Scotland Memory Stick - The Leith Agency
Visit Scotland
Issue 12 | September 2009
Agency
The Leith Agency
Creative Team
Art Director: Caroline Petrie, Copywriter: Conrad Robson, Creative Director: Sean Moore
Production Team
Producer: Grant Byrne
Date
2009
Background
As the name implies, Scotland’s International Image is the body responsible for promoting Scotland abroad as a place to work, invest, live, holiday or study.
They had a very specific request: to produce a handout to be distributed at home to foreign visitors and at events worldwide.
The challenge was that to a lot of people Scotland is the past - shortbread, tartan, and whisky. The aim was to showcase Scotland as an independent, modern and hugely creative nation. It’s a tough balancing act.
Idea
Targeting an international audience, memory sticks will be handed out at events, conferences and festivals throughout 2009.
Since this is Scotland’s year of ‘Homecoming’, there will be good access to a wide audience of foreign visitors in search of their roots.
As well as showcasing Scotland as an independent and dynamic nation the piece is designed to drive traffic onto Scotland.org and increase the number of registered users on the site.
The creative challenge was to strike a balance between Scotland’s rich culture and past and showcasing a more modern version in a way that made sense to the recipient.
This ‘blend’ was communicated by placing attractive content onto a modern format (a memory stick) but delivered in a very traditional way (a whisky presentation case) summed up with the emotive umbrella line of ‘We are past. We are future. We are Scotland.’
Drawing upon a wide range of topics, the material was organized into section s such as Creativity, Innovation and Events. To introduce these sections we developed traditional crests representative of Scotland and embedded them with powerful modern elements.
The copy juxtaposes the past and the future at every stage thereby enhancing and challenging peoples perceptions about Scotland.
Results
The campaign has only just broken and there are no results as yet.
Our Thoughts
This would have been a tough job for the creative team. Not throwing out the old to showcase the new. The way they’ve handled it is good, with some really nice art direction touches in the canister and the individual pages. All in all a solid if slightly expected idea.