Quick of the starting blocks
In September 2014, Minale Tattersfield was asked to develop the name, visual identity, website, branded assets and an integrated campaign to help raise investment to promote and help produce an independent documentary about Italian immigrants moving to the UK by Luca Vullo.
With filming set to commence in October 2014 and the documentary’s first screening scheduled for the Cannes Film Festival in early spring 2015, the identity, brand assets and planning for the integrated campaign had to be in place by the end of October 2014.
The initial scope was to capture the essence of the documentary and communicate it clearly and effectively to the project’s investors, sponsors and collaborators. Once achieved this first objective we would then develop an integrated campaign to build awareness for the documentary as well as bring in further investment through crowd sourcing.
A time of great change
The title of the documentary had to be emotive, descriptive and 'sensitive' about the subject matter. It would have to appeal and be understood by both Italian and English speakers. The idea was to create a film title that would not require translating into different languages, but rather work more like a brand name that would be easy to understand to 'spread' and memorable to 'stick'.
INFLUX was chosen for the title. It was felt that it had the potential to represent a ‘collective movement’ or even a ‘public manifesto’. It was direct and clearly made no excuses about the subject matter: the arrival of people in large numbers, ‘an influx of people’, which could be interpreted as both a negative and a positive, depending on the persons point of view. It basically was indicative of the current political and social climate effecting the Eurozone; a state of things which are in flux, meaning a time when things are kind of up in the air and could go either way, better still, a time of great change!
The identity had to be designed for use across multiple channels, both digital and traditional. Therefor the letter ‘I’ for influx, equally applicable to Immigration, Integration, Inspiration and Independence, was adopted as both the documentary's values but also as a metaphor of an opening doorway into the unknown. The final identity also suggested an abstract minimalist representation of the geographical ‘boot’ of Italy. In its simplest form the identity could be used in a number of different interpretations, which would later become the central theme upon which to build the integrated campaign.
Reaching out
Once the name and identity had been agreed and signed off, the next step was to plan on how to expand the ‘community’ which the documentary would represent. With social media we started to develop a two way conversation with the growing Italian community resident in the UK.
A campaign built around the ‘big idea’ of ‘being a real fan’ and 'Inspire more’ was integrated with-in Luca Vullo’s PR activity, were he was invited to appear on several TV and Radio shows to present his vision for the documentary and how he wants to try and capture a snap shot of today’s exodus of young Italians migrating to London.
The branded assets created for the whole project included:
1. Visual and verbal identity (INFLUX)
2. The INFLUX Look and feel and tone of voice
3. Crowd funding campaign assets
5. Website look and content
6. Social media content
The result
The objective of creating an authentic inspiring narrative around the documentary’s theme as well as achieving the £20,000 target from crowd sourcing was achieved with-in the tight timeframe of just 8 weeks. The documentary’s facebook followers has grown from zero to just under 2000 in less than 2 months, with interest from new interested partners and sponsors growing on a weekly bases.
The documentary has now started its next phase of post-production, with the funding secured through crowd sourcing. Our next stage to develop and build brand awareness further has also started, with the inaugural screening at Cannes in spring approaching fast. Stay tunned!