News

Following a 3-way pitch, Edinburgh-based creative studio, 39steps, in collaboration with ad agency mightysmall has been appointed to reinvigorate the brand, marketing and advertising for Scotland’s largest independent Funeral Directors, William Purves Ltd.

With communications spanning everything from brand collateral to online, and brand advertising campaigns, the business will be actively raising it’s profile with a consistent message, promoting its core services throughout Edinburgh and the Lothians.

The pitch was co-ordinated by FMC & Sons following research and a Brand Audit for the client.

Steve McCracken, Chairman of the FMC group said: “The proposal from 39steps and mightysmall showed considerable insight into the marketing communication needs of firms in the funeral sector and set them apart from other propositions.”

Julie Diver, Managing Director of 39steps, commented: “It’s great to be working with such a well-known and respected company in Edinburgh. The Purves team is committed to marketing aims that include producing quality materials that generate real results. We’re delighted to be entrusted with taking an Edinburgh institution to the next level and really looking forward to teaming up again with mightysmall in a new sector.”

Tamsin Ansdell, Director of mightysmall, added: “Great to be collaborating with 39steps again – the two companies’ skill sets compliment each other nicely and we’ll enjoy working with Purves, in a sector we haven’t explored before with a really fresh, interesting brief.”

We were asked by Scottish Community Foundation to create event materials for Scotland’s Philanthropy Debate 2010. The event will be a thought-provoking and lively debate on philanthropy and charitable giving in Scotland. 39steps will be designing invites, letters, flyers for online and print use and event programmes. Scottish Community Foundation has been working with people and organisations to help them give to good causes effectively and inexpensively since 1996 by providing advice, administration and management support services. We hope to bring you our designs soon!

39steps designed a corporate identity for the new Social Media Academy run by JCI Edinburgh. The course is suitable for those who don’t even have social media accounts and don’t know where to start, as each evening will begin with a hands-on session where you’ll bring your laptop and sign up for each of the social media services. Expert speakers will give an example of how to get more out of the media and there will be a chance to ask questions of the experts and case study speakers.

The Academy starts on the 2nd September and runs weekly until the 22nd October when there will be a graduation dinner, where attendees will be given awards and certificates through participating in the course.

Following on from our recent project with Informatics Ventures, we’re now working with a spin-out company on their branding and web presence in the bio sciences field, who work out of the world-acclaimed School of Informatics at Edinburgh University. Fab people, watch this space to see what we come up with!

Regular readers may remember we set ourselves a creative brief a while ago inspired by designer Stefan Sagmeister. Our challenge was to create a design based around a song lyric that was quite personal to us. Hats off to Kimberly, who was here on work experience at the time, and Lewis who actually managed to create something. Kimberly’s illustrative and literal take on Ocean Colour Scene’s ‘The Riverboat Song’ was great. Lewis took his DIY skills to the next level by carving lyrics from ‘Hey Hey, My My (Into the Black)’ by Neil Young into a piece of wood and setting fire to the whole thing. Feel free to lavish upon them the praise they rightly deserve.