Competition among advertising agencies in the design market and the failure of local resource companies to invest in design services were two of the many hurdles facing the sector in Western Australia, according to John Emery, principal creative director of Reb Design.
Subiaco-based Reb Design created two of the top three most recognised brands in the WA Business News branding survey this year – HBF and Bunnings – as well as that for the West Coast Eagles, which came in at sixth position.
“All development for these brands was accompanied by stringent guidelines and philosophies, which were created to maintain the integrity of the brand over the years,” Mr Emery said.
“These guidelines or style guides not only ensure continuity of the brand in the marketplace, but also reduce the time required by the various marketing departments to police the correct usage of their logos and associated materials.”
During recent years, the emerging design industry has been dominated by the major advertising agencies, which have often included brand creation in their package offers to clients.
“Advertising agencies have been struggling in terms of media, because there isn’t that much, so they wanted to get a larger share of the pie,” Mr Emery said.
“They all said to not-so-sophisticated clients: ‘If you do that we’ll do your brand or your logo’…but they don’t really put the value and time into that.”
He said the transformation of the design industry into a cottage industry was another barrier to the development of the local trade. The design business, which has 25 per cent of its core clientele based on the east coast, is disappointed that some design agencies’ expansion plans have been stifled as a result of large WA resource companies’ non-existent branding policies.
“There isn’t much happening here in terms of really large corporate branding programs; there’s more over east,” Mr Emery said.
“I’m not too sure why, considering we are right into this resource boom. But I guess a lot people think ‘why would we do it, everything is going great?’ If you say that to people who are the cream design groups in this city, and there are probably four or five – that’s it.”
