Just came back through Guernsey airport from big presentation in Jersey and two 2-metre wide mystery boxes suspended from the ceiling have appeared! Maybe it’s the Jedi Master in hiding? Has anyone else seen them? Any ideas what’s inside?

Firstly there is Gareth Rowson who has joined us as a Senior Creative. Gareth has over a decade of industry experience stretching from New Zealand to the UK. For the last five years he has based himself on this side of the globe, recently freelancing for multiple agencies and small businesses internationally including well-known local company Healthspan Group.  Gareth has created brand identities for local businesses through to packaging designs as far afield as New Zealand’s Kapiti Cheeses.  He’s a welcome addition at a time when originality and creative thinking are the currency of a new competitive world.  With his wide range of project experience Gareth brings a wealth of creative talent to the Oi team.

Next is Tamara O’Brien who has joined us a Consultant Strategist providing board level brand planning and direction across our client portfolio. Tamara is a high-caliber industry professional with an unusual mix of both marketing and advertising having spent many years in leading companies on both sides of the fence.  She has created and run her own brands, as well as run her own agency helping high profile FMCG brands do the same.  Tamara spent her formative years in advertising at Saatchi & Saatchi London.  

Josh Brennan has joined as a Web Developer in our digital team. Josh brings a wealth of expertise in building anything from .Net to PHP sites, oh and is pretty handy at Flash too.

Oi has won the tender to be the first independent commercial sponsor to brand one of the most iconic landmarks in Guernsey.

Our innovative submission clinched the deal, which includes installing a webcam at the top of the 32-metre mast at Guernsey’s busiest roundabout. The webcam will stream live footage across the east coast of Guernsey to Herm and Sark accessible through this website and a few others (to be announced in the near future). Oi will initially also feature a number of branded flags on the mast and then offer our clients branding opportunities in the future.

The 15-tonne mast at the bottom of St Julian’s Avenue roundabout was originally meant to be up for just a year, but after 5 years has just been repainted and looks more striking than ever before. Situated on the busiest roundabout in Guernsey, and considering outdoor advertising is banned on the island, it is arguably Guernsey’s best advertising location.

A masterful move.

This is the most successful global viral interactive film ever. Absolute genius. Click here to check it out and then send it to a friend…

And here’s a taster of what to expect. Great fun and very, very clever.

The project includes creating a new visual identity with design and image guidelines, messages, and application across all internal/external print as well as electronic media. A major part involves the design of a new website for the Guernsey Financial Services Commission working closely with leading Microsoft Sharepoint website developers, Core GB.

Oi has also recently won a separate three-way pitch to produce the prestigious annual report and accounts for the Guernsey Financial Services Commission.

Another nice bit of work from the creative team who once again came out fighting when faced with a tough brief. A simple message delivered in a creative, engaging and persuasive way.  Job done.

No one can fail to have heard about the massive global recall of Toyota cars over the past few weeks with millions of ‘defective’ vehicles called back especially over Europe, North America and China…

Gone in a flash it seems is the car giant’s long standing reputation for being one of the most reliable vehicles around and fiscally the impact is even scarier with share values plummeting overnight.

But, once the dust settles the lingering question may be what price can be put on the damage to their brand image?  How long will it take for the hearts and minds of consumers to forgive this and what lessons will Toyota have learned about communication.

Certainly if you’re to believe the media one of the biggest criticisms of them has been the time lag between press leakage of the scale of the issue and official Toyota statements, another will be how long it has taken them to directly contact customers. As we write we’ve heard they are rapidly preparing a series of marketing communications activity, but is it too little too late?

Dammed if you do, dammed if you don’t springs to mind, but from what we’ve seen it appears that Toyota have indeed been slow to get out there and reassure customers, perhaps wrongly believing silence is golden.  No doubt their team of crisis managers have been locked in conference rooms with them since the story broke strategising, but in this age of light-speed communication, where the internet can circulate a story faster than you can hit the brakes on your car (no pun intended) would they have been better off being alot more transparent. We think so. What about you?

Really like the sentiment of this ad by the Oi creative team and how it promotes Praxis Group’s sponsorship of the Saints in the Community programme. Nice work.