WIRED 99.9 FM is a Student Community of Interest Radio station with an active policy of facilitating access, communication, and participation. Dedicated to amplifying students’ voices, promoting local artists, and cultivating culture in Limerick and surrounding regions. We were commissioned to develop a brand system that could not only reflect their values and ethos, but also grow and adapt in a way that places the volunteers and their contributions at the forefront of everything they do.
What we did:
- Brand Development
- Graphic Design
- Video and Photography Production
- Marketing Campaign Management
- Content Creation
BRAND DEVELOPMENT — WIRED 99.9FM is a democratic broadcasting environment with students’ voices at its core. We identified early on that the operationality of this brand held a lot of weight in ensuring its success. In response to this we developed a lean yet dynamic system that employs a select few core elements efficiently and concisely, acting as a vessel to deliver the volunteers’ own voices, messaging, and personalities.
BRAND ELEMENTS — Inspired by audio waveforms, we developed an automated visual generator. Feeding in an audio input and tweaking and abstracting the properties to create random graphics. This dynamic system injects the brand with a constant momentum, fluidity, and fluctuation.
THE LOGO — Maintaining the promise of keeping volunteers and their work at the forefront or everything they do, we opted for a stripped back, neutral expression typographic approach for the logo.
THE EMBLEM — In recognising the nature of the station, we identified that the identity of WIRED 99.9FM would need to exist on a spectrum, depending on the application in which it was placed. As a result, in conjunction with the wordmark, we also developed a dynamic suite of emblems that captures this diversity and contrast. This allows for more variance in tone, as well as establishing a visual differentiation for when the voice is that of WIRED 99.9FM and their volunteers.
VIDEO PRODUCTION — Taking into consideration the launch of the brand, we were commissioned to create a video to be the initial announcement of the new identity. During the development of the brand, we identified some barriers for users in accessing the station. As WIRED’s frequency is shared with Limerick City Community Radio during weekends, and smart speakers in particular would struggle in recognising “Wired FM”, we renamed the station to WIRED 99.9FM as a means of combatting these compatibility issues and distinguishing the station’s frequency. As a result, we developed a video that not only revealed the new brand identity and visual language of the station, but also highlighted the change in name, placing an emphasis on the station’s frequency and establishing that familiarity for their audience.
CAMPAIGN STRATEGY — To coordinate the launch of the new brand and dissemination of the brand launch video, we developed a campaign strategy, mapping out the social advertising and planning a series of native content promoting complimentary messages. Throughout the campaign, we managed the placement of native content and social advertising on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook and Twitter.
RESULTS — The campaign successfully achieved targets set for brand awareness, engagement, and distribution of the campaign video, exceeding the targets for video views and impressions. Overall, the brand launch drove strong engagement from stakeholders, volunteers, students and the wider artistic community, especially through engagement with local musicians and artists. In 2022, the Wired 99.9FM campaign received a Silver award in the Logotypes and Marques category at the Shark Awards. It was also shortlisted in the Brand Refresh category at the 2022 IDI Awards, and the Video Campaign category in the Irish Social Media Awards 2022.
