bank.
Business marketing should no longer be vertical. Branding draws on experiences from all parts of our lives. The success and expansion of social media is proof that it’s ALL about people. The result of effective social media is that it gets people talking and sharing – a very powerful medium that highlights the importance of getting things right in the ‘real world’. One thing you should also be very clear about is that social media hasn’t replaced anything. If you haven’t got the brand right, or your other marcomms channels working effectively, it’s just another medium to get wrong.
Effective branding is about engaging people across all channels, it’s about balancing expectations with experiences, and not least of all with your staff. It’s about developing loyalty and an emotional connection, stories with truth and something for the person to engage with, and it is definitely not just at Christmas.
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