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Firedog needed to be responsible for the full brand creation remit, which extended to the following elements: Brand strategy • Key messages • Testing • Visual brand identity development • Brand guideline bible • Truck branding (including interior graphics) • Print, merchandising & promotional • Online brand (for interim & full launch website) • Motion graphics for TV, big screens and online • Mobile brand guidelines.
BBC Blast is a creative forum that aims to inspire and motivate young people in the UK to realise their talents in art, dance, film, music and writing. The initial Blast brand was a 3-year pilot that had achieved sufficient interest and support within the BBC for it to become a mainstream BBC Learning and Education brand. The primary focus of the initiative is ‘Blast on Tour’ which is taking to the road this summer with a mobile creative studio offering digital media and creative experiences to young people. It’s more than a truck – think dream mobile workshop space crossed with a fully equipped media production studio.
Firedog was awarded the contract to create the Blast brand for the BBC after a five-way creative pitch. The challenge with BBC Blast was that it was essentially a brand that had evolved over a three year period and had, to the point when we started working on it, been controlled by the Blast youth panel. We felt that it would be dangerous for a London branding consultancy to descend upon the brand and reinvent everything according to their own house style. Our research indicated that young people are very much into personalising their experiences and are becoming resistant to demographic profiling that places them into a particular youth segment. From these strategic pointers, we realised that we would need to develop a brand that could not only adapt to anyone’s sense of style, but also change with the times – as to maintain its street credibility. We developed a “perimeter” illustration around the core brand, which will be able to be customised at will by the audience. The teens are able to download a spacing template from the Blast site and literally create their own brand experience. Whilst this strategy raises obvious challenges for the Blast team, we believe that its real power lies in the future potential of the brand evolution process.
The Blast brand became a leading beacon for engaging with young creative youth around the UK. The brand subsequently extended from an online environment onto the television medium with a number of hosted creative festivals.
