Proper Pumpkins!!
Wight Scribe’s perfectly proven practice on how to further enhance your brand identity!
This year has seen the creation of something that I’m particularly proud of.
And it’s worked exceptionally well.
In the very beginning came The Voice, and The Voice said unto me, “Come on, let’s bugger about a bit”.
Well, the Voice didn’t really say that because The Voice belonged to Mark and Mark is highly eloquent and rather well spoken, (some might even go as far as to say “posh”). He pronounces words such as “year” like “yahh”, “tissue” is “tiss-yew” and “shower” is “shaaaaar”. He can somehow even make the word “house” rhyme with “mice”.
But I knew what he meant.
Last year I was brought in late on to help promote the inaugural Isle of Wight Steampunk Festival.
This year, along with Mark at Bate Brand and Loz at LozBerryWorks I’ve been involved from the start and, from a digital marketing point of view, between the three of us, we’ve achieved and created something that’s pretty damn amazeballs.
We all know the power of having an effective and impactful brand identity, particularly in regards to visual brand recognition. Take Nike’s “swoosh”, Levi’s little red tag and, probably most famously, the golden arches of Maccie D’s. Straight away you can associate the image with the product, you know what you’re getting.
But, for this year’s Isle of Wight’s Steampunk Festival, after our initial brainstorm whereby The Voice spaketh, and gaveth its thoughts-eth, leaving the imagery to Mark and the social wizardry to Loz I knuckled down and concentrated on how best to create a personality, a language and voice for it.
Steampunk, for those who are unaware, is, at its heart, a subgenre of science fiction and fantasy that’s set within an alternative era of Victorian England. An era where today’s modern inventions and technology are predominantly run on steam power as the dominant source of energy.
Basically you could just try imagining the world of Oliver Twist. Victorian fashion, its pomp, flair and facial hair all coupled with some seriously funky modern day gadgets and gizmos.
And goggles, you mustn't forget the goggles…..
Now, my task was to somehow try and relate this era to the Isle of Wight itself.
I had to find a way to associate the two even further, to marry them up if you will - so, with a couple of pointers from “The Voice” I looked at the languages used at the time and combined Victorian terms and phrases with the old “Oil’a Woight” Caulkhead dialect.
So this brought two audiences together that shared a common interest in The Isle of Wight Steampunk Festival. Islanders who have grown up hearing terms such as “mallyshag, nammet, nipper, jasper and scran bag” and Steampunk enthusiasts who know their “hornswoggling shoddyocracy bow-wow mutton” to their “highfalutin’ bags o’mystery!”.
It created interest, amusement, interaction - to some seriously impressive levels too!
With Loz handling the posts, sharing and interacting with them, Mark on imagery and myself on copy purely from a social media perspective we increased the profile of The Isle of Wight Steampunk Festival substantially.
Facebook Views rose from 27.7k to 345,966
Followers went from 844 to 1.78k
Content interactions rose from 2k to 7,523
And the top 3 posts views/interactions rose from 75-112 to 6,791 - 14.1k
Teamwork makes the dream work!
A little FYI 🙂
There are lots of books on local Isle of Wight phrases — including A Dictionary of the Isle of Wight Dialect and of Provincialisms Used in the Island by W. H. Long, which was originally published by George Brannon of the County Press in the 1880s and is still available in print or online from Forgotten Books.
And, as well as good old Captain Google this site threw up an extensive library of Victorian/Steampunk terms and phrases.
https://victorianvocabulary.weebly.com/glossary-of-victorian-slang.html
