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.

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).

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.

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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