One of the Midlands’ leading creative agencies is celebrating after strengthening its team, picking up a number of client wins and receiving regional funding.
ORBhas grown significantly in the past 12 months and has now welcomed Kevin Kelly to the team, to lead on strategy and copywriting. With a background working for large agencies, Kevin joins ORB after spending the past five years in Barcelona as an integrated planner. He is now part of a 12-strong team that uses a blend of illustrative and visual story-telling techniques to help businesses bring their objectives to fruition; whether that be increased sales, better employee engagement or increased awareness among target audiences.
With this interactive approach to branding, ORB has seen a number of high profile client wins in recent months including hosting RBSMidlands and East of England Corporate & Institutional Banking’s ‘Think Outside The Bank’ staff conference. Taking one of the UK’s top banks out of its comfort zone, ORB led the event at The Buszy, a former central bus station in Milton Keynes now run by social enteprise. With an objective of engaging staff to ensure better customer experiences, the teams were all given coloured pens and sketch books to ‘doodle’ their experiences and interactions during the day, the whole of which was captured by cameras for a live-edited film and by illustrators on giant canvases to hang in the bank’s offices around the region. Bankers could even try skateboarding or street dance during the day. They also hosted unique workshops with staff to get them thinking about the business and how their everyday actions could change the customer experience. The outcomes of these sessions were then taken back into the business to achieve a better level of service and customer satisfaction.
Similarly, ORB was invited to host a visual thinking workshop alongside international experts at Pedare 2013, the Centre for Pedagogic Arts-based Research, to show university professors how they might use visualisation as part of their day jobs to demonstrate an alternative way of learning and generating ideas. The event, which took place at Falmouth University, challenged academics to understand the value of visual thinking for commercial and educational purposes.
As well as interactive ‘drawing board’ sessions, ORB has also picked up projects that look at brand positioning – from visual identity and marketing activity, to competitor analysis and employee engagement. A recent client includes national repairs company, RIGHTIO, who are set to roll out a new brand – including website, marketing collateral and staff uniforms – in the next few weeks. They have also started working with Court Collaboration – launched this year by Birmingham Young Professional of the Year winner Anthony McCourt – which has included creating a new brand and producing marketing collateral for the commercial development company. As part of this, ORB has created a brand for one of COURT’s most high profile projects, The Astbury, which sees a 300-acre transformation of unspoilt Shropshire countryside into a luxury country destination. This comes in addition to confirming a retained contract with utilities company, Glide, for their rebrand and ongoingmarketing.
ORB has also secured some high profile Public Sector campaigns, both of which will take place over the coming months. Launching alongside National Alcohol Awareness Week and continuing into early 2014, NHS Dudley has appointed ORB to deliver a behaviour change project in the local area to help drive better conversations about alcohol. This includes a new campaign identity, experiential activity and marketing support. Birmingham City Council is also set to rebrand its Fostering & Adoption, which ORB will lead on and launch in January 2014.
ORB has also identified a number of key opportunities within the higher education sector, which has helped them secure funding from the Birmingham Post Growth Fund. One of 10 businesses to receive funding, ORB has now been able to continue its growth, creating new jobs and appointing new team members.
ORB is all about bringing brands to life and creating ‘Hell Yeah!’ moments. The expert creative team can transform, launch and create new brands, finding the best way to communicate their services to their audiences. Telling stories through words and images, they find out what makes a business different and create strategy, ideas and creative to make them more meaningful, relevant and memorable.
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