O’Grady Drama

Advantage Media Group was approached for the detailed revitalisation of one of Australia’s most experienced and successful drama educational body – Helen O’Grady Drama Academy.
Australia is the origin space for this now international academy, and its national Australian team requested a considered rebrand that aimed at revitalising the name of O’Grady Drama in the eyes of schools, parents, teachers and the wider community. The rebrand was to be approached holistically, with considerations for logo adaption, colour, imagery, language, website, collateral material, franchising material, and social media management.

Adapt and evolve the Brand into a more modern, clean and approachable visual identity. This meant finding the key identifying traits of the original brand – the bold, iconic drama masks, the sun, as well as in other iterations, the playful, child-friendly font use. Taking these visual cue’s that we identified as positive and intrinsic to the core feeling of O’Grady Drama, we fleshed this out with a Discovery Process of the ‘Who, What, Why’ behind the Australian Academy.

By understanding the purpose of the rebrand and the audiences we were targeting, we were able to bring this out to the many facets of the brand including but not limited to; the website, paper adverts, certificate design, office paperwork designs, business cards, t-shirts, public banners management of Social Media profiles and more.

The re-brand had to appeal to teachers, students, parents, schools as well and the Head Office of O’Grady Drama Australia. with so many audiences to attract, the final product would need to be malleable and tempered while remaining instinctually positive and child-friendly. Additionally, as a multi-tiered, multi-faceted and franchisee based model, the branding process for the collateral would need to be wholistic as well as flexible for each individual franchisee.

To have a lengthy discovery process with consistent consultation with the necessary audience members in order to gauge the success of the direction we were heading in. With so many formats of materials, our team had the opportunity to refine and solidify many guidelines for the Visual Identity of the brand as well as anticipate the needs of the franchisees. This meant developing an automised system of variable data files that could be easily selected and printed for each school, but that also required testing hundreds of details in dozens of formats and layouts. Creating a Variable Data Network for these was integral to creating an efficient ongoing system of advertisement for the coming years as well as a universal network for the academies to be able to access the extra collateral material developed for their own Social Media Profiles.

The response from the teachers, students, the public and industry peers has been overwhelming positive. The perception of the 40+ year old brand has been lifted with a fresh, youthful, not-taking-itself-too-seriously look. The visual appeal was not merely superficial, and we are overjoyed to report that O’Grady Drama have found much less resistance in communicating with new and existing students and parents:

“[We’ve] noticed many more inquiries are coming through as a result of having seen [the] Facebook advertising. People are also tagging friends in marketing posts and making inquiries.”

– Bec Lindsay, O’Grady Leader in Mornington, Central Coast, and Adelaide Academies.