London's newest village comes to life with branding guidance from Ziggurat Brands
At the end of 2013 Greenwich Millennium Village (GMV) - the consortium of developer Countrywide, housebuilder Taylor Wimpey and the Mayor of London- charged Ziggurat Brands to create a community where people feel they belong.
In the early 2000s Greenwich Millennium Village was created as a new urban space with low-energy buildings designed by Dutch architect Ralph Erskine.
Following the success of the London 2012 Olympic Games Ziggurat Brands set about creating an identity for Greenwich Millennium Village that would “build on the sense of community generated by the Games, and would encourage people not simply to see the area as an investment opportunity but as a place to live, to raise their families and to feel proud of,” said Alison Taylor, client director at Ziggurat Brands.
Taylor added: “The challenge in creating an authentic and powerful identity for a property development is that there is rarely any product differentiation. Houses in one development are much like houses in another development, so you have to look elsewhere for the essence of the brand.”
In order to create a solid identity for the area which is home to The O2 arena the agency talked to those “on the ground” to get a feel for how much they liked living there. Ziggurat Brands encouraged the stakeholders to use the name Greenwich Millennium Village as opposed to GMV, which sounds more like a development company than a place to live.