29th APARTMENT WEBSITE

Being commissioned by 29th Apartment for the branding and marketing collateral of their funky St Kilda bar was a project that the Big Dogs were really able to sink their teeth into. When it came time for a revamp of their website, we were more than happy to step up.  The objective was to add to the popularity of the already heavily visited site by creating an exciting on-brand experience. 29th Apartment asked us to ensure that the site was accommodating and easily accessible for people looking to make group bookings, birthday bookings and generally direct them a lot of traffic. A heavy social media focus and integration was also high on the priority list. So we set out…

The creative strategy for the website needed to stay in line and compliment the already established brand message. Fitzroy St, a melting pot of Melbourne pop culture, is the setting of 29th Apartment’s brand experience. The bar has been modeled on a New York style apartment- complete with a lounge room, kitchen, bedroom and games room. The brand narrative is centred on ‘Katishe’, a talented but struggling artist in New York circa 1960’s who supported herself by becoming a sex worker in the evenings. Katishe’s story set the basis for our client and their design and brand identity.

Keeping all this in mind, the website design encapsulates the free love era through retro pop imagery, and leads people on the 29th Apartment experience even before they step foot through the front door. Iconic sex paper-backs of the 1960s are collaged as the background of the site and boldly bright colours inject a shot of energy.

The execution of the site started with an update of the Flash version that the previous 29th Apartment website was running on. By doing this one thing, the Big Dog digital department brought social media integration and SEO to another level, which was something imperative to the client. Videos and imagery make the experience engaging and allow people visiting the site to feel involved and entertained. The 29th Apartment website now runs as a CMS (Content Management System). This allows our friends at 29th to change and update the content on the site on their own- saving time and money.

29th Apartment have reported back to us that there has been a definite increase in traffic to their website and function bookings are up by 25%. 29th received more enquires in the first 7 weeks of the new website going live than they did in an entire year with the flashed based site! The crew at 29th believe that this is due to wider audience appeal, the sales driven component of the website development and the easy to use structure created by Big Dog.