Government work often means following well-trodden templates and serving narrow audiences. Yet when the Strategic Engagement Team at the Department of the Premier and Cabinet came to us to develop this work around the promise of collaboration, wide participation, high engagement and legacy it resonated with our own values and interests. At Rodeo we know designers cannot ‘make’ a brand – only an audience can do this. Our role in developing the naming, positioning and the identity of Open State was to construct the foundation of a brand that connects with people now and into the future.

As a series of events Open State explored how open and transparent decision-making, open innovation and open engagement can help to address complex challenges like transforming our economy, climate change, and rapidly evolving technologies.
Open State had more than 25,000 attendances from overseas, interstate and within South Australia and delivered $11 million in economic value to the state.

By explicitly linking what our audience care about to the entry points of the program and objectives, we looked for the opportunity to create a more meaningful and ‘personal’ identity around relevance, passion, expertise and experience. We wanted to create a memory space in a users’ mind using a series of interconnected actions, messages, experiences and visual language. This was the foundation of the Open State brand experience. 

Our communication framework provided a platform to communicate the core program and various interactions of Open State. The program descriptors provided a hook to connect to our audiences and showcase the program content, values, thinking and ambition. By building a campaign around these themes we could tap into the intrinsic interests, concerns and values of our audiences bringing people to explore the potential trajectories of our collective future.