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SPRING 2016 INSIDE: / KEEPING THOSE NEW YEAR RESOLUTIONS / CREATING AND CURATING GREAT CONTENT / TRENDS AND THOUGHT LEADERSHIP ON THE FUTURE OFFICE / STORY TELLING FOR A GOOD NIGHT’S SLEEP + MORE PIN POINTS…
WE’VE STARTED 2016 WITH A...
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/ LET’S KEEP FOCUSED ON OUR GOOD INTENTIONS / Like us, you probably spent the New Year reflecting, evaluating, reviewing and setting the occasional resolution. Fuelled by optimism and aspiration, filled with purpose and resolve, a time to take stock and become bigger, better, faster, stronger (at least that’s what the ads always tell us).
We make our way to the gym, start new diets and maybe even try to sober up a little during Dry January. But great intentions can often fall by the wayside.
Underpinning the comms plan, we also make sure there are clear objectives and key performance indicators (KPIs) against which we can track progress and measure success. To get a feel for how the approach works in practice, take a look at some of the behind-the-scenes stories featured in this edition of Pulse.
It can be the same with your marketing aspirations. New projects, ambitious growth plans, expansion into new sectors. Perhaps you hope to engage with different consumers or increase market share? Whatever your ambitions, it’s all too easy for them to get derailed by day-to-day demands.
Ultimately, our resolution is simple – to make sure you are doing what customers value – so you can drive revenue, loyalty and profitability. Sounds like a plan?
That’s why, at Point 6, we approach our projects with a simple yet highly effective plan, using our ‘three Ds’: Define. Design. Deliver.
Let Point 6 help make your resolutions for 2016 a reality.
To start, we’ll help you define a clear strategy. Smart, creative thinking based on thorough research of your audience, competitors and the market. We’ll talk to your customers, mystery shop the sector, and really understand their experiences. We’ll look at how they think, feel and want to engage with your brand. We aim to understand what connects people at a personal level – what we call ‘the value experience’. This is the world of evidence-based design. We’ll develop a value proposition which provides insights for the creative stage, where we’ll develop concepts and ideas, produce visuals and cultivate a tone of voice which collectively bring your brand to life and resonate with your customers. Our final step is to deliver the designs and assets to you, along with guidelines for their implementation. This can range from packaging, digital, film and photography through to a whole marcoms tool kit.
email: hello@point6.co.uk
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/ A TASTE OF THE FUTURE AT FOOD MATTERS LIVE It’s no secret. The Point 6 team do love their food! In November 2015, designers Em and Sam had their tastebuds truly tantalised at the Food Matters Live event. As part of our research into the latest trends in healthy eating, they were able to sample everything from cereals and energy drinks through to health products, supplements, sweet treats and glorious gin. One of the key trends our intrepid researchers observed was the number of natural and superfood products on offer – packed full of proteins, vitamins, minerals and antioxidants. The ladies chatted to several artisan start-up businesses about the challenges of creating an impact with limited budget – a fascinating conversation that has now turned into a handful of live projects. Back in the studio, our resident illustrator Enya was inspired to create a visual feast in her own unique style. If you’d like to see more of Enya’s food illustration, you can follow her on Instagram @enya_todd or visit at www.enyasartofpatisserie.com
/ DUTCH DESIGN WEEK WAS A SCREAM During a mad, non-stop week in October, the Dutch city of Eindhoven opens its doors (literally) to the best and the most exciting people working in design. The city transforms itself into a creative maelstrom, where practically anything goes. And hooray! We got to go and play there for a day! A highlight among the thousands of exhibits – 2,400 designers in 100 locations – was the old clock factory (the Klokgebouw), which hosted hundreds of beautiful, curious and boundary-pushing exhibits. The innovation on show was astonishing. Our absolute favourite there was a rounded-corner plywood cube called Kuub, which was actually a standalone light switch. Depending on which way you placed the cube, you could dim, turn on or turn off your lights. Totally new thinking and a deeply cool and simple product (although not so good if you have a toddler who loves playing with bricks!). There’s a great video at www.kuub.us. However, there was one big, big frustration. Many of the designs spoke to the need to feel, to handle, to experience the products, but the most common sign in the whole of the exhibitions was ‘DO NOT TOUCH’! If you can only look but not touch a product, you’ll never feel the full impact of the designer’s intent, and my goodness, there were a lot of fantastic designs just aching to be touched. We also packed in a unique experience at the eclectic Circus of Life Gardens, just a few hundred metres from the Klokgebouw in Strijp-S. One of the exhibits was a scream-booth. It was a chance to let off steam and get your loudest scream uploaded. So Point 6’s vocal excitement is now recorded for posterity and lives on in the ether, along with a thousand other screams! Visit www.ddw.nl.
/ GET UP & GLOW – CELEBRATING 10 YEARS OF CREATIVE LIGHT DISPLAYS In November last year, a select group from the Point 6 design team – Rita, Dave and Sam – travelled with Creative Director Russ to Eindhoven for the city’s GLOW event, which was celebrating its 10th anniversary. For a whole week, at nightfall, the exhibition takes over the city’s landscape with huge light installations. The team were dazzled as they walked through the city guided solely by glimmering lights. The spirit and grandeur of the event definitely sparked a lasting impression. In fact, our team members were left wondering how they could recreate a DIY version of their favourite installations at home.
@Point6Design
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/ CREATING, CURATING AND CONNECTING / Content creation and curation is a big growth area for many of our clients and a strong focus at Point6.
we FACT FIND
With both B2C and B2B customers embracing and expecting to communicate across different channels, it’s more important than ever that brands get smart about the content they create and how it is deployed. The aim, after all, is to maximise engagement.
we research
At its best, great content – whether it’s a tweet, a LinkedIn post, an image, an infographic, or a crafted article – must be relevant, topical and interesting. It may also need to express your brand personality and perhaps be amusing, clever or thought provoking. In short, it must be valued by its target audience – people who are looking for involving stories. Great content also needs to be well written and optimised for search engines, so it can be more easily found by your target audience and syndicated across channels to give the optimum return for budget.
/ BEHIND THE SCENES Creating and curating great content relies on a suite of skills deployed by our team of creative experts. We work with our clients to define the value propositions, target audiences and key messages, which then inspire our creative work. Our starting point is to find the insights and unique angles that bring the proposition to life. Our team speaks to clients, their customers and leading industry specialists to gather the stories, facts and figures. They conduct research, attend exhibitions and benchmark competitors to really understand the hot topics, challenges and trends. We write the questions and interview the experts, while recording, filming and photographing people and places to bring the stories to life.
we interview
email: hello@point6.co.uk
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Interviewing and photographing Jo Tulej from The Future Laboratory for RetailScene magazine, for Philips Lighting.
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we FILM
able office building, for Philips
m, Europe’s most sustain an at The Edge in Amsterda
um
Filming architect Babette Bo
Lighting
we craft copy
/ CONNECTED CURATION Our team then uses its full range of copywriting, art direction, infographic creation and design skills to produce a toolkit of assets to share the content in as many channels as possible. An example might be a designed web page containing the full article content, alongside a short sharable video of a key insight from the expert, which complements the broader piece and can be shared on the client’s YouTube channel. We will also create social images and summary post copy for Twitter and LinkedIn, targeted to specific audiences.
/ SHARE AND SHARE A LIKE Your goals may be to drive engagement, increase ‘share of voice’ or to drive sales, directly or indirectly. Whatever your needs, it makes sense to get the most value out of the content you have invested in and give it the best chance of getting noticed and shared or liked. Whatever your goals, we can help you to boost your brand’s popularity.
we get social
@Point6Design
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/ THE OFFICE OF THE FUTURE IS NOW A REALITY / REACHING A NEW AUDIENCE The way we work and where we work has changed dramatically over the last 20 years. What makes a great workspace is now a conversation that involves everyone from developers and landlords through to investors, architects and interior designers. It’s also a concern for the tenants of office buildings – from the CEO level downwards to finance officers, estate managers, IT directors, HR managers and employees. Philips Lighting asked us to create and share relevant thought-provoking content that would engage with these different audiences.
content creation
Copywriting and designing content to bring the key topics and themes to life.
email: hello@point6.co.uk
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/ CREATING CONTENT TO BE VALUED
/ SHARED MESSAGING
To start the process and to discover which key topics were driving online discussion, we conducted a ‘social listening’ exercise. This created our blueprint for FutureOffice – a thought leadership platform and online hub, sharing insights from experts and exploring trends.
Content was hosted online on lighting.philips.com and shared on social networks Twitter and LinkedIn. The content hub will continue to grow in 2016, with new articles, posts and assets being added each month. The client also plans for the content to be localised for different markets, so the Point 6 team produced a short briefing film to be shared internally to simplify the proposition and get the markets on board with the project objectives.
We researched the hot topics with our client and together agreed a content plan. The next step was to identify the key messages and stories we wanted to share, as well as the experts we could meet to glean insights, experience and expertise. The Point 6 team worked flexibly – not only writing the article summaries and agreeing the interview questions, but also meeting and interviewing people, while overseeing the art direction, photography and filming.
WEBPAGE DESIGN
Creating a logical user journey.
A social toolkit to engage and increase reach.
@Point6Design
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internal comms
getting social
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/ SLEEP SUPPORT SERVICE HELPING CLINICIANS SUPPORT THEIR PATIENTS / INTRO The work done by Sleep Support Service is absolutely amazing and inspirational. They support people who suffer from OSA (Obstructive Sleep Apnoea) by monitoring appropriate use of their breathing mask by patients remotely and giving them ongoing support over the phone.
Over the past year we’ve helped the talented team at Philips Respironics in the UK to create a value proposition for their Sleep Support Service.
/ DEFINING OUR MISSION We entered this project with very little knowledge of OSA or the Sleep Support Service, so to achieve a meaningful value proposition, we went on quite a journey – interviewing and filming patients, clinicians, physicians, nurses and procurement professionals, all in search of that moment of truth. We soon realised that this was no easy task, as clinicians, procurement and patients had different priorities. How could we bring insights from these groups together in one compelling presentation?
/ UNIQUE INSIGHTS We spent many days doing in-house research on topics associated with the condition, and we also researched the NHS and the language they used. We mapped out the whole process before travelling to Bradford Royal Infirmary NHS Trust in Yorkshire, UK to film and interview clinicians and patients. During our interviews, we learnt a great deal and heard many stories from OSA sufferers – sometimes sobering, but often with a happy ending. What drove us most was knowing that at the end of the experience, we would be able to create a tool, using targeted and meaningful design, to help clinicians understand the support available to them as they help their patients cope with OSA.
OSA
/ ADDING VALUE Once the value proposition was agreed, we first worked on a ‘Patient Welcome Pack’. We had learnt during our research that people with OSA are usually extremely tired and often have poor eyesight, so with this in mind, we used large copy, clear and friendly tone of voice, infographics and pictures to make it inviting for patients.
email: hello@point6.co.uk
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Within the first month We’ll review how you’re doing and discuss how to help you more
/ PATIENT JOURNEY
Your PAP prescription is sent to us
Follow up
We contact you 48hrs later to make sure you are ok
We store your information on a secure database
At 3 months Once again, we’ll check how you’re doing and help you if you need it
Set up At 12 months We’ll call you to see how you’ve done over the last year and send you a brand new mask*
We deliver your PAP device and mask
/ SHARING THE MESSAGE We then moved on to build the ‘Sleep Support Service tablet presentation’, an interactive iPad tool that would work as a hub for the sales team. Our objective was to humanise the service by introducing the ‘people at the other end of the phone’. We included photos and interviews of the team, which was also a great opportunity to showcase their vast clinical expertise and demonstrate that they are much more than a call centre! To tackle this big mission, Point 6 collaborated with some of our talented friends: the photographer Vanessa Champion and filmmakers and editors Jonathan Warner and Simon Drew.
Teri Challier;
“When developing a value proposition for our Sleep Support Service, Point 6 took the time to understand our needs and the needs of our customers. This 12 month project challenged us all, but Point 6’s passion and perseverance has resulted in a value proposition and interactive tablet presentation that gives our service a strong identity and clear positioning.”
@Point6Design
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Marketing manager & Kara Slaney;
Product manager Philips Respironics
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/ EXPLORING THE NEW CUSTOMER JOURNEY / RetailScene was a first for Philips – a magazine with a strong lifestyle feel, which was then adapted to different platforms.
Launched at EuroShop, ‘The World’s Leading Retail Trade Fair’, in Düsseldorf, RetailScene is a coffee-table magazine focused on how lighting can help create exceptional customer experiences, targeted specifically at European fashion and food retailers.
/ A TRAILBLAZING FIRST FOR PHILIPS LIGHTING Briefed by Philips to ‘do something quite different’, RetailScene content was co-curated, designed and written by Point 6. The 84-page magazine was selected as one of a handful of ‘trailblazing’ creative projects so we worked closely with the Philips Design and Brand teams.
/ ILLUMINATING CONTENT IS KING We worked with leading fashion and food industry experts and retail gurus to create or edit content for the articles. We created a magazine which wasn’t ‘product focused’, but instead looked at current and future trends in retail, told insightful customer stories and reported on new Philips innovations, all without getting bogged down in technical talk. Our Point 6 team also conducted interviews and photoshoots, including a memorable one with the late, celebrated design guru, Rodney Fitch in the library of our very own ‘local’ – The Alice House in Queen’s Park, West London.
/ DRIVING MORE VALUE FROM THE ASSETS While the project was initially print based, we were easily able to create an additional online version, hosted on the retail pages of the Philips site. We also then re-purposed the content for targeted social sharing, engaging with the diverse target audience and driving traffic to the site.
email: hello@point6.co.uk
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/ HOLLAND & BARRETT UK AND EU ROLLOUT / Having previewed our packaging rollout story in the summer edition of Pulse, we were cock-a-hoop to see our delightful designs feature in The Apprentice on the BBC. Sir Alan Sugar set his contestants the challenge of getting to grips with the healthy snack market, and enlisted our friends at H&B to guide them through the task. Having pride of place on shelf in-store, our packs played a starring role as the cameras followed the teams carrying out their market research. The design team here at Point 6 have now rolled out designs for over 300 SKUs, that’s nearly one for each day of the year! Great to see also that Dutch-owned chain De Tuinen are rolling out the work we initially created here in the UK, so their clients are now enjoying the ‘The Good Life’ too. So if your packaging needs a health check for the new year, our team would love to help make the transformation a reality.
@Point6Design
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PIN POINTS
New year and new arrival!
6 of the best
Washing away dirty habits
A new addition to the Point 6 family
Some achievable goals for 2016
The rise of eco packaging
Point 6 had some fantastic news at the end of last year, when our extremely talented designer Hayley welcomed a beautiful baby girl into the world. We were delighted to have an office visit from a very proud mum and miles of smiles from baby Charlotte. Many congratulations Mummy Hayley! What an exciting year ahead for you!
Formed by founding partners Eric and Adam in 2001, Method is a company that produces ethical, environmentally and chemically clean cleaning products! They are true market leaders in their field taking their cruelty-free, sustainable and green values very seriously and packaging them into some truly beautiful minimalistic bottles.
Let this year’s resolution be a bold and simple one – stop kidding yourself. Don’t sit in misery during some of the rainiest months of the year thinking about all of the new year resolutions that you have already broken. Let’s all just take a look at some resolutions that we might actually be able to achieve! I’m just saying take a look... no other commitment required! / 1 Chew your food Food is good and it is essential for life. Cutting it out makes literally no sense. We know we all would like to be a couple of pounds lighter, so we have found a simple solution. Chew! Due to busy lifestyles we are not even taking the time to chew our food! Properly chewed food can be processed and digested by your body better and will also leave you feeling more satisfied and fuller for longer.
In a galaxy far, far away… The Force awakens in Point 6
So much chat has been going around the studio about the new Star Wars film? Loads! Ever since the release of Star Wars Episode VII was announced we’ve heard nothing else. Graham had booked his tickets the very day the UK release was announced. Andy changed his desktop pictures to stills from the film. A number of us hit the cinemas over the festive period to relive our childhoods. A welltimed release by Disney in the run up to Christmas, the movie has generated a whole host of associated gadgets and toys. Em gifted her husband this amazing little BB-8 droid by Sphero – an app-enabled droid controlled via a smart device; he roams, he learns, he projects messages through augmented reality. Awesome! He most certainly is the droid we were looking for.
Designed by Karim Rashid these visual masterpieces are made from 100% recycled plastic that can be recycled again! / 2 Use the stairs Stairs are great, although they are usually partnered with an escalator or a lift, which renders them a rather less appealing option. However, walking up and down the stairs everyday will not only give you a glowing sense of achievement, but it is one step closer to eliminating the need for an expensive gym membership that you are never going to use!
/ 3 Smile, even on Mondays There is no longer any science to back up how many muscles are used when smiling because everyone smiles differently. But essentially the bigger your smile, the more muscles you’ll use. This will increase blood flow to your grinning cheeks making you look positively radiant whilst feeling fantastic. So smile! It’s good for you!
They also have produced some absolutely hysterical TV advertising campaigns. Be sure to check them out! Search ‘Method Advert’ on YouTube.
Point 6 like to party... Christmas 2015
Christmas is a season for partying and, at the end of last year, Point 6 dressed to impress by mimicking their favourite musical heroes. A night of high spirits, drink and karaoke proved to be Christmas cocktail of joy! The Best Dressed prize had to go to our newest Point Sixer, Dave, for letting his feminine side break free in an ode to Freddie Mercury, in some of the highest heels we have ever seen! Highlights from the evening included Andy and Laura’s expertly written quiz and Enya’s jaw dropping rap in Chinese. What hidden talents we have!
A sparkling innovation
Bio-based isothermal packaging In 2013 Veuve Clicquot presented the first 100% recyclable champagne packaging that can keep a pre-chilled bottle cold for two hours! In 2014 this isothermal box, made from potatoes and recycled paper, was redesigned into the beautiful form below to be more resilient and easier to transport. Genius!
/ 4 Put your phone down! The real world is passing by all around us as a result of our need to continuously stare at tiny screens. Even when sat among long-lost friends, our immediate reaction is to reach for our phone to show them the latest funny video on Facebook! So instead of looking at a picture of strangers sat on a beach on Instagram, go to the beach. Seen a picture of someone’s tasty breakfast? Don’t ‘like’ it, go and get yourself some breakfast! / 5 Go on holiday! We know funds may be tight, but holidays don’t have to be big, expensive get-aways to desert island shores! Holidays can simply be time off work in the great outdoors, just down the road from you. The photograph to the left may look like the furthest tip of land that you can travel to on earth, but in fact it was taken on British shores! Okay, it did rain for the majority of the week, but for that one day it didn’t. And it was glorious!
Champagne packaging made out of Champagne grapes!
In aid of Save the Children, and as part of the UK charity phenomenon of Christmas Jumper Day, Point 6 pulled on an array of truly heart warming woolly jumpers and raised £57!
2015 has brought a whole new level of innovation to the Veuve Clicquot house, which is now making use of the skin of all of its perfectly crushed grapes and turning it into packaging.
BEEautiful packaging
Honey packaged in natural materials FoodsCross believe that we should take real care in the area of food production and consumption. The provenance, method of cultivation and quantity of their harvest are all a result of them listening to the natural rhythms of their land. Sharing this environmental mantra, the packaging uses eco-friendly materials and handcrafted details, where even the sound it makes forms part of the ritual!
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/ 6 Get more sleep Easier said than done? What about last night when you stayed up to watch back to back episodes of Game of Thrones? Seriously, you can watch catch up TV any time. You’ve got some work to do tonight? That sucks. But you probably could have started two hours earlier, before trying to make #worksucks trend on Twitter. Just saying!
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@Point6Design
A Point 6 publication Get in touch on +44 (0)20 8962 5880 or email us at hello@point6.co.uk www.point6.co.uk
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