MUSE Gold

2024

PA's Brand Impact Index 2024

Entrant Company

PA Consulting

Category

Best Agency Awards - Best Business Campaign

Client's Name

PA Consulting

Country / Region

United Kingdom

PA’s first, annual survey on U.S. brands, finds consumers are looking for brands to be a catalyst for a better world.

Our survey of 7,000 U.S. consumers found they want brands to operate sustainably, use responsibly sourced materials, and actively champion good causes that cultivate community.

Campaign design challenge.
• An annual Index requires an idea rich enough to provide a wellspring for creative renewal, spanning years.
• As a data-driven report, we need a design system capable of eye-catching activations, and highly consumable data visualisations.
• It needs to instantly signal its subject-matter to a highly design-literate audience, and relatable across sectors from FMCG to social media influencers.

Creative response.
We focussed on the idea of ‘packshots’ – the universal visual language of brands. A packshot is defined as a still or moving image of a product, usually including its packaging and labelling, used to show the product in advertising.

Packshots have evolved into a creative sub-discipline, with its own visual logic: a perfume bottle shown artfully ‘exploding’ from its packaging; or a mass-produced bottle, raised on a pedestal, photographed like a fashion model. No-one questions these tropes, and we wanted to leverage their ubiquity and familiarity, as the framework of a design system.

Adobe Illustrator is ideal for replicating man-made surfaces; with live text, and saleable vector-based graphics, perfect for any media adaptations. It lends executions an ‘uncanny’ feel, which helps avoid confusion with actual brands.

The trope of a pedestal became symbolic of category evaluation and ranking, with a grided backdrop implying systematic analysis.

Our design system uses ‘Hero’ imagery to evoke brands as our subject matter. ‘Spotlight’ imagery, based on packaging design, is used to create smile-in-the-mind ways to enliven key stats. While the basic data utilises the typographic language of product information.

We used our visual identity to create a branded consistency across the category illustrations: this included designing ‘products’ based on our rules for type scaling and image aspect ratios.

We anticipate evolving this concept over many years. Roll-on 2025…!

Credits

CMO / PA Consulting
Jo Scarlett
Business Director / PA Consulting
Laura King
Senior Marketing Manager / PA Consulting
Amy Bloom
Head of Thought Leadership / PA Consulting
Tom Bovingdon
Head of Design Studio / PA Consulting
Bill Cameron
Head of Creative /PA Consulting
Andrew Peach
Senior Digital Experience Manager / PA Consulting
Megan Daniher
More Gold Winners
Experiential & Immersive
2024
MUSE Advertising Awards - The Dolby House: Redefining Immersive Experiences at SXSW

Entrant Company

Sparks

Category

Experiential & Immersive - Live Experiences

Country / Region

United States

Video
2024
MUSE Advertising Awards - The Invisible Machine

Entrant Company

ICON FIRECREST

Category

Video - Self-Promotion

Country / Region

Ireland

Experiential & Immersive
2024
MUSE Advertising Awards - A.Maison at Cannes Lions

Entrant Company

Pinch

Category

Experiential & Immersive - Interactive Outdoor Event

Country / Region

United States

Marketing & Promotional
2024
MUSE Advertising Awards - Nelson Jameson 2024 Dairy Themed Calendar

Entrant Company

Nelson-Jameson

Category

Marketing & Promotional - Calendar

Country / Region

United States