Archive for the 'Copywriting' Category
28 June 2011 at 19:28
If there's one thing we Utopians just love, it's a gem. A gem hidden under a goosegog bush, preferably.
Now, this lovely company isn't by any means hidden because Cantilever Bars, specialists in bar design, manufacture and installation, are everywhere. It's just that they're tucked away in rural Gloucestershire, creating their alchemic wonders..plus I wanted to use the word goosegog.
If you've ever stood at a bar (and I mean, a proper swanky bar), you were probably leaning against one of their fantastic creations.
Who's on their list?
The Groucho Club, The Botanist, Diageo, The Cabinet Room, Cafe Boheme, Carluccio's, Royal Exchange, Green's, Plateau, Bond & Brook at Fenwicks, Soho House NY, Soho House Berlin, Bowood Golf & Country Club, Brighton Dome, Champagne Mumm, Roof Top Garden,....I mean, really, and this list goes on and on.
Drafted in to write web copy
...as in draft beer...anyway...We were asked to examine the contents of the web copy for Cantilever's new site, which we've duly done. It should be hitting the site very soon and was mainly a case of breaking it up, playing with the language and generally making it sit more happily on the screen for you tasty readers to enjoy.
Cheers!
Tags: Cantilever Bars | Copywriting | Gloucestershire
Posted in Copywriting | No Comments
15 February 2011 at 15:55
A major client with major clients
When you’re the market leading specialists in road and rail livery, signage and outdoor media and your customers number BT, Transport for London, Shell, National Grid, First Capital and Sky, you need a brand identity that embodies confidence, experience, expertise.
Stewart Signs are renowned for delivering projects of the highest standards and have been for over 40 years, but then you already knew that....just look around you, there are examples of their work everywhere, such as the BT Openreach vans, every sign and poster you see on London's tube and bus network, the huge train wraps on Eurostar, countless vehicle wraps on lorries, the signs that show us the way around the UK, and the media displays that surround us in airports and stations.
Utopia take the branding challenge
Starting with a session on marketing and brand strategy, we created a new visual identity for Stewart Signs. Giving them 6 design routes to choose from, they went with our favourite . One particular challenge was to consolidate the various areas of the company, most notably bringing their Rail brand - Halo Rail - in house under the Stewart Signs umbrella.
Our brief: design a brand identity that's both versatile and conveys the scale and scope of their business. A brand identity that's colourful, vibrant, dynamic and contemporary.
So, we took them from this:
to this:
Brand roll-out
In our next blog, we'll look at the challenge of designing and building a (pretty) vast eCommerce website . But we’ll wait until it’s launched...any day now.
Meanwhile, here’s a glimpse at one of our favourite documents – Brand Guidelines. Where would we be, moreover, where would our clients be, without a few carefully devised rules and regulations for keeping their brand new brand on track? Yes, it’s a rail pun, we had to get one in.
See more of our work for Stewart Signs in our portfolio
Posted in Design | Copywriting | Branding | Strategic Marketing | No Comments
28 January 2011 at 10:05
Avelo, the market leading providers of technical solutions for the financial services industry, appointed Utopia as their creative marketing agency to deliver 3 campaigns.
Campaign 1: Wealth Optimiser
Design and deliver the launch of Avelo's new wealth management product, Wealth Optimiser.
Utopia's brief included devising the campaign concepts - One Stop. All destinations - for a product that will, for the first time, enable financial services practitioners to access all their clients' assets and information from one, single place.
An integrated solution
Avelo, branded 1st - The Exchange at the time, wanted to keep the campaign marketing and implementation under one roof, so Utopia's integrated service was the natural choice. Speed, creative quality, technical competence and reliable communication gave this campaign the success it demanded, for which we provided:
- Creative design and product branding
- Copywriting
- Campaign website with online registration
- Video production
- Email marketing
- Banner adverts
- Trade Press advertising
Experience the campaign website, visit www.wealthoptimiser.co.uk
Campaign 2: RDR Countdown Programme (Retail Distribution Review)
Avelo required a creative concept / campaign idea together with associated marketing collateral to communicate the RDR Countdown Programme to a wide range of distributors in the financial services market.
Again, Utopia provided a full range of services underpinned by our design, copywriting and web skills to deliver:
- Campaign creative
- Email invitation
- Jump page
- Online banner advertising
- Branded print materials
Campaign 3: Avelo Roadshows
Avelo required a creative concept / campaign theme together with associated marketing collateral to promote the Joint Roadshow to a target audience of their key financial services clients. This would also be one of the first opportunities for Avelo to promote their new name and brand.
Utopia presented a range of creative ideas, combining our strengths in copywriting and design, to produce:
- Campaign theme and creative
- Email marketing and jump pages
- Direct Mail
- Online banner advertising
- Trade press advertising in Money Marketing magazine
Posted in Design | Copywriting | Branding | Websites | Email marketing | Advertising | Video | No Comments
29 September 2010 at 11:25
Rebranding art
Now, my medium is light…I must have light … and move that hill…no, not that one…get rid of that tree, I’m trying to measure up here…and those cows – cleave them in twain, stick ‘em in this box of chemicals - and that group of hikers… Perfect, I think for my first brush stroke I wi – What?! It’s raining!
Sound familiar? Possibly not, but any artist (I’ve just made up) will tell you the same story of frustrating days and thwarted attempts to create a masterpiece for the demanding art lovers and buyers of Great Britain. If only there were something new and less time consuming and less expensive yet totally unique…(I’m building this up, you see?)…
Unique art from i-Pixx
We’ve been enjoying a lot of art, of late, but we weren’t expecting this as our next client win.
i-Pixx, an innovative new company who create striking portraits and pictures from your DNA. They liked what they saw in us and commissioned Utopia to start the ball rolling by:
- Designing a suite of sales and marketing materials including retail packaging
- Redesigning their website and providing SEO / SEM advice
- Creating a new tone of voice for all communications
- Rewriting all their copy and producing original content for web and print
Posted in Design | Copywriting | No Comments
14 June 2010 at 11:18
Whelford Group website live in under 2 weeks!
From design sign off to a live site with functionality – slide show and downloads - plus testing, checking and initial SEO to boot…the words ‘pulled out of the bag’ could readily be applied to this project.
Utopia’s web designer, Jamie McColm, is known for his magic tricks (and also an array of hilarious voices…seriously, call him, it’s quite astonishing, sometimes a bit scary..) but this one was a little slice of genius.
Flexible and Fast when you feel the need, the need for….cue the music
Jamie wasn’t sitting around twiddling thumbs or flying jets, he had all sorts of projects underway. But one of the many (U-rated) words you can use to describe Utopia, is: Flexible.
And that’s how it should be. If we can, we’ll do everything to reprioritise so that an urgent client need is delivered. (Our lawyers / families wish us to insert a ‘within reason’ caveat here!)
Holding Page? Ugh, no thanks
We’d already produced The Whelford Group’s new sales and marketing brochure and, with the regional business awards looming, we were asked to redesign and build a new website in time. Can’t have inconsistency with your touch points now, can you? No, you can’t.
With only 2 weeks to the awards, the obvious solution from the client was to slap up a holding page. But we don’t really like holding pages, so we came back with: “Nah, forget that – let’s see if we can do a bit more”…for ‘”we” came back with’ read Utopia’s MD, Owen (and um, yes, it is me writing this…possibly by way of an apology to Jamie). But did he flinch? No. Well, not that I’d know, I just left a hurried message on his voice mail and ran off.
Did he deliver? Absolutely. www.whelfordconstruction.co.uk
Posted in Design | Copywriting | Websites | No Comments
23 April 2010 at 11:10
Utopia client, The Whelford Group, is delighted with the new marketing brochure.
Now to get Phase 1 of their redesigned website coloured in, written, built and live….in 2 weeks, in time for the region’s business awards.
Posted in Design | Copywriting | Branding | No Comments
14 January 2010 at 11:12
This post is intended for those of you new to Twitter, or those who set up a Twitter account but haven’t been back for months…know the feeling… If you’re a fully paid up Twitter nerd, this probably isn’t for you, but the occasional reminder never hurts.
So, a few simple pointers to help you write your tweets:
- Twitter is a great place to improve your writing skills. It forces you to edit your thoughts, be concise, and get to the point. Apply this guideline to your other promotional writing, such as brochures, advertising, web pages, email marketing.
- Keep it simple: remember, you only have 140 characters (not words, not letters: every symbol, space, number, comma counts).
- Use words that are shorter and more descriptive. Keyword: Verbs – like herbs, they’re good for you when crafting your Twitter message, better than adverbs or adjectives here.
- Punch: don’t waffle, you haven’t got the space or the time. Make each tweet a single message, one idea that captivates your followers and convinces them to click your link or retweet (RT)….which leads me onto a key point…
The importance of Twitter links
Link always: for personal tweets this isn’t so vital, but is MY life really enriched by the breaking news that you’re ‘having a cup of tea, wonder if there are any biscuits, the cat’s nice’…? Increasingly, those of us who use Twitter for business have grasped the importance of linking, either to a third party article or comment or back to our own website or blog.
Links channel traffic: following on from that last point, I don’t use Twitter as a standalone marketing tool. It’s ideal as another link in the message chain, a bus stop en route, so use it to engage your followers and take them with you somewhere else, for example by tweeting the title of your latest blog post, a news feature on your website, new stock on your online product catalogue, etc.
Next time
In our next post we’ll look at how (on earth) you manage to juggle social media tools for the benefit of your business and not spend all day / night doing it. Meanwhile, see if we’re following our own tips (and do follow us, we’ll follow you): Utopia Twitter
Posted in Copywriting | Social Media | No Comments
28 December 2009 at 11:14
What have we been up to in Utopia?
Don’t give me that look. I know it’s been ages since the last post, but we’ve been busy. Since the launch of the MASCo rebrand, their marketing activity has grown and grown, culminating in the Christmas-lights-style-switch-on of their new website.
Designed with the customer first, it’s already had lots of positive feedback. So what’s the focus for our marketing of MASCo in 2010? PR, email, and internet marketing. I want to bring that advertising spend down and hike up their exposure with a combination of traditional editorial and clever online activity. We’ll keep you posted.
What’s new?
Word of mouth has so far been the winning formula for our own client wins, but with the new Utopia Communications website about to launch (yes, finally!), we’ll be pushing more. The site includes a showcase of our recent work, which you can also navigate by service criteria (marketing, creative, web, PR), and there’s a client area that will keep communication flowing on individual projects.
A flurry of quotations and commissions ended the year (including two requests for copywriting arriving on Christmas Eve), so we look forward to leaping into spring (we don’t like winter) with all sorts of new challenges and interesting clients…apart from a new travel company coming on board in November, the construction industry seems to have taken a shine to Utopia. Resist urge to weave in building puns.
Happy New Year!
To all our clients, suppliers and friends, we wish you all every good fortune for 2010.
Utopia Communications
Posted in Design | Copywriting | Branding | Strategic Marketing | Websites | Email marketing | Advertising | Social Media | PR | No Comments
03 September 2009 at 11:17
Latest banner ads for This is Gloucestershire website, rolling out ( I love that expression ) this weekend.
Hot baths!
Into the woods…
Posted in Design | Copywriting | Advertising | No Comments
