Former Sassoon Colour Director Emma Loen is a rising star within the hairdressing profession. In 2022 she initiated a new venture and opened her first independent salon in Finnieston, Glasgow, offering an exceptional, bespoke hair care experience within a collaborative and creative space.

To realise the full potential of her new salon, Emma required stylish and contemporary branding which would roll out across an extensive range of offline and online assets. 

Working closely with Emma, we designed a full logo suite including logotype and graphic marque variations, external signage, business cards, website with book online functionality, service menus, gift cards, wrapping tissue paper, tote and paper bags, and even slipmats for in-house DJ turntables.

Emma also commissioned Maguires to produce a brand film, stills and social content. To date, the brand film has reached 94,128 people based within Scotland, with 6,844 link clicks to the Emma Loen website. 

Since launching in April, Emma’s business has gone from strength to strength, with an ever-growing client list and an upcoming ‘salon collection’ launch scheduled for March 2023.

The Rum Slinger is a Glasgow-based service offering its customers the ability to subscribe to a monthly delivery of three expertly selected rums from around the world.

Each month takes on a geographic theme, with tasting notes accompanying each letterbox-sized package.

Maguires were appointed to provide a social toolkit to give the start-up much-needed content to serve to prospective customers, at a time when the UK was still in lockdown.

We provided product photography tied to the theme of each release, a brand video, and a series of eye-catching typographic treatments to supplement their own organic offering.

The C&C Restaurant Group owns and operates a number of well-known restaurants in Glasgow’s City Centre, West End and Southside. Maguires were brought on board midway through 2021 to provide creative content and brand direction for two of their best-known restaurant brands, plus another exciting venue that was to launch in July.

The first of which was Halloumi, a Greek-Cypriot Mezze restaurant chain with locations in the heart of Glasgow City Centre and the trendy Southside. 

The client was keen to retain the existing logo type but felt the brand needed a distinctive tone of voice and a bolder creative positioning across their social channels.

We began by developing an expanded logo marque to incorporate a brand strapline, followed by a fresh graphic style and a wider colour palette. This graphic style took the form of a modern pattern device that referenced traditional mosaics, but featured a minimalist take on various ingredients and Greek iconography. The blocks of the pattern could then be deployed together, or separately, as part of a regular series of short animations designed to bring to life an irreverent new tone of voice, with offers and one-liners.

Regular food photography and short films were also provided on a monthly basis by our in-house team at Maguires, driving increased engagement over the 6-month period to date.

In the Summer of 2020, Rioja Finnieston underwent a dramatic transformation from a late-night bar and informal tapas spot to a refined, high-end Spanish restaurant, headed up by Michelin-starred Catalan chef Miguel Angel Mayor. Having mastered his craft in the legendary El Bulli restaurant, Chef Miguel moved to Glasgow to present his new concept and challenge preconceived ideas of fine dining. With such a unique and exciting venture, Maguires were delighted to work and collaborate with Chef Miguel.

Since Rioja re-launched in July 2021, Miguel’s concept has showcased the best of both Scottish and Iberian produce with a breath-taking array of ever-evolving dishes, all presented with playfulness and creativity. Our team has sought to capture the essence of Miguel’s gastronomic vision through photography, film, graphics, sound, and words. Beautiful and well-crafted food photography is key to our approach, as are the ‘Food Stories’ film series which articulate Miguel’s story and his approach to Rioja’s signature dishes.

Our social campaigns for Rioja launched in July 2021, with exceptionally high levels of engagement throughout. Facebook and Instagram combined have seen over 16,477 likes on organic posts, with 723,779 impressions and a 128% increase in phone calls, prompted by social media content (data extract from July-Oct 31 2021).

As Miguel’s concept evolves into 2022, so will our agile social strategy – ensuring Miguel’s innovative techniques and world-class food is showcased with both finesse and respect.

In July 2020, Joe Lazzerini and partner Amalia Colaluca took over the reins of The Hebridean – a gastro pub in Glasgow’s vibrant West End – formerly owned by Nico Simeone.

Maguires was tasked with developing the new brand identity, photography suite, brand films and provision of an ongoing digital marketing strategy and implementation for the new venture.

After a highly successful launch in September 2020, bookings and word-of-mouth recommendations were flooding in.

Instagram followers increased by 2,702 with Facebook likes up by 764, within just 3 months. The new website also outperformed expectations, with 62,467 page views from September 2020 to December 2020 – exceptional numbers for an independent restaurant operating in a highly competitive market. The Loveable Rogue’s social audience were also highly engaged, with 105k video views and 10,714 link clicks to the website or online kiosk.

However, opening a restaurant in 2020 was not to be without its challenges. The closure of restaurants at 6pm and the ban on alcohol sales in October was followed by a second three-week lockdown in November and December.

Having anticipated the arrival of this second wave of restrictions, ‘The Rogue at Home’ was developed – providing a beautifully boxed ‘at home’ offering of The Rogue’s popular Sunday Roast. This was quickly followed up in December with The Loveable Rogue’s Christmas Day Dinner Box, a four-course festive feast delivered to your door.

Maguires provided the branding, accompanying films and stills to promote both new offerings.

At time of writing, ‘The Rogue at Home’ continues to provide diners a unique at home dining experience as anticipation builds for the reopening of the restaurant in the later part of December (2020).

Urban Grocer are a family-run business with a rich heritage in the fresh fruit and vegetables wholesaling industry, dating back over 70 years.

The Urban Grocer brand was launched in 2013 to supply fresh produce straight to restaurant kitchens. In 2020, against the backdrop of the first National lockdown, they decided to take that experience and expertise and offer a direct-to-consumer delivery service.

Customers can choose from a range of expertly curated fresh fruit and vegetable boxes as well as offering a range of premium pantry items and high-quality meat and poultry.

Maguires created a fresh brand identity and a bespoke suite of food photography in order to help the Urban Grocer brand ma­ke the transition to a UK-wide delivery service.

The new brand identity was launched in early December 2020, as part of a targeted social campaign. Maguires produced an animated explainer video to help showcase the service to new customers as well as a series of product-specific remarketing campaigns and seasonal box promotions and mailers.

As part of an ongoing creative retainer, we will be developing new marketing strategies to help expand their customer base, creating new content to improve social engagement and build brand recognition throughout the UK.

St Aloysius’ College is a leading independent school based in Glasgow.

In 2019, Maguires created the highly successful ‘The Start of Something Great’ campaign to promote their annual open day (view the full case study here).

One year later, and with the world in the throes of a global pandemic, the likelihood of a traditional face-to-face open day was slim. Anticipating this, the school briefed us to explore an alternative solution which helped prospective parents and pupils learn about the school in advance of applying.

We knew that a virtual open day would clearly be a necessity. This would allow for direct communication between parents, staff members, and pupils – both current and prospective. To this end, we engaged our events partner (and client) Cameron to discuss the requirements for a live virtual event.

Our ambition was to bridge the gap between the experience of a physical event and that of a virtual one. This would allow prospective parents to tour through the campus at their leisure, getting a sense of the school environment and the beauty of the city centre location.

Our solution was a bespoke, informative and feature-rich microsite that would provide a range of multimedia content which could be explored in advance of the live virtual event. The main body of the microsite was a series of six films that would help to tell the story of St Aloysius in greater detail. Using a range of interviews with staff, pupils and parents, coupled with reportage footage of the campus, facilities and daily school life, the final films each focused on a different element and resulted in over 20 minutes of high-quality content for viewing.

Alongside this, we commissioned a bespoke 3D map of the campus, drone footage of the building exteriors and a 360-degree interactive tour which showcased the inside of the main school buildings.

Finally, the virtual tour website provided a prospectus download (also designed by Maguires) and an online application form for the open day.

The site acted as a vital companion to our digital advertising campaign, which pushed traffic to an online applications page. The virtual tour site was then served to interested applicants as well as being pushed out as part of a separate, targeted social media campaign.

The results for the 2 virtual open days (Senior School, and the Junior School) were hugely encouraging. Since the campaign commenced in November, there have been 26,851 link clicks to the microsite from social channels. Campaign content served on social channels has had a total reach of 65,551 with 28,995 video views by early December 2020.

Following a successful pitch, Maguires were appointed to produce a multi-channel creative campaign for leading independent school, St Aloysius’ College.

Our campaign was to focus on driving awareness of the school and increasing attendance at their upcoming open evening.

The school motto, Ad Majora Natus Sum – which translates as “I was born for greater things” – is the foundation upon which the school’s teaching philosophy is based. “Our young people not only have their academic potential ignited, but are also taught to look on the world with empathy, offering their talents and energies for the benefit of others”, states Headmaster Matthew Bartlett.

It’s clear that what makes St Aloysius’ College unique in a competitive sector is this ‘greater’ good, which became the heart of the campaign. We wanted to keep the existing ‘Great Things Happen in The Green Blazer’ as an overall brand strapline, but give this year’s campaign a more direct call-to-action, while remaining true to what makes the school special.

Our solution was to highlight that choosing to attend St Aloysius’ is ‘The Start of Something Great’, at whichever stage a pupil joins – from Kindergarten through to the Senior School. The use of the word ‘great’ gave us the ability to tie the campaign to the school’s traditions, while also promoting the many ‘great’ aspects of the school: the friendships, the opportunities, the facilities and, of course, the results.

The creative centred around an impactful collage style – bursting with activity, but with a singular ‘hero’ image at its core. This echoed the school’s ethos of “plac(ing) the formation of the whole person at the centre of all learning.”

All campaign photography was shot by Maguires, with the campaign film also being directed and edited by our in-house team. We developed the campaign creative across a multitude of assets, implementing them as part of a targeted online marketing strategy on Facebook and Instagram, with a bespoke canvas ad within Facebook that helped to streamline the sign-up process.

The campaign was highly successful, with a 52% increase on the previous year’s attendance figures.

One of our existing social clients, a Glasgow-based utilities consultancy, was looking to reinvent itself with a new brand name that better reflected its blue chip client list.

As well as the new brand name and identity, we were also tasked with the design and build of the accompanying website and digital marketing strategy.

One of the key objectives of the brief was to ensure the new brand would stand out in a very competitive and ever-changing industry.

It started with the name. After countless brainstorming sessions – in which we analysed the core offering of the business, its values, and its competitors – boxfish was born.

A rare and surprisingly agile creature, the boxfish is known for its impressive efficiency and streamlined movement; the way it cuts through the current with ease. For a company that prides itself on maximising cost efficiencies, saving its clients time and money – it was the perfect fit.

The boxfish’s vibrant blue and yellow colours gave us a vibrant and distinctive colour palette to work from, with its distinctive outline providing inspiration for the logo mark.

To help highlight the many services on offer at boxfish we developed an engaging illustrative style, showcasing each service with bespoke character illustrations.

The creation of a confident, conversational tone of voice – removing business speak and industry jargon – ensured that brand identity and brand voice aligned seamlessly.

Formerly Cameron Presentations, this forward-thinking, 70-year-old, family-run events company were looking to revitalise their entire communications landscape with a new look and feel across all media channels. Our mission was to design and produce a brand, website and digital comms strategy which projected Cameron’s evolution and confidence within an ever-changing and highly competitive industry.

Using ‘connecting ideas’ as a working strapline, we devised bespoke dot matrix patterns or ‘circle clouds’ which represented the notion of connectivity and alluded to light / sound wave patterns. This formed the cornerstone of the brand identity and allowed for extensive flexibility in creative execution. A vibrant and confident set of colour gradients were developed, working harmoniously with the circle clouds and providing the brand with a robust, flexible graphical backdrop. The clean, confident brand identity was then deployed in a number of new marketing materials, including letterheads, business cards, brochures, bespoke envelopes, van livery and signage. Added value came from the development of a bespoke desktop app which animates the circle cloud pattern, allowing for variations in both ring speed and wave width.

A clean, modular web build was designed and developed which projected Cameron as leaders and innovators in their sector and projected the company as an ‘Events Agency’.

Copy style was an integral aspect of the new Cameron identity – they were looking for a fresh and bold tone which differentiates them from their competitors and aligns with their ‘fun, friendly, creative’ ethos.  All copy for both offline and online comms was written from the ground up by Maguires’ in-house copywriting team, ensuring both brand identity and copy style align seamlessly.

Our social and digital strategy needed to be vibrant, on-brand and engaging, ensuring cut-through to captivate the Cameron crowd and increase social interactions. Using a mix of paid-for and organic content on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and Instagram, as well as a robust Google AdWords campaign, our strategy and content creation ensured huge spikes in engagement and massive increases in website click-throughs and online enquiries.

Check out the new website and some of the stats below.

www.wearecameron.com

Website sessions up by 70%
Page views up by 75%
User session duration up by 31%
Pages per session up by 18%

The stats above reflect the % change in key stats on the old Cameron website vs. the new Cameron website for a period of 30 days after launch.

Stravaigin is one of the best-known restaurants and bars in Glasgow. For over 20 years, they’ve taken pride in using local produce to create internationally-inspired Scottish dishes.

Having been approached to promote Stravaigin’s monthly 5 course fine dining events, we were first tasked with refining the Stravaigin brand.

The logo had gone through a number of iterations over the last 20 years, with several versions still in use throughout the restaurant. We simplified the original logo using typography sympathetic with the Art Nouveau style of the original brand.

Previously hidden within the logo, the ‘Think Global, Eat Local’ ethos was elevated to its own brand marque, acting as a companion to the main logo. This ethos was the essence of their brand, so by creating a separate marque and producing it as a simple ink stamp, we allowed this ethos to be branded on everything that they do.

In addition to the logo, we introduced a new brand colour – influenced by the dark natural wood interior and game-filled menu. This helped provide a fresh look for the staff, with uniforms and hand-stamped business cards.

Finally, we designed a series of menus, from À La Carte to Brunch, Cocktails to Daily Specials, and everything in-between.

The new brand allowed us to create a unique look-and-feel across all communications, including a series of targeted social media campaigns. The first of which was a campaign to promote the new À La Carte menu from Chef James MacRae.

In addition to the branding and marketing responsibilities, the Maguires in-house team provided all photography used across the paid-for social campaigns.

Stravaigin is one of the best-known restaurants and bars in Glasgow. For over 20 years, they’ve taken pride in using local produce to create internationally-inspired Scottish dishes.

Maguires were approached to provide a distinctive advertising style and marketing strategy to promote Stravaigin’s monthly 5 course fine dining events. Each event had a unique culinary focus, with the menus taking inspiration from a particular country or world region.

The creative had to be distinctively ‘Stravaigin’ in style, whilst also illustrating the geographical focus of that particular month.

Taking influence from the reclaimed fixtures and salvaged antiques found inside Stravaigin, we identified geographical and culinary features from each of the countries to create unique artworks for each event. This led to multiple creative executions for our targeted social media advertising campaign, as well as posters, flyers, emails and menus for the event staff.

Having already redesigned the Stravaigin brand, we were keen to provide a strong creative rationale to tie all of these events together along with the new brand. As ‘stravaig’ is an old Scots word meaning ‘to wander’, we proposed presenting each of the events as part of a series, which we called ‘One Night Wanders’.

Now recognised as Scotland’s Theme Park, M&D’s is unique in Scotland. There are over 70 rides and attractions throughout the park, including thrill rides, kids’ rides, 18 hole miniature golf, glow in the dark indoor bowling, a massive indoor complex, a gigantic soft play area, bars, restaurants and an indoor tropical rainforest.

Maguires were tasked with updating the marketing strategy and creative look and feel for the 2018 season, to appeal to a teenage audience.

We developed a series of playful images showcasing the variety and the excitement on offer at M&D’s, with the ‘hero’ of each image being ‘text speak’ associated with a fun visit to M&D’s.
The campaign ran across all print and digital communications, as well as a substantial outdoor campaign.

Following a successful pitch, Maguires were appointed by Stirling Council to create and launch a new brand and marketing campaign for the Stirling area.

The initial stages of the brand development saw us undertake an extensive three-month consultation process, where feedback was gathered from key stakeholders and residents. This process covered both city centre and rural areas, stretching from Crianlarich and Aberfoyle, to Dunblane, Bannockburn and Callander.

The result of this process saw the creation of the brand ‘Stirling: Alive with Scotland’ – illustrating that Stirling is a place where you can find all that is good about Scotland; its history, beauty, ingenuity as well as the wide-ranging opportunities it offers.

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20 20 Opticians – part of the Duncan & Todd Group, one of the UK’s largest optical retailers – appointed Maguires to create an engaging in-store campaign to promote the sale of their digital lenses, across all six of their practices.

The objective of the campaign was to highlight the specific benefits of each lens; from lenses that provide relief for visual fatigue, to lenses that allow your eyes to better adapt to computer and device screens.

As the campaign was to run in-store and on social channels, the creative had to grab the attention of passersby and online users, clearly communicating a range of advanced products to a younger, tech-savvy audience.

Our clean and quirky approach to communicating the complex benefits of the four lenses was backed up by the design and build of a bespoke microsite for the campaign.

The microsite provides a dedicated portal for traffic arriving from social and digital channels, where users can find out more specific information about the lenses, while allowing our POS campaign to remain clean and direct.

By creating a series of isolated ‘hero’ images for each lens (instead of using model-based lifestyle imagery more commonly associated with Opticians) the campaign could be easily adapted to various POS and digital formats, without losing any of its impact.