Our Logbook

Seedcamp is an organisation founded by Albion non-exec Saul Klein (and with a visual identity by Albion) that aims to foster and nourish young entrepreneurs across Europe. It runs the annual Seedcamp Week – kind of a Investment Idol for startups – where young companies compete to win funding.

Seedcamp first ran in 2007, and the idea has really gained momentum since then, with loads of coverage. You can read all about the week on the Seedcamp blog.

Once again our very own Jason Goodman was a mentor, alongside people like Brent Hoberman of lastminute.com / MyDeco and Vartin Varsavsky of FON.

He says “it was a very enlightening experience. The enthusiasm of businesses starting up in a very tough economic climate, but also the openness and benevolence of the experienced entrepreneurs giving their time and advice freely to help other businesses start up. Maybe it’s been happening in Silicon Valley for years, but it feels like something genuinely new and exciting for Europe. Our own industry could learn a lot from this way of behaving…”

You can see Jason in action in this video (1′11″ in, if you want to skip straight to the hot action):

Seedcamp Day 3 Highlights from Seedcamp on Vimeo.

Sorry, last post on Absolute today, I promise. But I’ve just seen something amazing.

Zippy is one of Virgin Radio / Absolute’s loyal listeners and an active contributor on their forums. He came along to one of our research groups at the start of the process.

This morning he interviewed Absolute boss (and our client) Clive, and now they’ve published the whole things on their website as a stream, podcast and photoset.

We had nothing to do with this, but I think it’s genius. THIS is how you do a rebranding – open, transparent, conversational, and as honestly as possible.

Also, they’ve already got over 16 pages of SMS feedback from listeners, which we’re pouring over, and already acting on. Modern radio is an amazing business. A real-time conversation with millions of listeners participants. Remember that from a few years ago?

Some links to the coverage of Absolute Radio:

• BBC News: ‘Virgin Radio to become Absolute’
• MediaGuardian’s ‘The end of Virgin Radio? Absolute-ly.’
• Brand Republic’s ‘Virgin Radio rebrands as Absolute Radio’
• Digital Spy forum
• One Golden Square blog

What’s amazing is how intelligent and balanced the discussion in the comments is on each of these… apart from the ‘marketing professionals’ commenting under the Brand Republic article. Hmm.

Sorry for not posting for a while. We’ve had our heads down, working on rebranding Virgin Radio.

We had to do the whole thing in 60 days, because they have to hand the Virgin brand back 90 days after buying the company. If you’ve ever worked on a rebranding, you know that’s pretty aggressive. There’s a lot to do.

The new name was announced to VIPs (registered website users) by email and SMS yesterday, and on-air this morning by Christian O’Connell.

And the new name is Absolute.

Image used under Creative Commons license from James Cridland.

Some people have commented that the “sandal-wearing marketing folk” have really pulled off a trick this time, as the new brand name was also the name of the new management team’s consultancy Absolute Radio International Ltd.

Well, the story is that we did come up with some cracking names (IMHO), but whenever we were talking about what the new brand should stand for, our clients always kept underlining one name in particular on their pads. The one that was already printed at the top!

So Absolute met one of the most important criteria for a new brand name – that the people who work for the company like it and feel that it signals their ambition. It also met another criteria for the new owners – that it was available as a domain and trademark internationally. Plus, as James points out, it will appear first in the list of stations on DAB radios, and DAB is the future.

So what exactly have we been doing then?

• Creating their ‘open way of doing business’ strategy, including building and maintaining their staff blog onegoldensquare.com.
• Defining the new brand platform and endline – ‘discover real music’.
• Designing the new brand identity.
• Working with them on the ‘crossfade’ launch strategy. (You’ll notice on air that the station is now being referred to as “Virgin Radio, soon to be Absolute” Keep listening and see how that evolves…)
• Writing and designing a newspaper-style ‘brand book’ for the trade (advertisers, media agencies, commentators).
• Working with their online team on the new website design (to be launched soon).
• Developing an integrated launch campaign for later in the year.

Phew. After a pause for a quick glass of Champagne it’s straight back to work. There are only 30 days until Mr Branson wants his brand back and there’s still a lot to do.