Sampson Tyrrell brands the age debate initiative

Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise is handling the branding and marketing for a nationwide social campaign to open up debate on the UK’s changing demographics.

The millennium Debate of the Age, initiated by Age Concern, will address issues relating to stages of life along five themes: work and lifestyles, health and care, the built environment, paying for age, and values and attitudes.

The aim is to get an 80 per cent awareness rate for the initiative, which launches today. As well as the identity, sponsorship branding, merchandising, promotional literature and a website, Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise has designed a bus to act as a travelling roadshow over the next two years.

The Time Machine bus “will take the debate to the people”, says STE director Mary Peterkin. It will tour the country and park in public areas such as schools, colleges and shopping centres.

The website will act as a “virtual forum”, says STE creative director Stuart Redfern, where people can respond to debate proposals posted on the site. The results of the debate will be collated and presented as an agenda for the age to policy-makers.

“The identity is about talking,” says Redfern. A model of the bubble – a nationally understood icon for speaking – was given a shadow to give it some tangible value, he adds.

The initiative will culminate in the “people’s congress” to be held in the Millennium Dome at Greenwich in March 2000.

See News Analysis, page 8