Pro ject
fou r
Wh at r eal ly w ork s
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It’s one thing to send out a self-promotion piece, whether it’s a calendar, a box of customised crayons or even bag of fake blood. But will it actually work? After all, great though it is to be noticed by a potential client or commissioner, simply coming up on someone’s radar won’t automatically make those all-important commissions start fl ooding in.
The good news is that the buzz gained from that initial exposure can indeed be converted into paid work and fruitful client relationships. We’ve spoken to the creatives behind three original, innovative self-branding campaigns to fi nd out how they did just that.
London illustrator Radim Malinic explains how he threw a launch party for his portfolio books, while Prague-based consultancy Touch Branding tell us what on earth they were doing visiting creative directors in a pretend ambulance. And
Nicholas O’Brian Wilson of Oregon-based
Owen & Stork reveals how a simple but effective portfolio idea helped inspire a guerrilla marketing campaign for a major brand with a global reach.
Turn over to fi nd out how a little thinking outside the box helped our three creatives stand out from the crowd.
CAP140.feat_successes 77 7/27/10 11:55:48 AM

What really works
The promo item
Radim Malinic,
Brand Nu
Award-winning illustrator, art director and graphic designer
Radim Malinic is based in London and works under the name Brand
Nu. One of the most prolifi c commercial illustrators around, he has worked with a huge roster of worldwide clients that includes the likes of Blossom
Hill, Harrods, the BBC,
O2 UK, O2 Germany,
Penguin Books and
The Wall Street Journal .
www.brandnu.co.uk
I’ve created three portfolio books over the last four years. I wanted to give my clients fi rst-hand experience of my work and make sure the right people would see the right things. You can miss a page in a book, but you don’t miss all of them.
My books have got more and more posh as I’ve spent more money on production. The latest,
BOOK THREE
, cost
£4 a copy to make. I sell them through my website, so they double up as a sales tool.
The production costs pay for themselves from sales, and that goes up with the work they bring in.
I was a graphic designer before starting doing commercial illustration, so
I learned a lot about printing techniques.
I use expensive GF Smith paper, which feels like a cross between suede and plastic, so it’s nice to touch. The cover image is pressed in gold foil, and I send my books out in red envelopes so they’ll stand out.
I threw a launch party for BOOK
THREE
. My friend was opening a new
London bar, Soho Bar Rio Central, and I invited existing clients, fans, bloggers and a lot of people from ad agencies. I actually projected an animated video of the book onto a 4 x 5-metre screen, and handed out gift bags sponsored by Corona with free posters, iPhone stickers and lots of things that cost under a pound. I wanted to get under people’s skin. The stickers and posters were done very cheaply on a favour – the most expensive thing was paying for the food.
Sending portfolio books to clients is a simple way to keep them updated. Any new inquiry gets a copy within a couple of days, and I also use them to target new clients. I call them my oversized business cards, and I always follow up by email or phone within a week of sending them out. I hadn’t met Nada when she fi rst commissioned me – I sent her my second book to showcase my latest work and had a phone call saying they’d be interested in working with me soon after. I never imagined that I’d spend
£4,000 on self-promotional print production, but it’s paid off.
Computer Arts Projects
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September 2010
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www.computerarts.co.uk
7/27/10 11:56:08 AM

The hard sell
The commission
Nada McCormack,
Pulse Group
Nada McCormack is an art director at independent marketing the communications agency Pulse Group.
She joined Pulse in
2009, having previously worked for Triangle and
Arc. Based in London,
Pulse Group counts
Blossom Hill, Renault,
Smirnoff and Bentley among its clients, and recent campaigns have picked up awards from the ISP, MCCA and MAA.
www.pulsegroup.com
Radim worked on our ‘Let Play Begin’ sponsorship campaign for Blossom Hill wine at Wimbledon 2009.
He had worked on our Blossom Hill projects before, but sometimes you can forget or disregard good illustrators; it’s easier to see them as someone to potentially commission when you have something tangible in front of you. The way that he did the launch for his book also showed that he is commercially sound, which is unusual for illustrators.
This was the second year of
Blossom Hill’s sponsorship as the offi cial wine of Wimbledon, and we wanted to build on that through experiential activity.
We were targeting female consumers with hectic lives who like to let their hair down. We wanted to show that Blossom
Hill rosé is a playful wine, so we used the strapline ‘Let Play Begin’ to make the connection between the game and the brand positioning. We came up with the campaign idea and ambitions as to what the key visuals would look like across the campaign, and we commissioned Radim to bring the black and white scamp to life.
We look for illustrators who can add their own magic, then we combine that with the client’s objectives.
We provided games like table tennis where people were queuing, with banners and branded areas that stood out, and we used branded rickshaws to give people free lifts from the tube station
to the fi eld. We worked on some trade incentives and in-store promotions, and also created limited-edition packaging featuring a tennis ball, which fl ew off the shelves. The campaign went on to win the
Gold award for the alcoholic drinks category at the ISP Awards.
So much goes into why an illustrator gets picked: timing, budget, client vision. Getting an illustrator commissioned can be quite a big deal, and there are a lot of things working against creatives. Most of the illustrators we use don’t really promote themselves.
Radim is really proactive about it, and he’s constantly in the forefront of our minds because his book is always around.
www.computerarts.co.uk
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Computer Arts Projects
7/27/10 11:56:28 AM

What really works
The promo item
Aleš Micka and
Martin Marušinec,
Touch Branding
Aleš Micka and Martin
Marušinec fi rst met at
Leo Burnett Advertising in Prague in 1997.
Martin went on to spend seven years in
Australia, working for
VBC International, while
Aleš worked for Prague packaging design studio Cocoon and at
Grey Worldwide in
Dublin. They joined forces to form Touch
Branding in 2006. www.touchbranding.com
‘We’ll give our blood for good branding’ came out of an email brainstorm. The fi rst thought we had was of a fake blood bag being sent by post. We found it really interesting to imagine someone opening such an envelope. We thought even people from ad agencies would be shocked at fi rst. And if we could turn this initial shock into laughter, we would have created a memorable experience.
The blood bag is real. It’s the same as the ones hospitals use, although to be fair, they actually have the process computerised now, so not much is really handwritten any more. We tried to capture the perception of how the process works in a hospital, rather than the actual reality.
The fake blood was created using a recipe we found online. Altogether, we spent about £1.50 per piece.
We delivered our blood bag mailers to advertising agencies, dressed up in white coats and driving a specially branded van. We didn’t warn them – we just showed up and asked if we could see the creative director on very important business. Being dressed as doctors meant that we usually got through. Then we put the package on the table and left straight away, to pique their curiosity, so the reactions came later on. Some people found it disgusting, most found it hilarious, and one person even had a taste. Certainly no one thought it boring or ordinary.
We also sent some out by post and the reaction was much the same as when we delivered them personally. It got us through the doors and into the memory of pretty much all of the creative directors in the country. It established our agency’s reputation and gave us the edge over other branding studios as specialists on idea-
driven visual identities: not just nice logos or business card designs, but identities based on smart ideas that communicate the true essence of a brand.
Besides the stickers on business cards, letters and other covers, we also used the branding on our website,
Facebook, LinkedIn, presentations to clients and so on, and we followed up with phone calls to set up meetings. We won two Nutcrackers – the most prestigious
Czech awards – and our work was published in the D&AD yearbook and design blogs locally and worldwide. It gave us visibility in a fairly overcrowded market.
Most people said that it was bloody good.
Computer Arts Projects
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September 2010
CAP140.feat_successes 80 www.computerarts.co.uk
7/27/10 11:56:44 AM

The hard sell
The commission
Radomír Šanák,
ABS Jets
Radomír Šanák is the commercial director and director of ground operations for ABS Jets, a world-class executive jet operator with bases at Prague Ruzyne
Airport, Czech Republic, and Bratislava,
Slovakia. The company was established in
2004, and is also a maintenance and repair organisation. It was recently voted the best for business aviation by Overseas
Living magazine.
www.absjets.com
We hired Touch Branding to devise a new visual identity for ABS Jets. The branding that we had was far too colourful, with pale blue sky and clouds. We wanted to be seen in a much more subtle way, rather than being too fl ashy. We are one of the biggest companies in Europe for what we do, but we didn’t want to be shouting that out loud because our brand is all about understated style. Our visual identity needed to refl ect that.
We fi rst saw Touch Branding’s
‘We’d give our blood for good branding’ campaign while we were researching different branding companies. We came across the awarded campaign on the
Czech Art Directors Club website.
After ABS Jets got in contact with Touch Branding, they sent us a real blood bag so that we could see it for ourselves. We liked what they had done.
Other design studios had put together nice presentations, colours and layouts, but there was no second level to that – no telling what they could do or who they were, whereas here was a successful rebranding campaign.
The brand identity ABS Jets had before was colourful, fairly trendy and young-looking. It wasn’t that it was bad, it just wasn’t right, so it was time to fi nd a new branding agency. We invited three companies to pitch. Touch was one of them and they got the job.
Martin and Aleš designed a new brand identity inspired by simple, British style. They created design features that copied the shape of the back wing of a plane – those lines featured in the layout.
They created a new visual identity and defi ned the key messages that ABS Jets should be communicating.
That was the fi rst part of the branding project: creating the visual identity and roadmap. Since they did that, Touch Branding have spent over a year implementing all of these changes in every single area of the company’s visual identity, including business cards, envelopes, brochures, websites and so on.
www.computerarts.co.uk
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Computer Arts Projects
7/27/10 11:56:57 AM

What really works
The promo item
Nicholas O’Brian
Wilson, Owen & Stork
Based in Portland, USA,
Nicholas O’Brian Wilson received a BA in design from Arizona State
University’s Design
School and worked in advertising before going freelance. He now runs Owen & Stork, a creative fi rm that specialises in unique user experiences in the areas of product packaging, guerrilla marketing, product design and brand experience.
www.owenstork.com
I was working for an advertising company when the economy took a turn, leaving my position in question.
I wasn’t considering starting my own company at that time – I just wanted a stable job. My promotional piece needed to scream:
“Hey, look at me, you don’t want to miss this,” because I knew there would be loads of other, more qualifi ed designers fi shing for new jobs. I needed to speak more loudly to have a chance.
I wanted this piece to conjure up an emotional response, which is why the package has layers. I’m big on user experience, so progression was really important to me. I wanted the piece to fl ow a certain way and the information to be consumed in a particular order. A portfolio can sit on a desk and get covered up, or thrown away. It’s hard to overlook or disregard a package. Humans enjoy the mystery of opening presents. That’s why we go to the trouble of wrapping them up.
The packages are made from recycled wood and cardboard. Inside, there’s a portfolio book, a CV and a business card. The book is hand-bound and stitched, the cardboard forms are hand-cut and the outer boxes are silk-screened by hand, so it’s a labour of love to say the least. A local shop letterpressed the printed materials.
Because I was getting such a great response from the piece, I started sending them to people I knew who owned businesses. My fi rst break happened when a designer showed it to a project manager at Adidas, which resulted in work
– a memorabilia package sent out as gifts from Adidas. After that, I decided to go it alone. So the promotional piece became a tool for me to start my own company and market myself. Red Bull North America didn’t have a project in mind when I fi rst showed them the piece, but a few months later, I got a call about working together.
I hand-delivered some of the packages, and at one studio all of the design staff stopped what they were doing to see what I had brought in. You wouldn’t get that with a traditional portfolio.
Computer Arts Projects
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September 2010
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www.computerarts.co.uk
7/27/10 11:57:18 AM

The hard sell
The commission
Tony
Singmeuangthong,
Red Bull North
America
Tony is a member of
Red Bull’s team of fi eld marketing specialists, who establish the local face of the global Red
Bull brand. The team manages customer collection programs like the Red Bull Wings
Team and Student
Brand Managers and organise Red
Bull athlete and event projects.
www.redbullusa.com
Red Bull North America’s fi eld marketing division had wanted to do this project for some time. We wanted to stage a crate drop on college campuses in Oregon, USA, with free products for people to sample.
Crate drops had been executed before in some markets, but we expanded on the idea to make it an interactive experience that would show how Red Bull represents multiple brand traits: it’s creative, witty, anti-authoritarian and mysterious.
The crates had to look as if they had been airdropped from Austria. They were made to resemble a military-style airdrop, delivering the product for sampling through a break in the crate and an internal ramp that Nick devised.
Nick designed some concepts for us: materials, colour, branding, and so on. He created army-style stencil graphics and attached parachutes to the crates.
To look as realistic as possible, we made them appear weathered, and added a break in the corner to imply they had broken on impact when it hit the ground.
Then it was all about execution.
We wanted people to question whether or not it was actually real: they had to look as if they had fallen from the sky. Each crate was fi lled with 500 cans. We dropped them off on college campuses at
University of Oregon, Oregon State
University and Portland State University with their parachutes stuck in trees, at
specifi c drop locations that we selected for maximum exposure. We stationed multiple hidden cameras in various locations, including inside the crates themselves, to catch the action.
Nick was defi nitely someone we were considering for projects that we had in the pipeline – not only for input on the creative side, but for the creation process as well. We knew that he worked with wood
– we had never imagined personalising it to that extent, and using it as a marketing piece to promote something. We thought his self-promotional piece was an extremely creative way to show oneself.
It was so memorable that it was only a matter of time before we worked together.
September 2010
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Computer Arts Projects
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