As new habits, platforms and challenges present themselves, creative thinking must find their associated opportunities. Therefore when approaching the rebrand of our growing family of studios, with only ourselves as the client, the Vitamin mantra of “push the possible” immediately opened the door to unhindered innovative problem solving.
This is a brief which equally targets the company's staff as much as it does prospect clients or other creatives. With this in mind, there were three clear points to aim for; motivate the teams, position ourselves as industry leaders, and create a brand which acts as a point of inspiration. Assessing how the brand would be viewed in it's majority - on digital mediums - the idea was presented to use sound as the core mechanism in representing our experiential, innovation and high production values. Although "sonic branding" is no new avenue, the key concept to the proposed executions were unheard of.
Each studio has a unique sonic identity which fits their character and can stand alone or be combined with any or all other studios within the Multivitamin group to form a harmonious chorus of collaboration. This enables the teamwork in different projects to be represented through a variety of generated idents, commonly preceded with a standard introduction. In doing so, the listener can easily recognise a Vitamin project by the initial rise of music, but then feel as though they are exploring a new, living sound for each project they are shown.
Following such an intricate and untrodden path allowed experimentation from us without restraints, transitioning into an exciting partnership with audio specialists Adelphoi Music as we ventured beyond our internal skill sets. After providing them with our internal drafts of simple piano notes and annotated studio traits, we worked with their talented team to refine the concept to a highly produced standard, understanding further how sonic branding can be utilised across different touch points against traditional solutions.
Executing these in a visual form required an equally striking result. Creating a “universe” for our studios to live in, an infinite and expansive black was the constant theme with colour and shape relating to the same traits the audio feel was measured against. Taking to our 3D software we tested with dynamic sound-to-visual drivers and resulted in a series of sequences which saw both the camera discover the entity in movement, and the entity reveal itself through light and texture changes. This stage had numerous learning curves and delicate balances between our ultimate vision and limitations of technology, which went on to mould one of our most exciting projects yet.
Ahead of the core brand rollout, we opted to launch elements of early to support a nationwide incentive of “making your idea a reality” as many were furloughed or looking to adapt to a pandemic-struck world. As part of this campaign, the branding was applied to billboards, social media and a marketing page, later evolving into a regular panel discussion called Meet the Founders.
