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AGDA Finalist for Identity Logo, trademark and symbol, as well as finalist for Identity range of implementation.
To view The Song Company Identity logo, please view our portfolio....
In 2010, we entered our work with The Song Company for ABAF’s (Australian Business Arts Foundation) 2010 SME Award. The SME Award is for partnerships between businesses and arts and cultural organisations. Our work was recognised with a ‘Good Practice in Partnering’ award.
You can view some of our work for T...
For many marketers, memories of the past decade will be dominated by the global financial meltdown that marked the end of ‘the noughties’ in a savage fashion. But the GFC clouds a more profound and lasting game-changer, in the form of mainstream digital media.
To date, digital marketing has largely meant engag...
In 2011, we entered our work with The Song Company for ABAF’s (Australian Business Arts Foundation) 2011 SME Award. The SME Award is for partnerships between businesses and arts and cultural organisations. Our work was recognised with a ‘Good Practice in Partnering’ award.
You can view some of our work fo...
In 2011, we won the AbaF SME State Award for our partnership with The Song Company. The SME Award is for partnerships between businesses and arts and cultural organisations.
You can view some of our work for The Song Company in our portfolio....
In 2012, we won the Graphic Design Corporate Identity and Branding 2012 Melbourne Design Awards for our NAB brand identity work....
In 2012, we entered our work with The Song Company for ABAF’s (Australian Business Arts Foundation) 2012 SME Award. The SME Award is for partnerships between businesses and arts and cultural organisations. Our work was recognised with a ‘Good Practice in Partnering’ award.
You can view some of our work for ...
In 2012, we won the Graphic Design Corporate Identity and Branding 2012 Sydney Design Awards for our Foxtel brand identity work....
Principals has won another 6 awards in the REBRAND™ 2013 awards announced today.
With entries from 33 countries across 35 industries, REBRAND™ recognises the most effective brand transformations each year. The 6 wins this year give Principals a total of 30 REBRAND™ awards (including 3“Best of Awards”) si...
In the pre-dawn hours of Friday last week, 300 citizens pitched battle with 160 police in a street riot that raged for seven hours. The unrest, fought over burning barricades, was sparked by heavy-handed police efforts to arrest local residents believed to possess petrol bombs.
Another Twitter-fuelled uprising from ...
Brand consultancy Principals has today unveiled a new luxury residential brand “The Coolum Residences”. The Coolum Residences property development is a joint venture between Lend Lease and Sekisui House, located adjacent to the Hyatt Regency Coolum resort on the Sunshine Coast.
The new brand was created afte...
Westpac has been telling us, of late, that it is a no surprises bank. Safe as houses. Fiscally conservative. Back to basics and all that. Just what we need in a post GFC world, I have no doubt. But that’s not what I got from them recently.
I was standing in the street, somewhere in Surry Hills on a Saturday afte...
This is an example of a WordPress page, you could edit this to put information about yourself or your site so readers know where you are coming from. You can create as many pages like this one or sub-pages as you like and manage all of your content inside of WordPress....
Apparently, Mike Tyson’s going vegan.
The man who famously told Lennox Lewis “I’m coming for you man ….I want your heart, I want to eat your children”, now prefers tofu and lentils.
Yeah right.
You mean you’re never going to enjoy children again? And what about raw earlobe Mike? Never again?
Wha...
Without doubt, the Australian marketing community have passed through an emotional crossroads and now place digital and interactive channels at the heart of their ‘message out’ brand planning.
But as yet there are few examples of big brands that harness digital channels as a ‘key way in’ to their organis...
“I never wear T shirts. Ever. I only wear shirts, even to the beach”.
I am not sure when we think of service that Italians come to mind, do they? I normally associate discount offers with an absence of service, or in the case of airlines, what I call anti-service.
But here I am, enjoying the frankly, up...
Principals is proud to be be recognised by our peers for the quality of our branding work. For more awards please view the REBRAND section....
Making good on their promise to relentlessly pioneer industry standards in social and environmental responsibility, (especially their commitment to promote environmentally-friendly practices, use solar power, recycle fabric scraps and utilize organic cotton) American Apparel have introduced the 'Bag o Scraps'.
These...
I was to lunch on the controversial ban of ‘those’ Louis Vuitton ads.
Apparently, the Advertising Standards Agency (ASA) in France has ruled they mislead customers because they imply L.V’s products are completely hand made.
Pffffttt…not sure about that…
The campaign is a series of what appears to be ...
Most newsy types are out to lunch over Ben & Jerry's 'Hubby Hubby' - the temporary name of its 'Chubby Hubby' ice cream, in support of the decision to make gay-marriage legal in the company's home state, Vermont.
But seriously, this is Ben and Jerry’s we’re t...
It's a lobbyist's lot to exaggerate the misfortunes of their cause. As does the Retail Coalition, the pressure group backed by retailing heavyweights Solomon Lew, Gerry Harvey and Bernie Brookes. They're pressing the government to introduce GST on products bought from online retailers overseas, in the interests of ...
The 210,000 gallons of crude oil spewing into the Gulf of Mexico every day isn’t just destroying ecosystems and crucifying BP’s ‘Beyond Petroleum’ promise, it’s exposing BP for what they apparently were all along - Big Petroleum!
Mother Jones tells us that in 2000, with the noblest of intentions, then ...
I think we all remember when the multi-million dollar Alliance of Australian Retailers’ campaign against plain packaging failed to gain traction last year (..it seems some small detail about the ‘alliance’ being set up and funded by the world’s top three cigarette manufacturers tainted the credibility of th...
The furor surrounding claims that Marlboro were subliminally advertising their logo on the rear of Formula One cars is a great example of how the tobacco industry will seek to communicate their brands in the face of ever tightening regulations.
The debate here should not be whether or not Ferrari were advertising th...
Greens Senator Rachel Siewart posted a note on her facebook page last month indicating the tobacco industry is gathering ammunition for their next assault against government measures to curb smoking. Grand. I for one am getting the popcorn ready with anticipation as I’m reminded of the “Alliance of Australian Reta...
It was recently announced that “a new bank for Victorians” will launch in August: the Bank of Melbourne. “Finally a Bank for Victorians” states the new website. Wasn’t this what the Bank of Melbourne was - before it was axed by Westpac in 2004?
Living in Melbourne in 2004, I was rather distressed w...
To say that the writing is on the wall for passive, one-way media is an understatement. Interactive content that deeply engages and addictively rewards its users is the new normal. So little wonder marketers are scrambling to find ways to connect their brands in to the internet-enabled gaming craze.
But j...
Froot Loops (a cereal so un-fruity, its creators have to spell their product's name incorrectly, in order to avoid misleading consumers it may actually contain fruit!) is apparently a good breakfast choice.
In fact, Frosted Flakes and just about any other commercial breakfast cereal are also, apparently, good breakfas...
Carting through woolies on my way to our weekly packet of Tassal salmon I pass the ‘Facons’ - several shelves of vegetarian ‘meats’.
Casserole ‘Mince’, BBQ Soya ‘Sausages’, Tender Chickpea ‘Schnitzels’, Indian Kumera & Spinach ‘Kebabs’, the list goes on.
I’ve always found these a gig...
As President and Chief Operating Officer of the Four Seasons hotel group, Katie Taylor is a leader in perpetual motion. She clearly relishes the challenge of leading this high-end hospitality business within earshot of the chain's 82 check-in desks worldwide. Because, she states, matter of factly, 'there's...
Finding the right name for your business can be crucial, but don't take yourself too seriously in the process, writes Wayde Bull.
Your business name is an opportunity to make a memorable first impression on new customers. Ninety per cent of businesses play it straight and choose a name that literally describes w...
The Museum of Contemporary Art has finished its $15 million renovation project and delivers what I like to professionally term as a ‘themed pub’.
That’s to say, I doubt any self-respecting pub in Ireland would decorate its interiors with neon shamrocks yet that has become the defining identifier for Irish pu...
CSIRO recently published Our Future World, an analysis of the global trends that it believes will redefine how we will live in future, impacting the science and technology we will therefore demand. The study’s primary purpose was to inform strategic planning within its scientific community, yet it provides equa...
It's hard not to grin at some of the job titles that corporates dream up to satisfy the egos of their up-and coming executives. But one recent new entrant to the career lexicon, the Chief Listening Officer, may actually deserve more serious consideration than first appearances suggest.
For what big business, a...
As noted in this quarter’s digital pulse survey, Australians are growing increasingly comfortable with sharing personal information online. And frankly, even if they weren’t, their behaviour is being secretly tracked anyway so the result is a mass of data about your personal life floating in the ether.
This ...
Last year, a very angry individual or individuals, slashed four designer lounges at the Park Hyatt harbour bar in Sydney. The case was a head- scratcher for police, but Sydney’s design community has a hunch it was ‘design vigilantes’, punishing the Hyatt for buying replicas.
See, while we’ve been enjoyin...
One of the more interesting by-products of the Social Media revolution has been the change in the way people are now using language. In the digital space, language is fresh, funny, confronting, sometimes blindingly specific and often awe-inspiringly authentic.
Whatever the subject up for debate, people are now r...
I once wrote a guide to speed dating (I know, but it was a living) which involved interviewing a life coach and relationship specialist on the most effective way to be attractive in a limited timeframe. This was many years ago when the phenomenon was still fairly new but it all jumped back to mind when I read the d...
Principals – the branding and design brains behind new AFL team –Greater Western Sydney Giants
Australia's leading independent branding agency, Principals today revealed its intense behind-the-scenes work with Team GWS, to create a total brand strategy for the launch of the Australian Football League’s (AFL) new...
Principals loathes fakes. We despise frauds. On this blog we’ll weed
them out. Brands, celebrities, politicians, nothing will escape us. On the flip
side, we’ll praise anything or anyone real, authentic and true. Bookmark it....
I’m advised by a host of new age self help manuals that happiness is “neither an end nor a means, but rather a product of living an authentic, wise and outgoing life.” This quote comes from a review of 3 said manuals, so for the purpose of establishing a starting point, let’s say this is the summarized secret t...
Marcello Costa thinks chiropractic is quackery - one of the so-called alternative complementary medicines, based on superstition, not medical science.
He got me thinking - are alternative medicines pseudo-science at best? 'Kumbaya', instead of cold hard facts?
Well, in my experiences, they've felt very real....
Armchair activism needn’t be ‘slactivism’. Real activism gets results. If you can get results in your pyjamas then big ups to you!
Take the well-documented example of the fight against Nestle this year.
‘Using facebook and youtube, Greenpeace stared down Nestle and Nestle blinked’.
Nestle ‘had bee...
Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos is often depicted as the demolition man, not just reshaping the economics of the book publishing sector but wrecking the livelihoods of bricks-and-mortar book retailers everywhere. So the rumour that Amazon may soon open a retail store in its home town of Seattle has been greeted with ...
“Dealing with humans to cost extra as Jetstar goes self-service”. So claimed The Australian on May 25th 2011.
Jetstar is going ‘self-service’ and is now going to charge for any form of human contact we have with them. What’s more, Jetstar apparently now earns more money from ‘ancillary revenues’ (c...
If you want a sneak preview of the way in which your marketing department might be structured in future, there's no better place to look than The Coca Cola Company in Atlanta. In their search for new ways to add value to the world's most valuable brand portfolio, they've long experimented with brave organisation...
Walmart, the world’s most powerful retailer, is funding the development of a new consumer-friendly sustainability index it plans to apply to every product it sells worldwide.
In a wake-up call to its 100,000 global suppliers, Walmart has begun to request sustainability data from each and every one of them. 15 blu...
Simon Crean and his crew at Austrade are clocking up even more air miles than usual, as they scramble to unveil the new Australia Unlimited nation brand at an array of international business expos and sporting events.
There's really nothing new about a nation's politicians, trade commissioners and have-a-go expo...
So, I know I'll cop it for this, but how come pollies aren't allowed to change their minds?
We are...
You promise the kids pizza, but, after a quiet natter with your wife, decide Sumo Salad might be better...
Isn't that just good parenting? Or are you a liar - an inauthentic fake, who can't be trusted!
Alan...
Words, they come and go. They evolve, they change and sometimes lose their original meaning altogether.
It’s easy to get into a strop about it. Grumpy old men fighting against the tide of linguistic change has become a publishing category in its own right. It’s hard not to sympathise as words (like familiar frie...
To celebrate the opening of our office in Auckland, we replicated our Digital Pulse study in New Zealand. We've uncovered some interesting insights, which we've kindly shared through our Digital Pulse dashboard (click on "New Zealand" above the dashboard).
We discovered that although NZ follows Australia in ter...
While the uptake of web-connected mobile phones and tablets has been swift in Australia, the majority of their owners have yet to take the next step and embrace the use of location-sensing apps.
Principals’ latest Digital Pulse study, published this week, reveals there is considerable discomfort, across the ages a...
One of the funniest customer complaint letters on the web today is from a Virgin Atlantic passenger, Oliver Beale, who shares his ‘culinary journey from hell’ on a flight from Mumbai to London. His lengthy tongue-in-cheek email, addressed to Richard Branson and cc’d to the world is punctuated by close-ups of t...
Few business leaders today would challenge the idea that the internet is a priority communications channel for their business, yet it's surprisingly hard to build up a rich picture of Australian's online behaviours and attitudes from public domain information. Many of the facts published - and even more of what is ...
Principals publishes the second in their Digital Pulse research series. The quarterly report reviews online attitudes and behaviours, based upon a nationally representative sample of internet users.
This quarter the study explores the extent to which Australians feel comfortable sharing different kinds of inform...
I read an article on the SMH site a little while ago about a jackpot winning family in the UK who were ditching the mansion they had bought in favour of a smaller home. The Chester family’s decision stemmed, it seems, from a sense of disconnect – from their children ("In a small house you are always all toget...
Read about the big issues and challenges that brands are facing in a highly competitive and always connected world. And what smart companies are doing to stay one step ahead of change....
Our recent digital pulse survey ‘privacy issue’ found the majority of Australians are comfortable actively sharing personal opinions and attributed commentary online - and this should be celebrated as a good thing! I’m personally reinforcing this by expressing my opinion in this blog.
As the US on Tuesday anno...
I am absolutely fascinated by how the digital marketing world works and news spreads. I can't believe how far the digital world has come, considering that the first email was sent in 1997, the first online purchase was a pizza from Pizza Hut in 1994 and the first social media networking site was launched in the s...
You’ve got to admire the bravery of a brand who declares product ‘monogamy’ with “nothing but fruit, two servings of fruit in every bottle, made using Australian fruit where possible”.
Not many ‘earthy’, ‘pure’ brands have ever been brave enough to be that niche from the get go.
Innocent for ins...
Google CEO Eric Schmidt speaks with breathtaking candour on the topic of online privacy. He recently said, in a totally matter-of-fact way: "We know where you are. We know where you've been. We more or less know what you're thinking about". In an even more Orwellian moment he quipped "If you have something that...
‘Brand Voice is the New Black’, says Principals.
Principals has acquired brand language specialists XXVI (pronounced ‘twentysix’) in a bold move to consolidate their position as one of the leading brand agencies in the Asia Pacific region.
The only dedicated brand language specialist in Australia, XXVI ha...
(L-R): Deborah Mills, The Song Company; Jane Haley, AbaF and Sandy Belford, Principals.
Each year the AbaF Awards (Australian Business Arts Foundation) honour the finest relationships between the private sector and the arts, in the areas of partnering, volunteering and giving. It’s a chance for business...
Leading brand agency Principals has unleashed a cutting-edge advertising campaign to support the launch of the leading global legal brand, Ashurst, into the Australian market.
Law firms Ashurst and Blake Dawson came together on 1 March, creating a new global legal practice with operations in Australia, Europe, ...
Mallesons Stephen Jaques, one of the leading law firms in the Asia Pacific region, has launched a Facebook page to help recruit potential summer clerks and graduates.
Their social media strategy, developed by branding agency Principals, aims to help candidates to get a real sense of what the firm cares about, r...
Brand consultancy Principals has had a great start to the year, collecting ten awards from the 2012 ReBrand 100 Awards.
With entries from 28 countries across 34 industries, ReBrand recognises the most effective brand transformations each year. And this year Principals took the most awards of any agency group and...
Sydney based brand consultancy Principals has unveiled a new brand identity for top tier Singapore law firm, WongPartnership.
Principals won the project (in September 2011) in a competitive pitch and has completed the project in 4 months in time for WongPartnership's 20th anniversary, in February. The new brand...
Ends.
For further information contact:
Tom Brigstocke
Managing Director
Principals
T: 0418 447 094
E: tom@principals.com.au
About Principals
Principals is a brand strategy and identity company with offices in Sydney and Melbourne. Principals helps clients build authentic, stand-out i...
Brand consultancy Principals is today celebrating four wins at the prestigious REBRAND™ Awards.
The agency was recognised for its rebranding of Sucrogen, Peoplecare, Subaru Australia, and The Trust
Company. These four awards bring Principals’ total REBRAND Award haul to 14 – making it the most
REBRAND awar...
Missed an interesting blog post? It hasn't been removed. You can read and review all our previous posts here. Enjoy!...
Rebrand is an annual awards show that recognises the best rebrand projects in the world. Principals are proud to have won 14 of these awards in partnership with our great clients, making us the most awarded agency in Asia Pacific, and among the top 5 most awarded internationally....
Principals launches new name and brand identity for local neighbourhood group.
Principals branding agency has launched a new name and brand identity for RICHSS (Redfern and Inner City Home Support Services).
RICHSS is an important local neighbourhood service. They fulfill a vital social need. They enlist and ma...
Dear Gerry, DJs, Myer and other retail dinosaurs,
I love living in the 21 Century. I love shopping online.
And I think you’re missing the point of the shift to online shopping. It’s not always about the price. And it’s not about the tax.
For me it’s about convenience. Shopping when it suits me. Doing it my w...
'Local' is the new 'green'.
Local food, local goods,'locavores'. Local is fresher. Local burns less shipping fuel. Local keeps the wealth nearby. Yadda, yadda.
So how does a multinational get some local-cred?
They don't...
Grist tells us, in a bit of sneaky un-branding, Starbucks stripped its name and logo ...
This blog is not intended to cause harm or offence. Views expressed on this blog are the personal opinion of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of Principals Pty Ltd (Principals). Principals may choose not to post or to remove comments in its discretion. Principals will not be responsible for commen...
When incorporating gaming mechanics into your overall brand experience, communication campaign, loyalty program etc. It is essential, to understand the types of games that will resonate with your targeted customer segment. As uncovered in our most recent Digital Pulse study, most Australians have played some sort of...
Has anyone else been affected by the gold dust floating around Sydney the past few days? I am usually a fairly cynical person but there’s something about Oprah that just makes me feel like hugging someone. And spending money.
I’m sure our friends at Tourism Australia will be celebrating Christmas twice this ...
The discipline of Marketing has been dramatically transformed over the last decade and there is little doubt that the process of transformation continues at a rapid pace. New channels and touch-points have created new ways of communicating and engaging customers. While these changes have created exciting new oppo...
For business-to-business marketers, the concept of thought leadership is a very familiar one. In knowledge intensive industries like law and audit, technology and engineering, brands commonly seek to convey themselves as leaders by publishing thought-provoking papers around new management concepts and visions of the ...
“VODAFONE faces compensation payments to up to 4 million customers after confirming it is investigating a security breach that has put billing and call records on a publicly accessible website protected only by passwords that change monthly.” The Sydney Morning Herald – Vodafone liable for privacy brea...
What’s one of the least ‘sustainable’ products in your home? Is your washing machine, your dishwasher? Would you be surprised to learn it’s your jeans? Yes, that wardrobe staple uses 11,000 L of ‘embedded water’ to create 1kg of jeans. According to waterfootprint.org that’s more than twice the amount of w...
The executive team at Westpac must be wishing for Christmas to come a little early this year, as the bank remains doggedly out of favour with its customers, politicians and the community at large, for aggressively hiking its mortgage interest rates last week.
While we may become accustomed to divergent bank resp...
I was recently perusing the Queensland Government website (don’t ask why) but found myself reading a text about ‘why business innovation is important’ – a given, right? I mean you’d be hard pressed to find a set of corporate values that don’t incorporate some variation on the word ‘innovative’ ( ‘...
The success of an idea - or, in this case, a word - often comes back to haunt it, sometimes from over exposure, sometimes from opportunism. And that currently seems to be the fate of the word "brand".
The word is everywhere. Twenty five years ago, outside the idea of branding someone as ? usually something unflatter...
The smh reported yesterday that Bing Lee was facing a backlash to its social media donation campaign for the Queensland floods. Bing Lee promised to donate $1 to the Queensland flood appeal for every person that ‘likes’ its company facebook page (up to 10,000 people/$).
On the face of it, Bing Lee are offering t...
TV lied. (It won't be raising MY children!).
It told us, in 2008, Bega was famous for Bega. A half truth it seems, since, as Richard Farmer from Crikey tells us, only the Vintage Cheddars are made there. The rest of the Bega range is making another town famous.
Bega isn't alone.
National Foods recently consol...
At least three times in the last few months we’ve read of major brand owners, mostly in the field of fashion and sportswear, getting uppity about who wears their brand and what it is says about them.
Firstly there was Abercrombie & Fitch, apparently offering to pay Michael Sorrentino, star of the MTV...
Liz'd have sprayed nose-fanta all over her cluttered desk at the thought of swishing up for an Esquire shoot. But there's Tina - hotting it up with the best (the rest?) of them in last months issue?!?
Doesn't feel right... Why?
Cause, of all our celebrities, we don't want our comedians to change (read improve) ...
At a recent Australian Banking & Finance magazine function in Melbourne, keynote speaker Lisa Gray, head of National Australia Bank’s resurgent personal banking group, was asked what competitive challenges were keeping her awake at night. Clearly feeling on confident ground these days, in competing against he...
I love the new campaign for Blighty’s Nationwide Building Society.
They’ve used some of the least ‘acceptable’ characters from the British comedy hit, ‘Little Britain’, to bring to life their ‘Proud to be Different’ catch cry - Andy, Vicky Pollard and the ‘ladies’, Florence Rose and Emily How...
A breakthrough identity for an organisation formerly known as the Clay Brick & Paving Institute. Click here to view more....
A confident new identity for The University of Newcastle that reshapes its heritage for a new generation of students. Click here to view more....
A thought provoking identity for a performing arts group inspired by breakthrough performances. Click here to view more....
An engaging new identity for the specialist home-lending division of NAB, seeking to own the warmth of home. Click here to view more....
A vibrant new identity for a heritage brand setting out to rediscover its pioneering spirit. Click here to view more....
A refined new identity for a top tier law firm that captures the intelligence and warmth of its culture. Click here to view more....
A never stand still, language driven identity for the National Australia Bank's in-house University that invites NAB people to think again every time they see it. Click here to view more....
An ever changing identity for our own business, anchored in the idea of authentic storytelling. Click here to view more....
A playful new identity for Australia’s oldest childcare organisation, devoted to the care and happiness of children. Click here to view more....
An elegantly simple new identity for a financial services brand that aims to ‘uncomplicate’ the life of its customers. Click here to view more....
A refined new identity for The Trust Company, a firm that draws proudly on its past, yet now looks confidently to the future. Click here to view more....
An identity system that places Subaru's commitment to four wheel drive engineering at its core, in a warm and relatable way. Click here to view more....
A cheeky new identity for a small health care insurer with big ambitions and an even bigger heart. Click here to view more....
A fresh start identity for the former CSR Sugar business, signalling their colourful future as a food and biofuels business. Click here to view more....
A strong and dynamic identity for Australia’s financial services profession’s membership organisation, to inspire members to achieve more. Click here to view more....
An intelligent new identity for Catalyst Mutual that positions them as a savvy alternative to the big banks. Click here to view more....
A fresh language based brand identity to capture the essence of “community value champions” and bring to life the idea of hirmaa being the voice of the community. Click here to view more....
A challenger brand identity for one of Australia’s most dynamic diversified funds managers. Click here to view more....
A new name and visual identity to reflect an exciting new vision and position the Institute as the world expert in the field of bionics. Click here to view more....
A bold and coherent identity to build the profile of Australia’s leading university. Click here to view more....
An ambitious and striking name and identity for the AFL's newest club, launching in NRL heartland. Click here to view more....
A simplified name and a new brand identity for the Tax institute, to appeal to the new breed of tax practitioners. Click here to view more....
An altogether world class brand identity for one of Singapore’s leading law firms. Click here to view more....
A stunning brand identity based on the idea of an exclusive network of connections, to cut through premium brand clutter. Click here to view more....