The Scottish Equestrian Centre is Scotland’s only 5 star Equestrian Centre.

Founded in 1985, and still family-run, SEC has a reputation for excellence, having attained British Horse Society approval for their training and exam centre, as well as being awarded 5 stars by VisitScotland. The Scottish Equestrian Centre is also home to a 4 star B&B, welcoming guests to experience authentic horse-riding trips from across the globe.

Maguires were appointed to create a new brand identity and website for The Scottish Equestrian Centre as well as capturing a range of photographic and video content for the website and newly launched instagram channel.

The new brand marque sought to provide SEC with a fresh take on the traditional horse iconography often associated with equestrian sports. The angular and dynamic triangular edges of the logo were mirrored in the choice of font, helping provide the brand with a sense of modernity and movement.

The traditional red, seen across the centre’s saddles and riding livery, was retained and modernised for the new brand. This simple, but striking, colour palette was incorporated across the web design. The site itself had a variety of functions; a sales tool for lessons and riding trips as well as a booking site for the centre’s busy B&B, complete with tourist information on the wider area.

Quarriers is a leading social care charity that provides practical care and support for thousands of vulnerable children, adults and families across Scotland.

Maguires first worked with Quarriers in 2018, creating the award-winning ‘Care to Join Us’ campaign.

Since then we’ve helped to evolve the campaign, navigating through the filming challenges caused by the pandemic, to ensure this authentic, people-based campaign remains true to its original concept – the best way to promote working for Quarriers is to showcase the people themselves.

This year, the client was keen to showcase the people they care for, alongside a range of their staff, as they go about their daily duties as Support Workers.

Maguires spent several days on location at both adult and child care facilities, capturing a snapshot of day-to-day life at Quarriers.

The client was looking to expand their reach across social channels by including content for TikTok in addition to their usual Instagram and Facebook campaigns. With this in mind, Maguires supplied the marketing team at Quarriers with a number of edits of 15 second ads for both Child Services and Adult Services, so each area could be individually targeted. In addition, we provided longer cuts of each ad for TV and web, alongside a number of static ads for organic and paid-for posts and stories.

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

In 2019, Maguires created the highly successful campaign, ‘The Start of Something Great’, to promote the school’s annual open day.

Over the next few years, the campaign was successfully retained, with the central ‘hero’ images being updated each year, with additional video and web content added into the marketing mix, to further strengthen the offering. 

For 2022’s campaign, the client was keen to evolve the campaign style, while still remaining true to what made the original campaign successful.

Maguires was also commissioned to capture a fresh bank of photography of school life for the in-house social media team. 

This saw us spend two days at the school, across several locations, capturing a wide variety of school activities. From this we were able to assemble a fresh collage style and an expanded range of ‘hero’ pupil shots, providing variety and diversity for the digital and outdoor campaigns.

Finally, this year we decided to create a small thank-you for our ‘heroes’. Each pupil’s family was sent individualised posters with their name adapted to be part of ‘The Start of Something Great’ strap-line.

The Rocca Group was looking to expand its evening offering with the opening of Ciao, a specialist cocktail bar set within Rico’s, the renowned eatery on North Castle St in the heart of Edinburgh’s New Town.

Maguires were commissioned to create the brand for the new bar, having worked with The Rocca Group creating social content for Rico’s as well as their two sister venues: The Michelin-guided Seafood Ristorante in St Andrew’s and The Broughton in Edinburgh.

Opening November 2022, Ciao offers delicious drinks alongside cicchetti – small Italian snacks – as well as a lunch menu freshly prepared by the famed Rico’s kitchen. Their resident mixologists pride themselves on the The Negroni, a classic Italian cocktail containing gin, campari and sweet vermouth. As well as the classic version, many variations on the classic cocktail also appear on their extensive drinks menu. 

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.

Based in the newly refurbished five star resort at Cameron House, Tamburrini & Wishart offers a contemporary and innovative dining experience with seasonal produce at its heart, headed up by famed Scottish chefs Paul Tamburrini and Martin Wishart.

Guests can look forward to a five-course tasting menu that changes every two weeks, and a three-course lunch menu embracing modern techniques while celebrating classic flavours.

Maguires was commissioned to produce a series of stills and an overarching brand film which captured the essence of the experience. Throughout the shoot, our in-house photography team fully utilised the stunning environment to showcase the restaurant in action, from the exquisitely crafted and highly complex dishes, to a series of candid images shot during service.

As result of the success of the shoot, additional stills and film were commissioned by Cameron House which introduced their new Lobby Bar cocktail menu, ‘Myths & Legends’.

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 recent years, Glasgow has developed a rich and diverse culinary scene with new restaurants and cuisines appearing on every main street. When new-kid-on-the-block Roberta’s burst on the scene in August 2021, Maguires were tasked with establishing a unique tone of voice and visual style for this glamorous City Centre restaurant and cocktail bar.

Serving primarily Italian food, Roberta’s is far from your typical ristorante, with plush velvet and leather finishes, rich warm woods, and a beautiful marble long bar for the late-night cocktail crowd. The undoubted hero of the culinary offering is the authentic wood-fired pizzas, handmade on site by famed pizzaiolo brothers Ciro and Massimo Potenza and cooked in a bespoke Neapolitan pizza oven imported from Italy.

The client was looking to capture the general buzz and ambiance of Roberta’s, so our creative studio developed a punchy new typographic style which initially featured in a series of pre-launch teaser animations and has continued to feature throughout our campaigns. Our film and photographic team also worked on site to capture the unique Roberta’s atmosphere, with pizza spinning, cocktail slinging, and story sharing all caught on camera to create a series of captivating social films.

Since launch in August 2021, Roberta’s social and digital numbers have increased, with over 2,000 on their mailing list and over 347,975 social impressions, ensuring their audience numbers are increasing month on month and engagement continues to grow.

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.

Princes Square is an institution in Glasgow. A former merchant square, constructed from blonde sandstone in 1841, it was named ‘Scotland’s Favourite Building’ in 2016. It’s a shopping destination unlike any other in Scotland.

Nestled within Glasgow’s ‘Style Mile’ on Buchanan Street, it’s long been known for its luxury stores, lively restaurants and bars. Now, with the arrival of Everyman boutique cinema, it offers the perfect night out, all under one elegant roof.

Maguires were tasked with creating awareness of Princes Square as a great destination for a night out – and not solely a premier shopping destination.

We created the ‘After Hours by Princes Square’ campaign, showcasing the energy and vibrancy of a night out in Princes Square.

To keep the campaign look-and-feel representative of the Glasgow scene, we worked closely with Sassoons Hair Salon in Princes Square, who helped us source and style our real-life models – with many selected from the luxury boutiques within Princes Square itself.

The focus of the outdoor advertising campaign is primarily on individual models, giving four ‘hero’ posters – each shot in a different environment to highlight the full offering of a night out at Princes Square.

Inspired by the bright pastel hues of the colour-changing neon lights found throughout the entrance-ways of Princes Square, the art direction of the campaign featured a similar range of bold colours and neon backdrops to create a sophisticated nightlife look.

We also shot an accompanying promotional film to help bring the campaign to life on Princes Square’s social channels.

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.

Quarriers is a leading social care charity that provides practical care and support for thousands of vulnerable children, adults and families across Scotland. They help thousands of people to lead happier, more fulfilling lives. By challenging inequality, Quarriers give vulnerable people more opportunities and, importantly, ensure that their voices are heard.

Maguires were originally appointed in 2018, following a successful pitch, to create a recruitment campaign for Quarriers. Having struggled to fill carer roles through traditional recruitment avenues, the client decided to use a creative advertising campaign to target people interested in a career in care directly.

We created the ‘Care to join us’ campaign. The simple message got right to the point, by identifying the crucial requirement of working for Quarriers – that you really care.

A strong call to action prompts anyone considering a career in caring to find out about available roles via the Quarriers jobs page.

Quarriers were keen to champion their staff in the campaign, so Maguires commissioned and art-directed the photography at Quarrier’s Village using real Quarriers employees. Multiple creative executions were then provided for a far-ranging campaign across outdoor, social, digital, press and radio.

Launching in August 2018, the campaign has resulted in triple the number of visits to the Quarriers site, with the suitability of applicants also increasing to a healthy 1 in 3 being taken on.

The original campaign led to 200 new hires (as of April 2019) and was awarded S1 Jobs ‘Recruitment Campaign of the Year’ 2018.

To build on the success of last year’s campaign, we proposed producing an accompanying film for 2019, to help bring to life the vital work of Quarriers carers.

Once again, the photography and film work was commissioned and directed by Maguires at Quarriers Village, using real Quarriers employees. By featuring the same carers in both the print and film campaign we helped give a wider visibility to the ‘stars’ of the campaign.

The campaign launched in August 2019 across outdoor, social, digital, press and radio.

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’.

Refined branding for established, reputable kitchen experts.

Maguires started working with Palazzo Kitchens & Bathrooms in 2016, developing a new brand and website.

Since then, we’ve been running Palazzo’s social channels, generating new leads each month through a series of paid-for campaigns, case studies and lifestyle blogs.

All of the content for the case studies and blogs are created in-house at Maguires, with original photography and copywriting included in our monthly fee. This enables Palazzo to regularly showcase their craft, while helping provide continued engagement with potential customers.

Word-of-mouth recommendations from satisfied customers are important to Palazzo. This is why reaching out to potential customers through Facebook is vital to their growth. Maguires have developed a clear and concise social media marketing strategy which emphasises the quality of the Palazzo service.

By utilising a combination of sophisticated targeting and high-end photography & video content, Maguires have been able to consistently build the Palazzo social audience and continuously increase the number of high-quality leads.

Our detailed SEO strategy has seen Palazzo Kitchens climb to the top of the rankings for a selection of vital key terms, including the #2 position for “kitchens Glasgow”. The Palazzo website bounce rate out-performs the average for organic visits, increasing organic lead generation consistently month on month, with Cost Per Click (CPC) on Facebook also falling well below the average.

In addition, Social SEO optimisation has taken place, with Maguires helping Palazzo to increase the number of 5-star reviews the company receives on specialist interior design social network Houzz, as well as on Google and Facebook.

palazzo.co.uk