At SomeOne we’ve long been advocates of bringing play to brands everyday actions, having seen the rewards products, organisations or services receive when they embrace a more playful approach.
SomeOne has been working with CBRE, the world’s largest commercial real estate services and investment firm on creating one-of-a-kind BrandBuildings for their UK headquarters in The City of London.
The best brands often display a sense of entertainment in the way they communicate and behave. While it’s expected of brands in certain spaces, such as music brands, soft drinks, and retailers, it’s increasingly helping sectors less familiar with a more entertaining approach.
At SomeOne we’ve long been advocates of bringing play to brands everyday actions, having seen the rewards products, organisations or services receive when they embrace a more playful approach.
Another client of ours, WorldPay is for example all set for the UK’s biggest floatation on the stock exchange (an estimated £6 billion) — and while we wouldn’t claim its significantly improved financial position is entirely down to the branding we deployed for them, it’s certainly helped make them better understood and more loved. We’ve applied this thinking and seen it work wonders for airlines, the financial sector, medical brands…
So it was with considerable enthusiasm that we embarked on a journey with property experts CBRE. The organisation provides clients with insightful, market leading advice to maximise the value of their real estate.
They know the property sector side and out, with a brick by brick level of knowledge. CBRE is also made up of lovely people they are pivotal in all things property, but could benefit from a way to start to break down preconceptions. Property after all is very good at building ivory towers. They wanted to build some bridges.
CBRE commercial property consultants advise more clients than any other commercial property adviser, combining the market-making of management consultants with the accountability of professional advisors.
They have over half a billion square feet in property and corporate facilities under management, and have been behind the valuation and advisory assignments for 66,625 properties.
SomeOne were asked to create a way for the brand to demonstrate their personalities duality. They are both managers and advisors. That there is a balance of professional advice and personal care. Their new HQ had all the right things in all the right places. But what it needed was a little fun.
Their intricate knowledge of the property market, their high profile success stories in the shape of world class architecture such as London’s 30 St Mary Axe (The Gherkin), the iconic SalesForce Tower and the One World Trade Center — the tallest building in the Western Hemisphere — led to us developing a series of illuminated, 2D window mounted pieces made entirely out of Lego bricks.
In parallel we designed and delivered a suite of fully built, internally illuminated 6ft scale models of some of CBRE’s most famous buildings — to be on display in key high traffic areas of the newly refurbished HQ. These too are made entirely out of Lego and took 5 weeks to construct.
We also developed a wall mounted typographic messaging system — again, created entirely out of Lego. It’s been an amazing project to be involved in. With over 350 offices in the CBRE network… Looks like it may be a good time to buy shares in Lego…
It felt entirely natural to take some of the world’s greatest buildings and interpret them with the world’s most popular toy