If you haven’t hear about the American Express Openair Cinemas, you may just be hiding under a rock. Read all about our work on conceptualising the brand and our approach to the design of the branding for Openair Cinemas.
American Express Openair Cinemas is Australia’s largest open air cinema, with 10 locations across Australia and New Zealand. They approached Made Somewhere to rebrand and position their popular event. The brief was to establish a master brand that can be adapted across all locations, to engage the audience and promote the event with a playful personality and new energy.
Before Made Somewhere could develop the strategy and new brand for American Express Openair Cinemas, we had to understand the issues of the previous branding. The feedback from the client and public was that the existing brand, although friendly, was too childish and did not effectively communicate to the appropriate audience. There was also a lack of emphasis on ‘American Express’ as the sponsored partner. From our own findings, we could see a limited cohesion of the brand across all media and that the brand lacked continuity in its tone and language. It was therefore not communicating appropriately to the right audience. We also had to decide how to provide the correct emphasis on ‘American Express’ without taking away from ‘Openair Cinemas’.
Made Somewhere developed a diverse brand strategy, brand suite and brand guidelines that provided the foundation for the brand for years to come, to ensure continual continuity in brand tone, graphics and messaging. The brand suite is playful and engaging with a bold character, highlighting ‘Openair Cinemas’, yet also providing emphasis on ‘American Express’, balancing the two brandmarks in harmony. The brand suite was made adaptable for different media and communications with a flexible but refined colour palette that could be utilised where required on promotional or corporate material, tying into the recognised existing brand colour blue, as well as touching on the ‘American Express’ corporate blue.
The extension of the brand was brought to life cohesively through a tailored tone of voice and copywriting, and playful patterns and graphics that retained the friendly and inviting nature of the open air cinema but also appealed to a wider target audience than just children. The brand was executed across exterior fence scrims, screen displays, printed event collateral and marketing material. The brand refresh resulted in a new lease of life for American Express Openair Cinemas that is inviting, refined and cohesively applied to effectively reach the correct audience and encourage attendance and positive engagement.
