Ricardo Moreno is the CEO of The Show Must Go Ona Riojan brand consultancy that carries out a branding original and disruptive for national and international clients. We talked to him about branding around a festival and many other issues related to the way he works.
One of the things that the pandemic has taught us is that value can be created from the supposed periphery. Big cities are no longer the absolute focus of creativity and there are more and more agencies that are capable of demonstrating it. An obvious case is The Show Must Go On (TSMGO)a brand consultant shop that from Logroño competes face to face with the largest in the world. Proof of this is that they have just delivered two projects of packaging in Peru and Korea and now they are immersed in two commissions from the United States and France. But they also have a wide portfolio of clients nationwide. San Miguel, Hojiblanca, Estrella Galicia or the DOCa Rioja are just a sample of its most representative clients.
Six years ago they launched with MUWI, the now well-established music festival, something that emerged with a simple lineup but has quickly become a national reference in the world of music and gastronomy. This event allows them to experiment with what they do best: branding. In fact, not only is their visual identity rich and attractive, but they also have a wide range that combines experiences that make brand development one of the pillars of the event.
The founder of TSMGO is Ricardo Moreno. After working in management positions in companies from different sectors, in 2009 he decided to launch himself into the exciting world of creativity. Since then, his career has been advancing in a direction marked by the ambition to create value for brands and entities with quality such as GPS, a real creative challenge at a time when visuals were not a priority for almost anyone. It did not take him long to open a gap and become a reference. We have had the opportunity to speak with him about the MUWIthe recent phenomenon of designing from the periphery or about its way of doing packaginga sector in which they have just received a Pentaward award at the Pentawards 2022.
the branding As a life form
Our focus and where we move more comfortably is in the branding. It is not only that we are more comfortable, but I also think that we contribute. I am referring above all to the creation of brands from scratch, from naming to positioning, tone of voice or adaptation to the platform. Then we take it to the visual part and to the graphic part.
They are projects in principle of small and medium format that require a more shop, to put it in some way, to put it in some way. Although there are clients such as the DOCa Rioja or Kaiku in which we are working on projects with an international dimension. Specifically, with the DOCa Rioja we are working with the new brand positioning, for which we have added sister companies to the work team, such as Morillas, with whom we frequently collaborate.
a different festival
MUWI appears in our lives in June 2016 as an embryo of the promoters who had closed the hiring of the poster for that first edition. They presented it to us as a challenge, we did an analysis of the situation and we saw that there were a couple of attributes that the festival could have that, capitalized and displayed in a very attractive way, could be relevant for an audience.
«We saw that there were a couple of attributes that the festival could have that, capitalized and displayed in a very attractive way, could be relevant to an audience»
Ricardo Moreno
The first point of difference is that it is held in a century-old winery (Bodegas Franco-Spanish) and this is special because it does not happen in other places. It is a winery that has more than 125 years of history, and this does not exist anywhere else. The second is that we wanted to give it a Riojan character and personality. La Rioja is a land of passage and we are very hospitable and we wanted to represent this. We encapsulate everything that involves these two concepts in “MUWI” which is the acronym for “Music” and “Wine”. We began to bring it to life visually, graphically, we built the tone of voice with which it was going to communicate on the different networks, with the media, press releases…
The good thing about communicating a music festival is that it invites you to be more disruptive and allows you to break codes that would be much more difficult in a conventional company. One example is that we hold a press conference in an attic simulating The Beatles’ farewell concert; or we have done a press conference in the bottling warehouse with a DJ. We do things that the media buy very well because it is very different and visual.
The activation we do of the brands that participate as sponsors in the festival is also different. The easy thing in any event is to put the sponsor’s logo on the poster and forget about it, but in our case we make life more complicated. For example, this year we have made a capsule edition of sneakers and espadrilles with the Macarena brand. The espadrilles are for all attendees and have a personalized MUWI design; and the sneakers they are for the artists, who find them when they arrive in the room.
Another thing we do is that each edition has a special wine edition in which a wine label appears with all the artists on the poster. Just as there are people who wear festival wristbands all year round, we launch bottles that are iconic enough to be kept as souvenirs.
There is another part of branding which is everything that has to do with experience, which is taken great care of by the promoter and to which we also contribute. For example, there is a very limited acoustic for 120 people on one of the ships where the headliner plays three or four songs acoustically. Another of the rooms in the cellar is transformed into a club and there is a DJ spinning for four hours. We have already had six editions and we have been learning little by little.
behind a brand
Every year we have access to invite some clients or contacts. This year we wanted to go one step further to have a side event where we sat down to talk about branding and about what brands mean to organizations. In the end, the goal was for us to share knowledge.
“This year we wanted to go a step further to do a side event where we sat down to talk about branding and about what brands mean for organizations»
Ricardo Moreno
In the end, around 30 people from all over Spain came to the event and all of them were linked in some way to the world of communication, branding and of marketing. We did activities around wine and chocolate, and we tried to expose everything that was behind a festival like MUWI. The whole layer that is not seen, which is marketing management and branding. Added to this and in order to promote the Logroño brand, we gave them a varnish on how this city can become welcoming for this format of events. The team was involved in its development and actively participated, Marta Bacaicoa (Project Manager) led its execution and Laura Calonge and José Ausó created a brand with the aim of longevity and becoming a traveling event.
packaging: a synthesis exercise
As we said, where we move more comfortable is in the world of branding and the packaging it’s one more leg. Once you synthesize everything that a brand wants to synthesize for its audiences, its target audiences and its clients, the next step is to condense it into a tangible element such as the packaging. What we seek to promote is that when that audience sees the design and the form, they understand everything behind it at a single glance. A person barely has seven seconds to make a purchase decision in a supermarket or on a shelf, and much less if we are talking about a platform on-line. In that short space of time we have to make the potential customer fall in love by showing all the virtues and benefits of the product. It is an exercise of synthesis where we feel comfortable and very comfortable.
A very clear example of this is our packaging which was awarded at the Pentawards. The purpose of the promoter was to introduce the potential client to the Amazon jungle and the exuberance of the untamed nature of Peru and for this we created a framework and a visual metaphor in which the packaging takes you to a jungle in Peru with animals and insects… We did all of this without losing sight of the fact that in the end what you want is to sell a bar of chocolate.
packaging sustainable
I think many of us are saying it, but a clear coordinate of the future of the packaging is sustainability and it has become one of our basic pillars. Right now we have two projects on the table whose requirements are that no material appears that cannot be incorporated back into the production cycle.
Specifically, we are carrying out a project for a rest systems company where this is very clear. The image of mattresses thrown around containers is very common, and approximately in Spain there are almost 2 million mattresses that are replaced every year. Given this situation, this company has incorporated a system in which the mattress is 100% recyclable. In fact, each mattress has a QR code that explains where the materials come from and how they are recycled. Each one has a DNI with which its possibility of recycling is absolutely guaranteed. This is an example that we have made a reality and is a clear example of what the demands of the future are.
talent in any corner
One of the few good things that the pandemic has brought is that it has flattened the world. This means that from Logroño, which is apparently a peripheral site, we are composing with agencies from all over the world. Right now we just finished a packaging for Korea and one for Peru. We are also immersed in two projects in the United States and France. We are competing with companies with much greater projection and much greater experience because basically what the client perceives is a computer screen.
“One of the few good things that the pandemic has brought is that it has flattened the world.”
Ricardo Moreno
Now you can find talent in almost any corner. I think one of the positive things about this is that in towns like Logroño or communities like La Rioja the level or quality of life is much higher. A few weeks ago, The Telegraph pointed to Logroño as one of the best places to live. From my house to the office it takes six minutes and this way of life results in the depth and quality of the work. Quality of life has become a basic criterion for professional decisions, and we can manage to recruit talent and live comfortably while competing with top-tier companies.
give back to society
I am closely linked to a club of directors and historically they have counted on me to teach give talks and whenever things fit me I go for the pure interest of sharing training. We have been 3 courses tutoring projects of packaging of the master’s degree packaging from ESDIR, something that has allowed us to contact other professionals and above all to discover talent that has joined the team.
I think that to dedicate yourself to this you have to have an attitude of curiosity towards life. I always recommend future creatives to be open to everything, especially complications, which is where one grows and gets tougher. Addressing difficulties will allow you to grow exponentially. The common characteristic that marketers and branding is that nothing is indifferent to them, they have a natural drive to delve into things, to know, to want to investigate…
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Ricardo Moreno: «The good thing about doing branding at a music festival is that you can be disruptive, get out of the comfort zone»