Bond University Launches New ‘Ambition Loves Company’ Brand Platform via Rick Barry

Bond University has launched its new brand platform ‘Ambition Loves Company’ developed with creative studio Rick Barry.

The campaign captures the distinctive spirit of Australia’s first private university as a place where driven people come together to amplify their potential.

Bond was one of the first projects taken on by Rick Barry after Alex Derwin, former BMF Chief Creative Officer and Hugh Munro, former The Monkeys Chief Strategy Officer, launched the studio last year.

Their previous work includes ALDI’s Good Different and Tourism Tasmania’s Come Down For Air.

Munro says Ambition Loves Company was shaped by countless conversations with Bond students, alumni and staff: “From early interviews we knew there was something different in the water at Bond, but it hadn’t made its way beyond the campus walls.

“Was this something that just had to be experienced first-hand? Or could we articulate it in a way that draws people towards the Bond brand?

“This is the kind of challenge that we find irresistible.”

Munro says beneath any effective brand platform lies a tension between being potent and distinctive, while also having broad appeal: “We discovered this challenge is heightened for a brand like Bond that needs to cut through amongst big-spending competitors while also appealing to prospective students, staff, researchers and partners, not just locally but from around the world.

“We were pleasantly surprised to find that Bond’s uniquely ambitious culture is just as resonant for a university dean from Queensland as it is for a Canadian postgrad law candidate.

“That’s when we knew we had something special in the idea of Ambition Loves Company.”

Munro says concepts like ‘ambition’ and ‘belonging’ might seem like strange bedfellows, but in Bond’s case they naturally coexist: “In fact, it’s the very collision of ambition and belonging that makes Bond such a unique, valuable and rewarding culture to learn within.”

Bond University Vice Chancellor and President Professor Tim Brailsford says Ambition Loves Company captures not only the university’s culture, but also its origin story: “When you think about the story of this university, it was a very ambitious story.

“The institution and the founders of the institution had this great ambition for Bond University to be something really special.

“Ambition Loves Company, to me, is this special ingredient we have here at Bond University, which is how we join together and push each other to achieve things which we would not otherwise be able to achieve on our own.”

Bond University Director Brand and Marketing Shannon Tricklebank says the brand platform summed up Bond’s unique campus culture and personalised teaching and learning model: “We all know that feeling of being surrounded by passionate and motivated people. It stirs something inside you.

“Ambition Loves Company works so well because it speaks to that special thing that happens here at Bond and was so beautifully captured and elevated by Hugh and Alex.

“I’m confident that Ambition Loves Company will be a long-term brand platform for Bond.

“It has the potency, authenticity and flexibility to last the distance.”

Campaign images and moving portraits were shot by Jo Duck who was behind the lens for Tourism Tasmania’s Come Down For Air campaign.

Visual identity evolution has been led by Jay O’Neill from Studio Paradise.

You can read about the science behind Ambition Loves Company here.

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