ABOUT

We were approached by the Gerety Awards to refresh and bring to life their industry-challenging brand, driving forwards their ambition and harnessing the amazing energy of the organisation's mission by updating and remodelling a brand world that was somewhat flat and dark into something inspirational, and full of personality and life.

The Gerety Awards aims to redefine the standard to which advertising is held. Named after Frances Gerety, the copywriter who coined the slogan “A diamond is forever", the awards mark the first time that juries have been brought together to select the best in advertising – all advertising, not just advertising made for women – through the female lens.

Women make up to 80% of all purchasing decisions globally, and so its talented judging panels set a new benchmark for creative communications relevant to market reality. They are unique in that sessions are held around the world, with international Executive and Grand Juries of female agency and brand leaders, alongside Ambassadors; creating a truly diverse and qualitative winners' showcase across multiple creative disciplines.

The proposed strategy was to create a fresh, bright TOV and visual style to celebrate the awards' mission, and to level-up the voices of the many incredible female creatives involved.

This was all done on a very low-budget, as a common drive to push forward diversity in the creative industries was a shared goal, and we deemed it important to support. It did, however, mean that creative solutions needed to be found in the simplest of ways.

The new tone-of-voice is feminine but confident, elegant but edgy. We took their existing principle colour of purple and brought it life. Both the UX and the visual elements of the website were redesigned, making navigation easy and content interesting to browse – a huge shift from the difficult to follow site that they had previously. It also had to function clearly as an entry upload portal and connect seamlessly to another site hosted through AwardsEngine. The website refresh aimed to give the work and the jury members prominence. You’re basically hit with a wall of names early on, which challenges the traditional status quo of many other awards schemes, and the industry at large.

The importance of the diamond heritage was paramount to this brief. And, so, we delved deep in to the craft of diamond cutting. There are 58 facets on a brilliant-cut diamond, with a ‘critical angle’ of 24.4 degrees… this was carefully applied throughout the brand system, including the precision cuts of the logo itself. The story of the diamond is always being told, right down to the warm-grey secondary colour – inspired by the shade of a diamond polishing wheel. This attention-to-detail, and light, refreshing colour palette, combined with the intrinsic optimism and beauty of light refracting through crystal, formed the basis for brand assets throughout the scheme.

A new font was chosen, fresh copy was written in an upbeat, friendly voice, energetically cropped diamond shards were specially created, and a sense of global community built through Instagram filters and Facebook talks. Industry awareness and footfall has increased dramatically since the rebrand was launched, alongside a much amplified buzz around the juries themselves.

The brilliance of a perfectly cut diamond reflects the quality of the awards, and the women who are part of it.

This is Gerety…