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.

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. 

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 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 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.

Having developed the highly successful, and award-winning, ‘Care to Join Us’ campaign for Quarriers, we were faced with a challenge on how to develop the visual content of the campaign during the first National lockdown. As both parties were required to stay at home, aside from an hour’s exercise a day, we had no means of shooting new footage of Quarriers staff in order to create fresh content for this year’s campaign.

We proposed using existing audio tracks of various Quarriers care workers, recorded as part of an earlier radio campaign, as the basis for a reimagined set of animated ads for this years’ social campaign.

By selecting three of the stores, as told by the Quarriers care workers, we create a series of playful animations, using a little ‘creative’ licence in the depiction of the scenes being described.

These three animations were brought to life by the wonderful Donna McAvoy and contained within the existing ‘Care to Join Us’ campaign banner.

We were then able to provide the Quarriers recruitment team with the required creative assets with which to run their unique lockdown recruitment drive via their own social channels.

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.