An engaging branding campaign, conceived by Birmingham-based OWB, has signalled how children and young people from the West Midlands can gain the best start in life and access opportunities to events and mental health support.

The city centre-based creative agency developed from scratch the ‘Yo!’ campaign for City of Wolverhampton Council during the pandemic months to redirect the narrative around young people having a lack of opportunities, to how they can thrive in a post pandemic world.

Shari Bryan, co-director of OWB comments: “More than 20 per cent of Wolverhampton is made up of children so we knew we needed to answer the brief by creating an overarching brand to cover the opportunities for children and young people of all ages. 

“The challenge was to create a brand that would appeal and resonate with different generations, be simple and recognisable.

“And rather than be reserved in our messaging and branding, we wanted to shine the light on, and make young people stop and take notice – and importantly help them recognise that opportunities really do exist in their communities.”

The Yo!’ campaign has its own logo, a vibrant yellow colour palette and straplines to further complement the campaign.

Launched across the city recently and will continue for years to come, director of communications and external relations at City of Wolverhampton Council, Ian Fegan said that the all of OWB’s ideas clearly demonstrated that they understood the message behind the brand.

He added: “OWB’s pitch was the only one that showed interest and took into account our objectives and what we were trying to achieve. In their presentation, OWB highlighted our aims, from giving children and young people the best start in life and creating opportunities, promoting events in the city and mental health support.

“When presenting the concepts, it was clear that OWB had completed a lot of research about Wolverhampton. The ideas were extremely creative and linked with the city in ways the council had never thought of before. We chose the Yo! option as we thought it best suited for our target audiences.

“We were extremely impressed by the speed of OWB and how professional they were throughout the whole process.”

Shari concludes: “We applaud each and every member of our team who worked independently and at home on this project. Even though we came together regularly to pool our ideas, brainstorm and bring them together collectively, it’s testament to our team that if you have a great idea and theme, being apart doesn’t and shouldn’t matter. 

“It was a pleasure to work with the City of Wolverhampton Council via video calls and to have had such a clear brief to enable us to create the campaign, we are now looking forward to meeting the team face-to-face.”