26.05.06
Cool down and stay creative

An image we’ve just produced for a poster about an up-coming D&AD Seminar on Creativity in Singapore, with the help of star photographer Patrice De Villiers. The event is on June the 27th at Old Billingsgate in London.

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15.05.06
More than we’d expected

At the turn of the millennium we helped create the More Th>n brand for Royal and SunAlliance. At the time it seemed a bit of a gamble, coming at the end of a long period of 90s ‘sillynamesdotcom’ but it was a name that was inherently comparitive (which seemed appropriate for the hurly burly world of direct insurance) - a name that suggested you get ‘more’ than the rest. The approved identity felt suitably 21st century, the ‘>’ keystroke survived the research hurdle and a genuinely intriguing new brand was up-and-running, with its own typeface and definitive colour scheme which stood out from the rest of the sector.

There were a few early issues – several of the collaborators on the brand launch simply didn’t ‘get’ why consistent use of the bright green would help build the brand and we have one enduring memory of the magazine design company lobbying passionately for the importance of lilac in their layouts. But the biggest fly in our modernist ointment was the ad agency of the time who had decided to try to launch the brand with the then ‘cooler-than-hell’ medium of ambient, and chose a lost dog called ‘Lucky’ as its lead image. Despite repeated warnings from all of us that they were falling into the sector trap of cute mascots (for ‘Churchill’ think ‘dog’, for ‘Direct Line’ think ‘red phone’, for ‘esure’ think ‘that annoying mouse’) the client signed up. For four years we were unluckily building the dog into layouts. Repeat anything enough and people will recognise it, and what was introduced as an idea to introduce their pet insurance offer slowly but surely became the brand’s mnemonic device, caught in a life and death struggle with our logotype and brand architecture for dominance.

So we watched the recent pitch for what has become a substantial above-the-line advertising account take place with some interest. Now the 3rd biggest direct insurance brand in the UK, More Th>n has jumped from 13th in the direct insurance charts pre-launch to the point when its ad budget is now a quite respectable £21 million. Deciding whether to ‘dog or not to dog’ or not would have been the main pitch decision, and to our collective relief the account has moved to Fallon on the strength of an endearing notion of normality, and how the ‘return to normal’ is all we really want from a service like insurance. A strong strategic notion that the More Th>n marketers were brave enough to sign up to, and a notion applauded by the advertising industry. Campaign noted a general return to ‘interesting ideas’ recently and cited Fallon’s More Th>n work as ‘the best example’.

Coupled with simple, straightforward copy and finally some art direction sympathetic to where the brand began we now have a chance to see where this company can really go. Think about it – if our identity and a scruffy dog could get them to third biggest, just think where an integrated approach could take the brand. Opportunity knocks for More Th>n, and we have a rare chance to show what we meant all along, five years later.

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