Jeremy Hildreth“We aim to portray London as a city of stature, a high-achieving ‘centre of the world’ that is paradoxically in many ways a modest and quirky place.” from the Visit London House Style Guide by Saffron/Jeremy Hildreth
As the marketing department for Europe’s largest city, Visit London champions London all over the world, promoting the city for both business and leisure tourism.
When they appointed Saffron in early 2008, they were using a handful of identities and sitting on a stack of brand research and advice from other agencies. The task of the team I led was to sort this out
We conducted a series of interviews (guided conversations, really) with about 10 Visit London stakeholders (e.g., managers, politicos, users, and even the former army general who runs the Tower of London, one of the city’s main attractions). We explained the process that was being undertaken, and shared with them some of our thoughts as we listened to theirs.
We also ran two large ‘brainstorming’ sessions with Visit London employees. We got good ideas from them (for the staff always know the belly, and the underbelly, of the beast), and did our best to assuage their concerns. The project at the outset had been controversial amongst the rank and file, but I asked for a show of hands at the end of each session of any detractors, any holdouts. There was just one (in the afternoon group); every other critic had come round, at least to the point of understanding and accepting the project, if not being outright supportive of it.
The rigorous consultation process let us really get to the heart of what London was about, and what Visit London was about on London’s behalf. We developed a sense of what kinds of branding solutions might work, and—more importantly, frankly – which ones probably wouldn’t.
Clearly, the challenge was to find a way to project London be historic and charming and also contemporary and evolving—and which avoided the clichés. The identity would support business as well as leisure tourism, so it had to dress up and dress down. Like the great city itself, it had to be everything to everybody.
The solution was a typographic identity based around a core idea of Visit London as “champions” for London and drawn in red—a colour solidly if not uniquely associated with the city. London’s quirkiness entered in the form of “factettes”, like “It rains more in Rome” and “Est. 50AD”, which are given their own line in the wordmark when the situation calls for it.
We devised two word wheels—an inner wheel (“the Circle Line”), comprised of ‘the things about which you can say “London ist hese above all else”’ (confident, connected, quirky, charming, enlightened and evolving); and an outer wheel (“the M25”), featuring 16 more words (including historic, stimulating, civil, seductive, surprising) which“add flesh to the skeleton.” We encouraged web personnel and other writers for Visit London, when sitting down to write something, to choose a word from each wheel and build their story around the pairing.
The 9 July 2008 issue of Marketing called the logo “near perfect.” A few months later, Louise Alexander, brand manager for Visit London, wrote: “The anecdotal feedback we have had has been very positive, and the identity is proving popular. The consistency of one brand for all audiences is of huge importance to us, making it both easier (and in the long run more cost effective) to brand and market the city across corporate, business and leisure audiences in all of our markets.”
Clarity. Plus personality. For London. Achieved.
