Unplugged commenced business in late 2002 and is the brainchild of creative team Rick and Sue Melvill who began trading following the end of the restraint of trade enforced after selling their hugely successful company Blue Moon to the Sisane Group.
The company has quietly been building its reputation with left of centre strategies for clients such as Standard Bank, Anglo American, Wesbank and Cell C and 2004 is the first year that the company has put forward entries to the Loeries.
Nominations for 2004 include two nominations for Standard Bank entitled 'Crossing the Line: Mass Market' and 'Crossing the Line: Youth Market', one nomination for Nedbank (Sabrage), a nomination for the VW Touareg Launch in conjunction Dogsbody and a nomination for Anglo Coal (Snake Handlers) in conjunction with sister company Tshisa, a specialist mining communications company. Nominations were received for the Corporate Event Awards in Internal Communication - Educational, External Communication - Product, External Communication - Service and in the Theatre Large Events categories (check www.loerie.org.za for further breakdowns).
Loeries were received for Standard Bank: Crossing the Line Mass Market (Silver), Nedbank: Sabrage (Silver), Standard Bank: Crossing the Line Youth Market (Gold), VW: Touareg Launch with Dogsbody (Gold) and Anglo Coal: Snakes Alive (Gold) done in conjunction with Tshisa.
"We are ecstatic that all our entries have been nominated and received awards this year and are pleased that our innovative integration of theatre, design and interactive experiential eventing has been well received by the judges. We believe that we offer our clients living, breathing experiences that permits them to get their messaging across on a platform that ensures audiences are receptive," said Sue Melvill, Executive Producer for Unplugged.
"Each event was designed with the client's key messages integrated but ensured that the event spoke to the specific target audience. With Standard Bank for example we tried to get the audience to understand the mass market through staging a traditional African wedding in Soweto. We even sent managers to tattoo parlours to understand the influence of body art on young people today as part of the youth emersion. Each programme was developed as an educational tool that ensured that the client's corporate culture was reflected in an innovative manner," said Rick Melvill, Creative Director.
Unplugged Communications
