The NNF rebrand and creative talent
Round my way, the Norfolk and Norwich Festival has become one of the most important events in the local calendar. It brings together all kinds of performance art from around the world, from chin-stroking Philip Glass recitals through to freaky Polish street theatre.
Recently, NNF announced a rebrand, which was carried out by Colchester agency Silk Pearce. It’s quite a departure from the previous look, with cheerful, summery colours and a ‘contemporary interpretation of woodblock type’ (it says here).
My subject in this post is not the quality of the rebrand, although I have seen some designers express reservations about it. What I’m interested in is the fact that it apparently couldn’t be sourced from within the local area – by which I mean a creative agency located in Norwich or Norfolk.
Local talent
Having been knocking around the Norwich scene for a few years now, I’ve been involved with several of our creative agencies. And in my view, many of them could have delivered work just as good as Silk Pearce’s – no disrespect to Silk Pearce, of course.
Selection was made via a credentials pitch, not a creative one. And I think it’s fair to assume that some Norfolk agencies were probably invited to pitch. But whether local players didn’t make the shortlist or failed at the pitch stage, NNF is effectively saying the same thing: none of them had the skills and experience to handle this rebrand.
Sorry, but I’m not buying that. The local creative scene has exploded in recent years, and we now have dozens (if not hundreds) of excellent agencies, many of whom specialise in exactly this sort of rebrand. And if you cast the net a bit wider, to take in freelancers, the field gets even larger. (Have a look at my Norwich Marketing Twitter list for a quick snapshot.)
No protection
Why do I think a local agency should have got the work? Well, it’s not because of a sense that organisations should buy locally on principle. Although I respect Buy Local as a movement, I’d feel hypocritical espousing its values, because when I buy services I get them from wherever seems appropriate. Sometimes buying local makes sense, sometimes it just doesn’t matter and sometimes it can hold you back.
Also, I serve clients all over the UK and around the world, and it seems strange to say that money should flow into our area but not out of it. I’d rather work in a region that’s properly integrated into the wider economy and can hold its own without protectionism, however well-intentioned.
Familiarity breeds content
No, my reasoning is not moral or economic but practical and aesthetic. It’s to do with the quality of work you can do when you’re already familiar with a brand – and the special case of a locally focused, locally rooted brand.
In this particular case, local knowledge is very relevant. There’s an ambient familiarity that comes from living and working in Norwich and being part of NNF every year that I think would translate into better work. You can get to know an iPad app from anywhere in the world, but to know the NNF and the area you need to be here.
The same argument would apply with a campaign to promote a particular tourist area. If you’d visited it yourself, you’d be far better equipped to capture its essence in your copy, your identity or your design. If you hadn’t, you’d be operating at one remove from the customer experience.
Familiarity takes away all the initial groundwork that creatives usually have to do in order to get up to speed with a brand. Instead of grappling with the basics, you’re free to focus on the finer points of the campaign or rebrand – fine-tuning the engine instead of reinventing the wheel. And with time and resource inevitably limited, that can only mean a better outcome, because you’re spending longer on adding real value.
Real brand values
However, it goes deeper than that. Creatives who’ve been to the concerts, mingled with the audience and soaked up the vibe are more likely to understand NNF’s brand values. And I don’t mean the aspirational values that the brand owner might want to impose, but the actual brand values generated by the people who use the product.
Brands are what people think of them. If you haven’t experienced a brand directly, the next best thing is to talk to those who have. And if you can’t do that, the next best thing is to put yourself in their shoes, to the best of your ability. But that’s the least any creative should do – for best results, we should be given better ammo than mere imagination.
Now, there is a view that says a fresh approach is worth having, and that an outsider can be well placed to deliver it. But I think that’s apposite when the client or their incumbent agency has got too involved with a brand, having worked with it too closely for too long. It’s not an argument for creatives to know less about the things they’re trying to sell.
Out of town
It’s a bit like the point about the manager of the England football team being English. When fans say that, they’re not being jingoistic or racist – they’re just expressing the crying need for a manager who knows the English league, speaks the English language and ‘gets’ English football culture. And the most likely answer to that brief is an English manager.
Of course, that hasn’t stopped us from having non-English managers of the English team – with mixed results. But the sense that something ‘out there’ is better than what we already have can be very powerful. As the saying goes, ‘an expert is always from out of town’.
I’m sorry to say that I think that’s what happened here. We have a lot of very high-calibre creatives here in Norfolk, and many of them could have handled this rebrand brilliantly. And for a project like this, I think it’s absolutely right that they should.
Comments (7)
Comments are closed.
I think at this point, following your article and from a number of rather unflattering tweets that have appeared (and have been taken down from the Festival Twitter page), I ought to state formerly on behalf of East Publishing that we cannot and will not associate ourselves with comments made by others. We were extremely lucky to have had The Norfolk & Norwich Festival as a client for six years. Together, we produced some work that we were all terribly proud of and which, crucially, sold bums onto seats. Apart from possibly being seen as fomenting unprofessional sour grapes by any, even indirect, association, we parted company amicably and still maintain regular contact (though fee-lessly these days).
The basic premise of your article is sound, when you suggest that actual brand values and the aspirations are given the wrong priorities, but you fail to understand what the current and the former artistic directors are striving (and strove) to achieve.
Jonathan Holloway part convinced the board and was part charged by them to push the pizzazz into the faces of the Norwich population, because they weren’t going to go out and look for it (even if they knew what to look for in the first place). So it can’t be compared to the England football manager’s role. It’s more a case of Mohammed going to the mountain. Familiarity wasn’t going to cut it in these circumstances. Shock of the new was. It took a couple of years, but it wasn’t long before the lines on the graph started angling more steeply.
What it required was some out-of-town vision, a great deal of (at times infuriating) persistence and an eye for cutting-edge, original, well-bugger-me creativity. That’s the point about the festival – if it weren’t for the out-of-town-ness and the levels of extraordinary creativity, it wouldn’t now be within the magic circle of city festivals in the UK. William Galinsky’s task at the Festival is no less daunting. Being handed the baton after such a rise in attendance, ticket sales and profile, with a short history of bringing the likes of Glass, Laurie Anderson, Ute Lemper, John Cale to Norwich, he has to take it to new levels, new audiences and at the same time, he has to try his damnedest to prop up attendance and sales in a year when some can now ill afford the petrol to get to the events.
In terms of how the visual identity of the brand has been treated, I have no doubt that there are dozens of creative directors in the NR postcodes who claim to be able to do a better job (or, at the very least, a similar one). Let’s face it, that’s what the grumble is about here. But, as creatives and owners of creative organisations, we should know – for the sake of our own professional integrity – that visual identity is only one part of the total brand. Having been through the pitch process (which wasn’t creative, but was based on strategic proposals as well as creds), I strongly suspect that the Festival put a great deal of thought into selection, on who would provide the best solutions for the broad job they needed doing for the broader remit that the Festival had been handed by, among others, the Arts Council. That job extended well beyond the distressed type logo and a brochure.
I know why we didn’t retain the business, which I won’t explain here. I wholly understand and accept that reason and I understand why Silk Pearce were appointed. I don’t know who else was on the pitch list and as I said above, I have no doubt there are other companies in Norfolk that were capable of stepping up to the plate. So either those decision makers at the Festival had decided, from available agency credentials and from past experience, not to invite some to pitch or they simply didn’t know they existed in the first place. Or there might be other reasons.
Whatever the reason, the lion’s share of the blame for the Norfolk & Norfolk Festival’s brand communication not being undertaken by a Norfolk or Norwich company lies with those Norfolk & Norwich companies. We ought to look to our own laurels, both in terms of what we think we are capable of and in terms of branding and communicating ourselves more efficiently and less parochially.
At the moment, if the Festival can hear of the reputation of a South American vocalist and book him before they book Albert Cooper, there’s no reason why they can’t engage a company in Essex in preference to one in Norfolk.
Sorry for the rant, but let’s not feel wounded by the slight, let’s instead stop giving people any reason to question our quality in the first place.
Regards
Anthony
It has to be said – the new identity is bad – surprisingly so.
And because the Norfolk and Norwich Festival has such a large profile, nationally and internationally, it exposes how inappropriate this design is. Is it a zoo? Maybe it’s an organised village fete in 1986? It certainly does not symbolise the fantastic content that the festival has built up over the past few years.
Can this brand identity stand proudly alongside the Manchester International Festival or the Grachtenfestival in Amsterdam? Sadly, it’s not even close – but it does sit comfortably in the local Norwich Advertiser alongside the usual weekend distractions.
Brand identity is subjective and even big brands get it wrong. It’s an easy target, but how the recent London Olympics logo was selected is a mystery. And it’s not just the logo, the design community even loathe the font choice in all its communications. And as a community, designers feel the embarrassment of when the world’s attention asks if that is the best we can do.
The same opinions and reactions apply to the NNF re-brand. I’m not aware of the process of selection or how the creative becomes diluted. Is it committee or fear? Or reacting to its previous design presentation?
East Publishing have done a great job in recent years in promoting the festival as an international destination event. But I was excited to see how the design would evolve in the hands of a new designer.
Regardless of whether that design appointment was regional or not – bad design will frustrate those who care.
And the NNF deserves a contemporary identity.
@Darren
Thanks for your comment. As a non-designer, I didn’t want to comment on the creative, and it’s interesting to see a professional’s view.
In a way, the debate over the quality of the rebrand is separate from the principles I’m discussing – but if the work really is wide of the mark, that might lend support to my argument.
@Anthony
Thanks for taking the time to comment.
In view of the feedback you mention (which I didn’t see), perhaps I should clarify that I certainly don’t speak on behalf of Norfolk’s creative community, or any firm within it, including those I know and have worked with. I wrote this completely independently, as a neutral observer who works in marketing, lives in Norwich and has been to some NNF events – nothing more.
By the same token, I write as an outsider to NNF, with little understanding of its story or its priorities – as you say. Nevertheless, I’m entitled to my opinion.
I know a brand is more than its logo, but I think your argument would be stronger if you explained exactly which ‘parts of the total brand’ you’re alluding to, and perhaps why Silk Pearce is so well placed to deliver them. I say that because, as far as I’m aware, there is no marketing channel (print or pixel) that can’t be handled very ably by Norfolk agencies.
Every branding campaign must put up with judgements based on its logo, or its most visible components. The 2012 Olympics (as Darren says), British Airways and of course Gap are three recent examples. The reason why such snap judgements are valid is that first impressions count. And the NNF brochure, while certainly just one part of the mix, is surely a central part of the experience for most customers.
Although I accept the general point about the ‘importing culture’ philosophy of NNF, I’m not sure we can extend the analogy to the branding. The fact that a Mexican tenor enhances the programme does not necessarily mean that an agency from outside Norwich will enhance the brand. Direct experience of the Festival is irrelevant for the tenor, essential for the agency (in my view).
I was pleased to get support for this post from some of the younger and/or more spirited marketers around Norwich. Most old hands, with more to lose, are preserving a diplomatic silence (assuming they’re reading). I guess, as you argue, the customer is always right.
I’m not going to apologise for putting this view out there, because I think a lot of people probably agree with me – even if they don’t feel they can say so right now.
I’m an ‘old hand’, and I’m happy to comment.
To be honest, I don’t much care who did the identity and what part of the country they’re from. What matters is the end result. And let’s face it, that’s the only reason we’re all talking about it.
(I’m also not interested in the whys and wherefores of the N&NF’s decision to use an outside agency – or what they were hoping to achieve with the new identity. It’s irrelevant. The work should live and die on its own merits.)
The N&NF are free to choose who they want to work with. That’s their business. And not being from Norfolk shouldn’t be a barrier to creating something that fits well. So really, I have little sympathy with the view that it should have been done by a local agency. I have even less sympathy, however, with the view that using an outside agency is somehow a reflection of the festival’s ethos. Nonsense. And as for the idea (as Anthony also suggests) that local agencies should blame themselves for not getting the work: you’d have to be dead to not be aware of at least five good agencies around here.
All of this shouldn’t mean, however, that the NN&F should be immune from criticism. If you put stuff out there for people to see you should fully expect people to comment.
For me, the nub of this is that someone at the N&NF thinks this is good work. Yes, many agencies around here could have done a better job. But then, given what they’ve gone with, how can we be sure that the people at the N&NF would have signed it off?
@ Paul
Thanks for commenting. As stated, I’m not getting into the merits of the actual work but I’m interested to see another professional’s views on it.
Of course I agree in principle that it’s NNF’s decision who they work with. But they are not just any old client. I think most people would expect a publicly funded body with ‘Norfolk & Norwich’ in its name to place its work locally if possible. (NNF would presumably say that it wasn’t possible in this case; my post suggests that it was.)
Just after this post went live, I had a drink with a very sophisticated couple who love the Festival and always book loads of tickets. They were astonished that the brochure had not been done by a Norwich firm.
‘Not being from Norfolk shouldn’t be a barrier to creating something that fits well’ – well, up to a point. I think an agency from Brazil, or even Cardiff, might find it a bit of a stretch, if only for logistical reasons. Colchester isn’t the other side of the world but I stand by my point that knowing the area and experiencing the brand first-hand makes a difference.
Tom
Hmm, let’s not get carried away. Knocking out the identity for a festival is hardly a difficult job. There’s really no need to immerse yourself in the ‘brand’. Mere complication for what is, after all, a logo, a website, a brochure cover and a few ads. Anyone with a degree of design competency and an understanding of what the festival is (again, hardly difficult to grasp) could do it.
I do like that your ‘very sophisticated’ friends were astonished though…
Cheers!
As a former resident of Norwich and a professional advertising bod’, I don’t agree with everything above.
The principle reason for changing agencies (isn’t it always the case) must surely have been a lack of results generated by previous campaigns. While Norfolk and Norwich in particular can be a right sod to get to, the festival has never been a significant event, regionally, let alone nationally. And you can’t spend public funds without being able to show improvements in attendance.
As for the idea that English football fans aren’t jingoistic… Of course they are, and like all clients who expect miracles, even when the product isn’t that great… they forgive everything, if a miracle gets delivered!