I wrote this fake news story for April Fool’s Day 2011 and we hosted it on the BFK site for that one day. I still like it, and want to archive it here.
Social media solutions within the civil service and the broader state sector.
We have just completed a major rebranding programme for The Office For Social Media Effectiveness to help them deliver on their strategic objectives. Established in 2009, the role and remit of the Office has expanded alongside the adoption of social media solutions within the civil service and the broader state sector. From today it is relaunching with a new name and corporate identity as “Status:State”.
We created this new name to express the breathless potential for communication possible through the simplicity and clarity of the now-ubiquitous status update. This name researched 23% better amongst key stakeholder groups, as opposed to other candidates such as “@Ireland”, “Like:Ireland” and “Status-Up!”
Our brand mark design builds upon the new name by leveraging the visual tropes and aesthetic conventions of social media in a unique, memorable and captivating manner. It forms the basis for a comprehensive visual system. Richard Bar, Director of Outreach for Status:State, says “We are confident this new brand will resonate with our clients and key stakeholders and that they will all really ‘Like’ it”.
This rebranding is not a cosmetic exercise, it reflects the ongoing activities of the Office. Our design work is informing and supporting these initiatives being rolled out in 2012/13.
1: Mentoring Activities
Status:State are now running introductory four-day workshops and in-depth 23-week courses in Social Media Best Practice. These certified programmes will ensure that Ireland’s state employees have the skills to operate in the new ‘Social 2.0 Sharing Economy’. We designed a suite of easy-to-use workbooks and 140-character flash cards to deliver these programmes.
2: The Bi-Tweet
Status:State are working with Facebook, Twitter and their peers to implement technological solutions resolving social media’s shortcomings in complying with the Official Languages Act. They have authored the OLA-240 protocol that will ensure all state-generated tweets shall be bilingual in future. Our brand consultants provided user experience and interface guidance to this project. “We expect most Irish people will install the software patch* enabling the Bi-Tweet” says Donal O’Auth, Head of Linguistic Enablement.
*Initially available for Blackberry, Windows Mobile and Symbian; other secondary platforms (iOS and Android) pending review and phase two roll-out in 2013–15.
3: The ‘Social Media Driving Licence’
This initiative will deliver a set of standard benchmarks and transferable skills. Our licence designs incorporate holograms, QR codes and RFID tags and are graded to reflect skills acquired: from the bronze-coloured ‘Noob’ all the way up to the gold-coloured ‘Scoble’ licence.
More information is available at the Office’s upgraded and enhanced web site: Status-State-Online.ie
#branding #brand_architecture #masterbrand #graphicdesign #graphic_design
Fantastic stuff Aidan. Such a shame it's an April Fool.
ReplyDeleteI've realised in my time abroad that as much as Ireland bills itself as an internet savvy country, it's really the exact opposite. My mother is a principal and she doesn't even have a school-provided e-mail address, nor do and of her teachers!
Open and frequent communication from the government (the actual government not the politicians) would go a long way to improving things for Irish citizens and businesses.
An idea like Status:State would be perfectly poised to take advantage of the progressing information revolution that is currently under way.
I couldn't agree more Charles.
ReplyDeleteRather than knocking state services, I guess that what I was having a go at was the social media training bandwagon. While there are undoubtedly some thoughtful and useful practitioners in that field, there is also an underbelly of over-priced half-day and full-day seminars where "you will learn how to update your status multiple social media websites…" and such-like. All of which seem to take advantage of how ill-informed people are. It did not seem much of a stretch to imagine those blossoming out into fully-fledged 23-week courses (..."learn how to 'check-in' at your office!", " learn how to 'share' photos of your team meetings on Instagram!" etc). There are just far too many opportunities for extracting the michael there...