20/12/22

Spinach Branding in 2022: A year building and refining brands

Branding

It’s been quite a year for Spinach Branding. In 2022 we continued to further evolve Barking Riverside London as a development grounded firmly on the principles of placemaking. We helped successfully launch Maze Row as a new name in fine wine, and published VOICES to further communicate the brand. This year we also saw the opening of SHOTO in Washington DC, the launch of Mirror Margarita by Hacha Bar, and continued our collaborations with Justerini & Brooks, as well as restaurant brands Chotto Matte and Steak & Company.

For the last few years our team has been collaborating with Barking Riverside Ltd to further evolve a London neighbourhood, providing a platform where old and new residents can build an authentic and inclusive place to live and work. And it is great to see our brand proposition, “A place to be, become and belong”, successfully set the foundation for this ambitious and exciting urban development project.

We are delighted to have won two awards alongside BRL for the project: “Best Marketing Campaign: Placemaking” at the 2022 Property Marketing Awards and “Best Brand Identity for the Property Sector” at the Transform Awards Europe. The accolades are for our brand campaign “Hello River. River Life.” which introduced Londoners to Barking Riverside, highlighting the site’s position within the context of the city and on the banks of the river Thames. Running across various media, the campaign was extremely successful in helping demonstrate that, due to Barking Riverside’s placemaking approach, the development is fundamentally different from other similar large-scale projects, offering real and meaningful benefits to residents.

Meanwhile, this year saw the opening of Thames riverboat and Barking Riverside overground rail station to connect the area to the central London and beyond, while the recognition of the local school as Outstanding by Ofsted has raised the bar further. Our current campaign “Think differently. Live differently” takes the original concept to its next stage. “The maturing of the development and pandemic meant Barking Riverside’s proposition had never been more relevant,” says Spinach partner and Branding Director Leigh Banks. “What we saw was a perfect alignment between our brand proposition and market sentiment. If we wish to live differently, and are willing to embrace change, then Barking Riverside does offer the opportunity to live better. We see this as a call to action; it is an acknowledgement that there is an alternative to how we live.”

This year we also saw Maze Row come to fruition as a new name in luxury wine. From our base in London, the team at Spinach Branding have been collaborating with our US-based client, part of E. & J. Gallo, to imagine and conceive an importer and exporter brand that approaches the fine wine scene in new and exciting ways.

We were intrigued by the Maze Row concept from the start. It tapped into so many of our specialisms: conceptualising an idea from scratch, challenging a traditional industry, and redefining the concept of luxury. These are areas we are genuinely passionate about. What’s more, the portfolio of partner-producers within the Maze Row collection of winemakers share strong values. They are all artisans who make unique products that connect intimately with time and place — all of which made the project even more compelling. And the international team have been a delight to partner with from the start.

Maze Row has been a complete brand building project to include brand definition, creating a brand platform and conceiving a name. “Using data, research, anecdotal experience and their own expertise, the Maze Row team developed an intriguing new proposition for the US wine market. We’ve worked with our client to further define the proposition and then translate it into a unique creative expression,” explains Banks.

And since our target group has a passion for discovery and exploration, long to be connected to a community who share their vision, it naturally made sense to create a platform from where we can explore wine in the wider context of culture. VOICES was thus launched this year as a lifestyle magazine in print and digital format to help express and support the Maze Row concept to great effect.

“Maze Row is all about experiencing wine and wine culture in a way that hasn’t been done before,” says Banks. “This is an ambitious vision that won’t happen overnight. The intentions are to lay the foundations now, and in 20 years time to be able to look back with hand on heart and say we changed the way people experience wine — for the better.”

On that note, we would like to thank all our partners for their support this year. And we wish you all the best in 2023.

Images: Barking Riverside London, Maze Row © Spinach Branding

Spinach Branding is a specialist branding agency based in London. We work with established businesses and start-ups around the world to build and refine their brands. See how we work and get in touch to discuss your brand.