Radiation is a brand navigation company. Our primary purpose is to develop inspired brand strategy that can inform, influence and unite all communication across all media, both externally and internally.
Once we have successfully captured the brand’s unique and authentic attitude via our unique Brand Mapping process, we develop a multi-media communication strategy to best connect with the identified audiences.
We believe that consumers no longer have vacancies in their lives for new brands. For them to make room for one more, a brand needs to be relevant, memorable and inspiring at all times. For this reason, we place an enormous amount of importance on our creative response, employing only best of breed individuals across all communication disciplines.
Presently Radiation has restless guardianship of 15 brands in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore. Many of these brands have been under our care for over six years. Many of our client relationships are even longer.
Radiation was established by Jill Brinsdon in May 2000, with a staff of one and absolutely no clients. Radiation now has restless guardianship of 15 brands in New Zealand, Australia and Singapore, an incredibly stable staff of five permanent radiators and a contracted workforce of around 30 best practice communication specialists.
Before starting Radiation, Jill was a highly regarded Director and Creative Director of major multi-national advertising agencies including Bates New Zealand, Publicis Mojo and Saatchi & Saatchi. For the last six years of this time, she also authored strategy and developed her skills as a consumer advocate via Mojo’s Mind and Mood programme.
Jill’s unique combination of skills, straddling business acumen, strategic insight and creative experience is a key part of Radiation’s x factor for the brands we develop for our clients. Ask any of them! (this last sentence linked to client testimonial section)
You can contact Jill directly at jill@radiation.co.nz or phone her at +64 9 309 5550
If Radiation was a brand – which, of course, it is – it would find its way out into the world in the most viral way possible. Radiation is a textbook ‘discovery brand’, known only to those in the know.
Just what it is that Radiation does, depends on what the client needs. First on the list of company objectives is to “Provide inspiration to whatever part of the brand or organisation needs it most”. If the brand needs ads, it gets ads. If the company needs repositioning, it gets repositioned.
Radiation can organise a store opening, redesign packaging, or suggest that a company fires all its staff – but only if that is what is best for the brand. Brinsdon calls it, “Brands without ads,” which means that the brand gets what it needs, not whatever creative services the agency specialises in.
Gone are the layers of ‘suits’ that make up the middle tier of a traditional advertising agency. “There is a growing marketplace and desire for people to work in a stripped-down, leaner, more virtual manner,” says Brinsdon, “And to have a breadth of solutions without all the structure that goes with it. Radiation is simply a response to the complete deconstruction of the working world, particularly the creative industries. The less structure we have in place, the greater ability we have to meet our clients’ evolving needs."
Perhaps the greatest misunderstanding involves the word 'brand'. What is it? Your new logo? The labels on your products? The sign above your door?
"Far from it, ‘brand’ should not be confused with ‘logo’. Branding is never completed – it’s a process, not an event,” says Brinsdon. “It’s holistic – branding is the attitude and experience that sits above your products or services to separate them from your competitors’, and make them more compelling, more exciting, more engaging, maybe even more expensive sometimes. Everything [about your business] must make a contribution to your brand.
Every aspect of a business feeds ‘the brand’. Imagine it as the central core with spokes running off to what represents the rest of your business – ‘voice’ (brochures, logos, ‘collateral’, etc), ‘behaviour’ (company culture, HR), ‘place’ (head office, retail outlet), and ‘products and services’. It all has to work – each touch point is an opportunity to demonstrate your brand and its values,” she says. “Treat every connection at every level of your business as though it’s a branding opportunity.”
Client Fiona Hewitt likes the fact Brinsdon brings together teams of consultants for individual projects, rather than employing a large staff who may or may not be suitable for a particular job.
“When I worked in an ad agency, I had a creative department worth $1 million so I wasn’t going to go anywhere else [for talent],” Brinsdon says. “So while an art director has totally different skills to a designer, for example, art directors were often used to do design work … Our model means I can choose a journalist, a designer or a high-end television production person depending on the job.”
Brinsdon’s job as 'chief radiator' is to bring the teams together, keep the strategic plan working and do the quality control. (Oh, and she does the weekly shop for groceries for those platters.)
The idea of expanding and contracting your teams to suit a particular task isn’t new – the film industry uses it all the time. Brinsdon says as well as poaching people, she’s always looking for models from other industries she can use in her own business. For example, a film company contact once told her up to 50% of their work came from their other film companies, so Brinsdon started developing a network of sometimes competitive businesses and individuals she could use.
It’s been a good year – and a year of change – for the weight-loss drug Xenical. Says Roche New Zealand marketing manager Stuart Knight “We’re very pleased with Xenical usage this year. After a predictably stable winter, use increased significantly into spring as people began to consider losing weight for summer.”
The ‘Ready when you are’ advertising campaign featuring the burning chair, exploding fast food caravan and a cast of motivational people enjoying getting some exercise and banishing energy-dense foods from their lives set out to re-educate people about the role of Xenical.
Consumer research prior to the campaign confirmed the need to communicate more information about the product or risk turning people off Xenical through unrealistic expectations.
"Radiation took things from there and the result is a new campaign that in its first month on air increased Xenical use by 20 per cent and registrations onto the Xenical Support Programme by 82 per cent, a result we’re delighted with.”
To compete beyond price, a brand has to connect with people at an emotional as well as a rational level.
We achieve this by finding its unique and authentic attitude, capturing it via our matchless Brand Mapping process then working closely with our clients to represent that attitude in as many aspects of their business as our brief includes.
To be a robust, authentic and believable brand, this attitude must be easily identifiable across the brand’s voice, environment, products and services, and behaviour (via the staff and the culture of the company). By using our Brand Experience Model we can ensure all these aspects are rigorously reviewed and revitalised with the brand’s unique attitude.
For each project, we create a hand-picked team, selected from our lineup of contracted radiators from all communication disciplines. These guys are our secret weapons. Every one of our radiators is a best of breed specialist who thrives on a tightly defined Radiation brief.
All work, across all media, is reviewed and challenged by our strategic and creative direction. This rigour and passion is why our clients’ brands thrive everywhere they live.
Call us on + 64 9 309 5550
Fax us on + 64 9 309 5551
Email us at radiate@radiation.co.nz
Visit us at 5 Flower Street, Eden Terrace, Auckland