Curtain lifts on The Alex’s new identity

New logo for Alexandra theatre

As part of The Alexandra’s £650,000 revamp, Birmingham’s flagship theatre has unveiled a new brand identity. Developed by Birmingham based One Black Bear.

The creative work, which includes a new logo, was revealed this week, following a teaser campaign that ran through September.

The Alex’s head of marketing and communications, Hannah James, commented:. “Our new brand identity is a key part of this year’s investment programme. It is intended to improve our reputation amongst audiences and producers alike and establish ourselves as a competitive option for West End productions visiting Birmingham.

“We knew of One Black Bear through work they previously did in our sector. And we are delighted with their fresh new creative that reflects our Art Deco heritage, while giving us an elegant, contemporary feel. We were especially keen to drop the ‘Birmingham’ reference, everyone knows where we are! We’re keen to attract new audiences with an increase in premium programming and an improved customer experience. And a new look identity is a key part of this story.”

Lee Bryan, head of design at One Black Bear, added: “We are really proud of this work for The Alex. The teaser campaign, which ran on six sheets, in the press and on social media, created the desired anticipation about what was happening and the full reveal has now completed the relaunch story.”

New logo for Alexandra theatre

Did you know we do lots of corporate ID rebrands as well as naming and development for new brands and products. Get in touch with us here to see how we can help you.

New managing partner at One Black Bear

New Managing Partner for Birmingham creative agency

One Black Bear has promoted Kate Hartshorn to managing partner. The move will see Kate lead the agency alongside owners and founders, Richard Elwell and Jon Harrison.

Previously, Kate spent fifteen years with Big Communications – now known as Big Dog – as client services director and later, as managing partner. While there, she worked closely across a range of national and international brands. Having previously worked as associate planning director at One Black Bear for two years, Kate’s new role will now involve the broader remit. She will help develop the agency from its current 25 strong team whilst retaining planning, insight and client liaison responsibilities.

Richard Elwell of One Black Bear said: “I can’t overstate how pleased we are to have Kate in this role – she’s the brightest planning brain for miles around and genuinely a brilliant agency personality. Kate brings vast experience and ability and is a champion of ‘the big thought’. Her insight, intuition and forensic detail across briefs will further bolster our offering to clients.”

Kate added: “I’m really happy to be taking on this senior role within One Black Bear. The agency is in a great position following our best year to date and I’m really looking forward to driving our progress further by fighting for work that is truly effective and also, by supporting our staff to become best in class.”

New Managing Partner for Birmingham creative agency

If you’d like to tap into Kate’s huge talent for marketing, research and herding cats, drop her a note here.

Gold and silver awards for National Express at Roses

Birmingham award winning creative agency

We’re immensely proud to announce that last night in Manchester we won a gold for best radio commercial and a silver in the travel & tourism category for our National Express Look Beyond London campaign at The Roses Creative Awards.

Five Roses Creative Awards nominations

We’re really proud and honoured to be nominated for five awards at this year’s Roses Creative Awards.

Our Youth Voice website is nominated in the Website category.

The Look Beyond campaign for National Express is then nominated in four categories: Radio Commercial, Outdoor Campaign, Integrated Campaign and Travel & Tourism.

Last year saw us pick up gold in Annual Report and bronze in Online Advert or Campaign – both for St Basils.

Good luck to all the nominees and we’ll see you at the bar on May 10.

You can view the full bloom of nominations here.

A sweet start to 2018

One Black Bear kicks off 2018 by celebrating more sweet success and partnering with London-based, aspiring confectionery brand Mighty Fine – a brief that covers strategic planning, branding, advertising, PR and social media.

The brand, which started life as a small chocolate shop in Camden in 2014, is now stocked in stores nationwide including Harvey Nichols, Selfridges, Waitrose, Sainsbury’s and a number of select independent retailers. As well as some international stockists.

Kate Hartshorn, associate planning director, at One Black Bear commented: “It’s great to be working with such an up and coming business. We’ve helped them articulate what is special about their brand. Developing a positioning that is compelling to trade and consumers alike, and will help fulfil their ambition of becoming a household name.”

The agency has been tasked with relaunching Mighty Fine’s look as well as projecting the brand and broadening its awareness.

Speaking about the brief Kit Tomlinson, co-founder of Mighty Fine, commented: “One Black Bear is a top quality agency and we are really excited to be working side by side with them to make 2018 a spectacular year.”

This most recent appointment follows a brief from market leading frame supplier Arqadia – part of the international Larson Juhl group. One Black Bear was appointed following a competitive pitch. Arqadia marketing manager, Pauline Hutchinson, commented: “We were really impressed with One Black Bear’s approach. They really are an integrated agency with every discipline under one roof.”

Award winning Bears

After being on a bit of an award winning streak this year, (Travel Marketing, Roses, Drum Design, Scottish Creative, CIPR Pride) Wednesday night saw us nervously attend the Jam House in Birmingham (with a couple of pre-drinks inside us) carrying the weight of 18 nominations on our shoulders. The tension was high as we mingled with ex-colleagues, old friends and our peers from the region and beyond at the bun fight that unbelievably turns 20 this year.

At the end of a great evening, we’d amazingly picked up 10 pieces of glassware for clients St Basils, National Express, Youth Voice, Scottish Police Federation and Eurolines. Rather proudly, we won across a multitude of disciplines too, with posters, press ads, radio commercials, branding, websites, digital, publication design and online films all being bagged.

A massive congratulations to all the Bears involved in pushing forward great ideas that lead to a trip onto the podium.

You can see all the winners by clicking here. More pics from the night can be viewed by clicking here.

Two PR golds and a silver at CIPR PRide

Birmingham agency wins PR awards

On Friday night the Bears gatecrashed the PR party of the year and managed to get our paws on an amazing three CIPR Midland’s PRide awards.

Our fabulously creative PR and Social campaign for National Express #NotSuchADrag (promoting the route between London and Brighton in the face of the Southern Rail crisis) won gold in the Best Consumer Campaign and Silver in Best Use Of Social Media.

Then our Donate Your Homepage stunt for St Basils continued it’s winning streak by claiming a gold in the Best Use Of Digital category.

Our PR Director Bron Eames also got up on stage to present an award, sadly not to ourselves.

All in all it was quite a night and we take great (ahem) pride in the fact that we bagged such a haul only 12 months after launching our dedicated PR offering.

Birmingham agency wins PR awards

If you’d like to talk to an award winning creative agency, drop us a note saying: ‘Can you add some shine to my thinking please’ here.

18 nominations at the Cream Awards

To say we’re rather chuffed with this latest batch of awards nominations is a bit of an understatement. Now nobody is counting any glassware chickens just yet but I’m sure you won’t mind us patting ourselves a tiny little bit on the back.

Big love to the aforementioned clients for buying some great work and to the talented Bears working tirelessly to create something great.

You can view all the nominations from the best agencies and clients in the Midlands, South West and Wales here.

To short circuit to our nominations though:
Annual Report – St Basils: Extending our reach
Identity Design – Youth Voice
Publication – St Basils: Extending our reach
Online Advert or Campaign – St Basils: Donate your homepage
Online Advert or Campaign – National Express: Look beyond London
Online Video/Film/Viral – National Express: Window on life
Online Video/Film/Viral – National Express: Look beyond London – Clogs
Website – Youth Voice
Website – Scottish Police Federation
Charity Advert – St Basils: Donate your homepage
Integrated Campaign – National Express: Look beyond London
Item of self promotion – One Black Bear
Low Budget – St Basils: Tomato & St Basils Soup
48 or 96 sheet poster – National Express: Ouch
6, 4 or smaller sheet poster – St Basils: If home isn’t an option
Outdoor campaign – National Express: Look beyond London
Press Campaign – Eurolines: For those who do appreciate Europe
Radio Commercial – National Express: Look beyond London

So, keep everything crossed for us as unbelievably it’s 20 years since Rich and I picked up the very first ever gold at the inaugural Cream Awards back in 1997 for a mono press ad for The Birmingham Marketing Partnership. Sadly, as this was pre-internet it appears all traces of its existence have long since disappeared.

We of course wish all our fellow nominees the best of British and we’ll see you at the bar in The Jam House on the 22nd November.

First things first for Triton Showers

Conceived by creative partners Jon Harrison and Richard Elwell – the strategy was to ‘own mornings’ for the UK’s leading shower manufacturer.

Richard expands: “To do this, we developed the positioning of ‘See you first thing Britain’ and created a series of personalities to emphasise how although we all have different morning routines, we should all have one thing in common; a shower… a Triton shower, to be more precise.

“As well as being fun and appealing to varying demographics, the different personalities helped us to expand the Triton messaging beyond what they’re primarily famous for – electric showers – and to showcase their digital and mixer ranges.

“The TV ad aims to show non-clichéd shower scenarios and avoids talking about power, efficiency or ease of use but more about the emotional attachment we all have with the shower experience.”

The campaign will also feature online, via a dedicated mobile app, and across trade communications.

David Tutton, managing director at Triton Showers, commented: “As a business it’s a really exciting time for us. There is so much going on to reinforce our position as the number one shower brand in the UK and this new campaign reflects our growing dedication to meeting the ever changing demands of the market.”

Triton is believed to be the first shower brand to go on TV and the commercial will screen on Channel 4 and Sky, as well as ITV. The TV ad was directed by James Rees through Koala in Birmingham. Stills were shot by Ian Winstanley.

The project also included a refresh and update of Triton’s branding. You can see the ad and more right here.

We’re on a bit of a winning streak

Yay, we’ve won a Gold at the Drum Design Awards for the SPF.

Our website was part of the ‘#Itswhatwedo’ campaign developed by production company and fellow Digbeth neighbours Tinker Taylor for the Scottish Police Federation and took the top spot last night amongst a sea of other fantastic entries.

Not only that, but our head of design, Lee, took home the prize for ‘Best Photo’ on the night. To be honest, we’re more proud of that one…

We’ve had a cracking first half of the year and a few bits of new glassware for the shelf are the icing on the cake.

You can check out the award winning website here. Fingers crossed our winning streak doesn’t end here.

Roses are red… and gold… and bronze

It’s always gratifying to be rewarded and awarded for our thinking.

We’re really proud to have won not just one, but two awards for our work with Midland’s based youth homeless charity St Basils last night.

The latest annual report and our ‘Donate your Homepage‘ campaign won Gold and Bronze respectively at the Roses Awards, and as you can imagine, we’re rather delighted with the result.

Even if we are a little worse for wear this morning… sign of a good night I guess.

Gold at the Travel Marketing Awards

And we’re pleased to announce that we walked away with two awards.

A block of lime green perspex (a gold award) for our Christmas rail disruption radio ad now sits on the shelf. You can listen to the ad here.

We also claimed a runner-up spot for our Take A Different View TV ad. You can watch that here.

All in all, a great night and wonderful to receive recognition for our continued efforts to create something that stands out in the travel sector.