If you’re great with people, and want to play a crucial part of our growth over the next few years …. give us a shout.
You’ll work closely with our clients, creative team and account managers looking after day-to-day projects and longer-term client development.
To be considered you’ll have:
A minimum of 3 years’ creative agency experience. But we’re open-minded and *keen to hear from you whatever your experience, so let us know who you are, what you love, and what you’re good at.
A track record managing and developing clients – scoping out requirements, managing budgets, schedules, and accurate record keeping.
Confidence in taking ownership from brief to delivery.
An understanding of the impact and value of quality creative.
Experience managing brand and campaign projects as well as an understanding of different marketing channels (OOH, Social, radio, TV etc).
Most of all, you’ll take great pride in your work and want to be a crucial part of our growth over the next few years.
The role will be based in our Leith office.
What can you expect from us?
We’re two-time winners of the Marketing Society’s Agency Employer Brand of the Year for the way we look after our people.
We take professional development seriously and you’ll get a load of opportunities to grow, including inspirational training courses from the UK’s brightest and best.
Then there’s the perks, great and small – from pension contributions to IFA advice, weekly yoga to monthly mindfulness, Vitality Healthcare, lots of work nights out, volunteering opportunities, and your birthday off.
If you’re a designer or art director who enjoys creating attention-seeking work, we need you NOW.
You’ll have an obsession for ideas, the guts to be different, and a hunger to learn and succeed.
You’ll also be confident with the usual Adobe programmes (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, After Effects).
We’re looking for the creative stars of tomorrow to work on a wide range of projects – from campaigns and brand identities to social content and photoshoots.
The role will be based in our Leith office.
You’ll have around 2 years’ top level agency experience. But we’re open-minded and keen to hear from you, so let us know who you are, what you love, and what you’re good at.
What can you expect from us?
At StudioLR, we treat our people right. We’ll put you on the best briefs around in a supportive environment where you’ll be able to shine. Just ask the last two Marketing Society Rising Creative Star Winners.
We’re two-time winners of the Marketing Society’s Agency Employer Brand of the Year, which means we’re award-winningly good at looking after you.
We take professional development seriously and you’ll have loads of opportunities to learn, including inspirational training courses from the UK’s brightest and best.
Then there’s the perks, great and small – from pension contributions to IFA advice, weekly yoga to monthly mindfulness, Vitality Healthcare, lots of work nights out, volunteering opportunities, and your birthday off.
It’s very easy to give advice on the hypothetically
perfect brand process. But in the real world brand building isn’t perfect. It
almost never starts with a blank page. Usually you’ve inherited a little
strategy here, some leftover messaging there, a bit of visual language here. If
you find yourself picking over the crumbs of your brand’s buffet, don’t worry –
we’ve all been there.
Taking our ingredients for a perfect brand – substance
and standout – and flipping them on their heads, we’ve developed a two-step
checklist to help you audit what you’ve got.
Step 1: Tap the
walls
You’re looking for that familiar hollow sound. Messages
that sound like press releases – full of boastful, empty adjectives. Ask
yourself hand on heart – is there anything in here that’s too much of a
stretch? What bits would fall down if we put weight on them? Your brand isn’t just
for show – it should be load-bearing.
Make sure you show more often than you say. Do
you constantly have to use words like ‘innovative’ to convince people (or maybe
convince yourself) that’s what your company is? The more you have to say it,
the less true it probably is.
Don’t be ashamed of hollow walls. Be honest and knock
them down.
Step 2: Strip
the wallpaper
Nobody will notice if you fade into the background – no
matter how beautifully crafted your velvet damask is.
Don’t be the car ad where it’s on a road going round a
mountain track. Don’t be the perfume ad with the athletic person in the water.
Don’t be the dependable, navy blue bank claiming they’re more human than every
other bank. Don’t be the packaging copy that thinks it’s the reader’s best bud.
These ideas are deader than disco.
Look at everything your brand does with brutal honesty
and ask yourself if it’s original or unusual in the market. Would you notice
this brand if you didn’t have a hand in building it? Is there a more interesting
way to say what you’re saying?
If you get rid of the dead wood – the hollow and the
dull – you’ll be well on your way to making something that’s not just passable,
or okay-ish, but sharp. Something with substance. Something that stands out.
Its meaning seems to be pretty flexible –
covering everything from a 20-page wordsoup and a series of unintelligible
diagrams, to ‘absolutely everything that a company ever does or even thinks
about doing’. A Google search for ‘What is brand strategy?’ or ‘What is
creative strategy?’ brings up a few unhelpful head-scratchers too.
So, for a recent talk to students and lecturers
at Dublin’s Maynooth University, we took Mark’s words to heart and challenged
ourselves to define brand strategy without using any jargon whatsoever. The
result:
Strategy = Deliberately doing
things in a specific way
It’s not profound, but for us that’s what it
all boils down to. Strategy isn’t useful on paper. Its use is in the real
world. In removing subjectivity and misinterpretation. In adding focus. In
getting lots of people (with competing priorities and different skills) to do
things in a specific way that adds up to a single coherent picture.
Ask your people to be ‘the best’ and you might
find some teams try to be the fastest, some the safest, some the cheapest, some
the most innovative. Suddenly some people are working to make the product
better looking, some longer lasting, some more widely available, some more
exclusive. Someone’s working on making the website more serious while someone
else is writing jokes for the ads. It’s carnage on the inside so you can
guarantee the signals picked up by your punters on the outside don’t make much
sense either.
But ask your people to deliberately do
things in a specific way – like being the simplest company in your sector,
or the most creative, or the safest… and suddenly you’re united. You’re
strategic. And no matter how bad a day you’re having, you know the right way to
do things.
Recently, Dave, our Head of Creative Strategy, hosted a webinar about ‘localism’ and what brands can do about the post-lockdown tourism downturn. Dave’s talk was so illuminating that we thought we’d give you a brief overview.
Since travelling is unravelling…
During the recent Time-That-Must-Not-Be-Named
there was little choice but to turn to local amusements, amenities, and
attractions. While this has been beneficial for the community around us, the
downside – particularly for those in the leisure industry – is that the
international tourism they rely on to survive has taken a serious downturn. So
what do we do?
Let’s face the situation honestly: 1. International tourism will take time to recover 2. Recruitment difficulties are limiting what you’ve got to offer 3. Long term, sustainability has to become a focus.
If the numbers aren’t coming in from overseas, there’s only
one way to turn. And it could be the silver lining to the long, dark Covid
cloud. So let’s give it a bash.
We could try: 1. Driving up local and domestic visitor numbers to fill the short term shortfall 2. Making it easier to attract and retain capable, invested staff 3. Building sustainable relationships, from supply chain to sentiment. And there’s already a name for it! This is the resurgence of ‘localism’.
Is it time to be a local hero?
– Michelle Heller, our office/finance manager and local hero
This goes wider than tourism – ‘localism’ is, ironically, a
global, cross-sector trend. If you don’t believe us, maybe you’ll believe a
little Californian start-up called Google?
“We’re witnessing a renewed commitment to local communities. To win hearts and minds, global brands are rethinking their strategies by adapting to a more localized approach. They’re finding community connections and embracing local pride and thinking, all while adding a hyperlocal lens to creative work.”
And the stats back it up. There was a 63.3% rise in the
number of people spending at local specialists like butchers, greengrocers and
bakers. So, what’s the problem? What’s stopping us hitting that potential?
Well, in short, the local community can often be turned off it they feel that: 1. Tourists are your priority 2. Profit is your priority 3. Your brand is notauthentic.
The only solution is to make sure you’re being true to your
brand and your community. Not condescending, not over-selling, and always
genuine.
Consider these two questions: 1. What do you want to be famous for? A single, sharp brand idea that underpins what we choose to say and do. Our equivalent of Harley Davidson’s ‘Freedom’. 2. How do you want to come across? A clear set of personality traits that shape the way we say and do those things. Our equivalent of Nike’s inspiring, powerful tone.
If you’ve got solid answers to the two prompts above, it sounded like you’re ready for…
Our sever springboards to being a local hero
With these Seven Springboards to refer back to, you’ll have
no trouble winning over the local market. Keep these in mind and bringing your
brand home won’t be a bother!
#1 – ‘For’, Not ‘To’
Look at your community’s needs, issues, and barriers. Where
could your brand credibly make a difference? It’s not about charity donations
or CSR initiatives, it’s about using your strengths and resources to offer
something the community actually wants.
#2 – Community Isn’t Competitive
How could you collaborate with local people, groups, and
businesses to create something better than the sum of its parts?
#3 – Let Them Behind the Curtain
Move away from the ‘fake’, polished exterior – let people
see the real deal behind the scenes. Encourage and enable teams to create,
share, and enjoy themselves!
#4 – Help Tourists & Locals Swap Roles
Locals are in the know – they find the unspoilt gems. How
can you give tourists a taste of that insider experience? Tourists are
carefree, on an adventure, discovering new things. How can you give locals a
taste of that freedom? Weaving them together could be fruitful long term.
#5 – The Real Thing
Local audiences are in the know and thrive on word of mouth
– you can’t pull the wool. Avoid over-hyping things, or just paying lip service
to your community. Embrace realism – visually and verbally.
What’s unique about your community’s character? How can you
embrace that to build a feeling of belonging?
If you’re going to reference local culture, make sure you
know it well.
#6 – Go to Them
Going beyond your fence – how can you take your attraction
out into the community?
#7 – Treat it Like a Pilot
From exclusive new offerings to targeted campaigns,‘local’ could be a great place to test new approaches. Capture as you go – in film, photos and interviews. Locals need to see other locals enjoying your attraction before they’ll realise it’s for them too.
Could bringing your brand home be the short- and long-term answer you’ve been looking for? Thanks for reading, we hope you’ve found something to chew on. If you’d like to see what we can do for your brand’s strategy, get in touch Andy or Dave:
What do sound engineers and marketers have in common? Firstly: Both insist on ‘testing, testing’. Secondly: The good ones make things crystal clear. But clear doesn’t necessarily mean loud.
“1,2…1,2…2,2…”
There’s a misconception in our world sometimes that volume = victory. That the more you raise the noise, the easier you’ll be heard.
But
getting your message across isn’t about turning it up – it’s about cutting
through. Clarity isn’t achieved through sheer force of decibels. It’s about
choosing what to amplify rather than just
blindly turning the master volume to ten like seemingly all train station P.A.
operators do. If you want the 0925 service to reach its final destination of the
quaint town of Engaged Customer, you have to stop off on the way at Cleartown,
Plainville, and the famous, bustling station known as Get Yer Pointa Cross.
FACE THE MUSIC
You’ve
got to hit the sweet spot between your frequency and your environment. To
create harmony between your message and your audience. And this doesn’t
require a raw power approach. It takes a deft touch. Balance, precision,
consideration. You have to be self-aware enough to know when you’re going too
hard or not hard enough. You have to listen carefully for feedback. You have to
be keenly attuned to the room.
Have you ever been to a gig and it just…didn’t sound right?
Maybe it was too bassy, too muffled. Or too loud and buzzy. Maybe the singing
was too quiet or all the loud stuff felt like it was at one side of the room.
Or it could be that the sound just didn’t have enough meat. It’s understandable – there’s a million things that
could go wrong. So much equalising, balancing, counterbalancing. Not just anyone
can squeeze magic out of four teenagers, two cheapo guitars, and a
malfunctioning, three-stringed bass.
STRIKE UP THE BRAND
Yep, a lot can go awry. There’s only one way to get them
screaming “ONE MORE TUNE, ONE MORE TUNE” – you’ve got to take the time to
listen. To really open the ears, take in the crowd and get an overview of the
experience of the gig-goer.
You’ve got to identify the nuances in the sound and coax out
only the gooiest of bits. Because every brand has something sweet in its sound.
An intriguing frequency or tone in there somewhere. This little nugget of
interest could be anything – an element of how it’s produced, it could be a
distinctive flavour, a feeling that you don’t get from anything else – it
doesn’t matter.
Every brand out there has some small ingredient that makes
it worth listening to. That morsel must be identified, nurtured, and protected.
It has to be balanced in the mix so it’s not overpowered, yet it can’t be out
there by itself or it’ll sound isolated and maybe even jarring. Getting the
balance right means you can put your best foot forward and create a harmony
between your best tones and timbres and the ones you’d prefer be pushed to the
background.
OWN YOUR WAVELENGTH
It’s a two-way street, too. Having your own frequency means
people know where to go for a certain vibe. It means they know what ears to
bring when they’re tuning in. If you’re clear about what you’re saying (and who
you’re saying it to), you’ll find you don’t have to shout.
To be heard, you have to say your piece in a different way.
A way that better resonates between both what you’re offering and what the
customer wants. Finding the sweetest sound for your voice. Finding the
frequency that puts shivers up spines. Owning your wavelength.
OVER AND OUT
So don’t just turn it up – craft a sound that’s uniquely
yours. One that carries your voice clearly to the eardrums of the world. No
pops, no fuzz, no distortion – just hi-res, 3D surround sound marketing.
And, like the bonus tracks nobody asked for,
we’ll end with the duds – the sound production/marketing jokes that didn’t cut
it for the intro:
What did the sound engineer say to the marketer who was
making coffee? I’ll have one two, one two.
What did the marketer say to the sound engineer? Were
you expecting that feedback?
What’s the difference between a good marketer and a bad sound guy? Whether the buzz was created deliberately or not.
In this game, we’re all professional attention seekers.
We crave the public’s gaze more than a streaker at a cup final. The trouble
with attention though, is it’s hard to hold.
Being disruptive and getting instant attention is easy. It’s so easy babies instinctively do it as soon as they board a Ryanair flight. But there’s a big difference between an instant ear-ache and a lasting memory.
The stuff that lasts – that requires commitment.
Think of how long Red Bull’s given you wiiiiings, or try
to remember the first time Kit-Kat told you to have a break – these are
timelessly ownable concepts that were achieved through timeless dedication.
The general public really don’t care about our brands. They don’t sit
eagerly anticipating our ‘key messages’. They’re busy living. They’ll maybe
catch half a TV ad on the way back from the loo, a glimpse of a social post
while thumbing through Instagram, a passing slice of a billboard while driving
home. If we haven’t thought ruthlessly about the big idea we want to be famous
for, we stand very little chance of being famous for anything.
Like Guinness World Records.
Let’s say there’s a fella who tries a different record
every week: most people in a VW mini, then longest toenails, then most tattoos,
then highest freefall without a parachute.
And another person who just does baths of beans. They dedicate their life to beanology and bathonomy. They pore over different models and volumes, they become
an authority on the bean-bath rules, study the different brands with different
tins and who has the most beans per can, etc etc.
Who’s more likely to break a world record?
Did Michael Jordan spend his youth committing evenly to
a bit of basketball, some crochet, a wee touch of theoretical physics, writing
a novel about Louis XIV, and rehearsing the double bass for the big hoedown?
No, he played basketball.
He shot for the hoop again and again and again probably
hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of times until he was a master. He
dedicated his young life to one idea. (Before becoming a largely
unsuccessful baseball player and actor but he was already famous for basketball
by then so we’re ignoring that).
Every ball that left his huge hands didn’t swoop through
the hoop flawlessly. Some dinged the rim. Some banged awkwardly against the
backboard. But he always aimed for the same thing. It’s a numbers game and you
can stack the odds in your favour by having focus. By throwing all your creativity
at one single, sharp idea.
So go.
Research your tins. Measure your tub. Slide in and let
the cold, viscous tomato goodness caress your skin like an expensive balm…
The human brain. So clever it named itself. The most
complex structure in the universe, some say (those people have obviously never
been trapped in the ever-shifting maze of the IKEA shop floor).
Yep, the brain is a beautiful thing. Not aesthetically,
of course, but in what it’s capable of. But one thing our minds aren’t so hot
at is focusing on multiple things at once. Apparently “the brain can’t
effectively handle more than two complex, related activities at once”.
Well, let’s test that theory out – try to multiply 13 x 17 and remember the name of the guy who played Tony Soprano and envision the colour of your front door and conjure up what your high school gym teacher looked like…your beautiful brain just turns to a formless buzz of white noise.
Our brains filter out what they can in order to
accomplish one or two tasks at a time effectively. That’s why when Derren Brown
gets his cards out and starts to ask for your National Insurance number, you
don’t notice that he’s nicked your watch.
Throw us a ball, and we’ll catch it. Throw us three, and
we will more likely than not (unless circus performers are currently reading
this blog) drop them all.
This is exactly why we need to keep messages to a minimum in advertising. If a t-shirt says:
MIKE’S MOTORS of MUSSELBURGH –– Best deals on old cars in town –– ‘We always match competitors’ prices’ £££ Get a quote today £££ “Don’t pay more than what you’re here for”
There’s no telling which message you’ll remember. If
any. So even if you do remember something, it might not be the important part.
In the over-saturated world of advertising, it’s tough
enough getting people to take in one message,
never mind five. Keep your
communications single-minded, straightforward, and as soak-up-able as they can
possibly be.
Think of it like texting your ex – keep the messages to an absolute minimum.
We love to learn and in a normal year you’ll find us on
a tonne of training courses. Whether it’s trying something new or just hearing
a fresh perspective on something we do every day, training keeps the wheels
turning. Last year was a little different. Neither us, nor our wheels, were
going anywhere. So we committed to remote learning and four of us studied Mark
Ritson’s Marketing Week Mini MBA in marketing.
It was extremely valuable. To anyone thinking of doing
it – go for it. It’s quite a big time commitment on top of a busy work life but
you won’t regret it. Here are a few little gems that have stuck with us…
1. Embrace the
humility of marketing.
The second you take a job in the industry you lose your
genuine opinion. You’re no longer a normal customer and your opinion is biased
and dangerous. The trick is to know you’re not the customer and make sure you
connect with them. Understanding your weakness becomes your biggest strength.
Once you accept that you’re in the dark, you’re going to want to switch the
lights on. Enter Market Research. One of the first things you’ll learn is that
while your brand means everything to you – it means almost nothing to your
customers.
2. Don’t take it out of the horse’s mouth
Research insights are most powerful when you don’t
paraphrase them. Ideally present video footage or audio recordings… if not try
direct quotes – ‘straight from the horse’s mouth’.
3. Kill the
hypothetical customer.
The ‘hypothetical customer’ never surprises us, does
exactly what we want, and somehow always has the needs we want them to have.
They’re all basically the same so they make marketing plans very easy to
develop. Unfortunately they don’t exist. And marketing plans built on them are
doomed to fail. Segment your market based on real data not stereotypes. And
remember they’re individual people. Never, ever try to average them out – the average
person in the UK has one testicle.
4. Segmentation is making the
map. Targeting is taking the hike.
Good market segmentation should be purely
descriptive not strategic – it’s not about you, it’s about the market. Once you
have the market segmented up then you can pack your bag and trek onto targeting
– where you’ll be glad to hear it is all about you. You can’t please everyone
though so think carefully about where you want to go. And where you don’t.
5. Don’t be in a rush to
position your brand.
Be disciplined and make sure you do your strategy
in the right order. Segment the whole market first, pick your targets second,
and only then should you think about how to position your brand. Otherwise who
are you positioning it for? And how could it possibly be relevant to them if
you didn’t know who they were when you did it?
6. Don’t get carried away with
all the brand fluff.
When you do come to position your brand
don’t get bogged down by all the latest lingo (DNA, essence, promise, purpose,
proposition, beliefs, values, principles, personality, voice – we could go on).
Keep it simple and make sure you’ve answered the important question: “What do
we want to stand for to our target customer? What should they think of when
they think of us?”. Remember, this has to be clear enough to unite a tonne of
people with conflicting priorities and different backgrounds and experiences. If
your computer died just as you were about to save your positioning slide, you
should be able to remember it word for word.
7. The only difference between a
brand and a commodity is meaning.
Both have a function, and both have a price,
but brands add meaning where commodities don’t. Deviate too far from the
meaning you’re trying to build and you’ll erode your brand back into a
commodity – which is, of course, a race to the bottom.
8. You’re more likely to be too
cheap than too expensive.
Pricing is tricky, with risks of going too
high or too low. But if you’re on the fence take heart in knowing where history
stands on this: 80-90% of pricing errors are underpricing.
9. Look at the job before you
choose the tool.
A plumber who arrives at the job with only
one tool is a bad plumber. A good plumber looks at the job and goes back to the
van to get the right tool. The same is true for creative. An open-minded,
output-agnostic approach will always beat a prescriptive, fixed approach. All
media plans take into account your audience, but the best ones take into
account your brand and your idea too. A brand built on being ‘big, bold, and
untamed’ might suit outdoor more than editorial. While a brand
built on being ‘discrete and personal’ should maybe only be seen in private –
like on mobile ads.
Imagine a football coach marking out areas for exercises.
He’s whistling away as he innocently lays out those cheap, plasticky little UFO-cones.
But, with every cone he picks from his mesh sack and lays out, one of the
annoying little kids sneaks behind him and puts it back in the bag. Cone after
cone he places delicately on the astro, cone after cone the kids pick it back
up. After five minutes of graft, he looks up to get the lay of the land, and
he’s got nothing. Not a marker on the ground. Everything he put out there –
gone.
This is what happens when you have a ‘nae sayer’ in a brainstorm. The aptly-named devil’s advocates may be trying to help, but ideas, especially freshly-born ones, need space to breathe. They’re barely formed, and someone’s already saying they’re not right.
These delicate little ideas need to be nurtured,
cultivated, and actively grown in a safe place – a creative greenhouse where
nothing is thrown away.
Editing while you’re still coming up with the ideas is a
very dangerous game.
Imagine opening your Lego pirate ship set and throwing
away bits that don’t immediately look useful. Then, when you get to the end,
you realise you needed all those unassuming little pieces to actually hold the
mast up and set the sails.
It might not be immediately clear why an idea is
relevant, or where it’s going to go, but even if you’re taking a line from that
idea you were gonna chuck, or a word, or a ghost of a whisper of a rumour of a
thought. It still deserves its place at the table.
Original ideas are messy. They don’t arrive the right
way up. Quite often they don’t even have an obvious start, or end, or shape.
Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull described them as “ugly babies” that “are not beautiful, miniature versions of the adults they will grow up to be. They are truly ugly: awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete”.
But with an open mind and a little patience, an idea can
go anywhere.
John Steinbeck said “Write freely and as rapidly as possible and throw the whole thing on paper. Never correct or rewrite until the whole thing is down.” And this guy won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
Whatever you do, don’t be the fireman at the BBQ dousing
the glowing coals before we even get a sniff of a sausage.
Stay positive and let ideas do their own thing. You’ll
be surprised where they go.