Potential Briefs:
The Feel Good Drinks Company
Get fruity, make people smile and kick start your career
Howdy
If you’re looking for an easy peasy pull-things-together-the-night-before type brief, then move along now. If however, you’re up for having some fun and producing creative work that’s so good your granny will weep, then this is for you. Why all the effort? Well apart from the chance of getting a commendation for your work, why not have a look back through our previous national campaigns? You’ll see that if a student’s idea knocks our socks off, we’ll go ahead and work with them to make it happen. Yep, we’re talking actual, nationwide campaigns. We should probably point out, we’re a small company and don’t have bags of spare cash, so if your work gets picked you won’t end up with your own private yacht. But you would end up with a stand-out CV and something interesting to tweet about for a change. And if you think we’re telling porkies? – just ask Debbie Hulme, a previous YCN entrant who saw her Feel Good Drinks idea on E4.
Background
In 2002 three guys who worked together at Coke decided to leave the rat race and form their own soft drinks company. They wanted to make healthy drinks that actually tasted good, create a brand that people liked and a business that made coming to work fun, even on Mondays.
Feel Good Drinks make 3 different ranges of delicious drinks in lots of fruity flavours including: Orange + Mango, Apple + Blueberry and Cranberry + Lime – we like to leave the boring flavours to everyone else. Every Feel Good Drink is packed full of 100% natural ingredients and absolutely no nasty stuff like artificial chemicals or spoonfuls of added sugar. (We wouldn’t want to drink that stuff, so we don’t expect you to either.)
The company now sells one Feel Good Drink every 2 seconds, but we’d like to sell more, and that’s where you come in.
The challenge
One word. Awareness.
We know that when someone tries one of our drinks, they’ll give it a big thumbs up. The trouble is, not enough people know who we are. So we’re looking for creative ideas that will dramatically raise awareness of our drinks, and just how darn tasty they are. We need you to think big - we want to see ideas that stop people in their tracks and make them feel instantaneously good, so good that they will grin from ear to ear. Below are two briefs. Let your creative taste buds be tickled and take your pick (of course if you’re feeling very industrious, we won’t stop you doing both...)
Brief 1
Make us famous.
Create a campaign that communicates 3 simple things: our brand name, what our drinks look like and that our drinks are choc-full of natural, tasty, fruitiness. And do all this in a way that is unique, memorable and makes people laugh.
Brief 2
Fruit not sugar.
We asked some people if they like their soft drinks to have lots of added sugar in them and they said no. No surprises there, then. Of course, we don’t add any sugar to our drinks – nada de nada, niente
di niente, absolutely zilch.
You might be surprised to hear though, that some of our competitors do add sugar to their ‘healthy’ drinks - and lots of it too. The ASA has banned both Vitamin Water and This Water from using misleading ads, which was in part due to the amount of sugar they heap in their drinks. They found that one bottle of This Water could contain up to 42g, that’s 8.5 teaspoons. A bottle of Vitamin Water was found to contain 23g, so just the 5 teaspoons then.
We know you can make great tasting natural juice drinks without adding sugar – we do it everyday. We think that when someone chooses a healthy drink they don’t want or expect it to have heaps of sugar in it. We want you to come up with an idea that tells people the facts, so they can make an informed choice next time they’re at the chiller. Can you communicate this in a fun and feel good way?
Creative Requirements
Often the best ideas have the potential to work across all manner of channels. Do consider all types of new and traditional media, including on-pack and even point of sale if you want to. You may also have noticed that we’re big fans of digital, spending time with our Facebook and Twitter families and spreading our message virally. The idea is to spread the word, so talking to consumers directly can’t be a bad idea. Feel free to incorporate the Feel Good Drinks logo and images of our bottles into your work where appropriate. For this work, we’d like you to focus on our small bottle still and sparkling juice drinks. Images of these can be found in the brief’s project pack.
Target Audience
16-34 year old adults who are happy to pay a little bit more for a healthy, tasty soft drink that isn’t full of junk. They are an up-beat, look-on-the-brightside, sociable bunch, who like to work hard but always find time for some feel good fun and games.
Tone of voice
PMA people - you can’t call yourself Feel Good Drinks and be miserable! The message should always be friendly, fun, and just a little bit cheeky. Please don’t get all serious on us now. It’s about talking to people on their level, making a connection and making them smile.
M&S
Package the perfect M&S picnic
Background
Marks & Spencer is famous for innovation, convenience and the quality of its food, and is often the first place you think of when shopping for a special occasion like a party or picnic. Anyone attending a summer event like Wimbledon or an open air classical concert will be familiar with a sea of M&S cool bags brimming with picnic food.
The creative challenge
Your brief is to create the ultimate picnic pack. It could be themed around a type of picnic or event, or around the type of food included eg. a romantic first date or anniversary picnic, a Spanish picnic, a picnic for an open air classical concert, a foodie’s gastro picnic etc. You should include everything needed for the perfect picnic: food (sweet and savoury), drinks, cutlery, plates, napkins etc. Think about the occasion, then devise the menu and decide on the physical packaging for all the food items and design of each item. Consider the overall carrier. It could be a picnic hamper, a cool bag or even just a cardboard box, but it will also need to be designed within the theme. Consider physical packaging; your design needs to be fit for purpose while creating minimal waste/refuse. The customer should feel like this is a fantastic treat and that M&S have thought of everything to make the occasion perfect.
Target audience
We have a wide customer base so you can aim this product at anyone from young, affluent singles or couples, families, older people whose children have left home etc. Consider who your target audience will be and tailor the picnic to that group.
Mandatories
Your design must include the M&S logo which is available in the project pack.
Considerations
Consider print process and number of colours – all packaging should be printed from a maximum of six colours per item. Consider whether you will use four colour process (plus two specials if needed) or all specials. Bear in mind that M&S is a brand which is known for Quality, Value and Trust and we have a strong eco policy (refer to the
Plan A website), so all designs should be true to the brand. Consider teaming up with other students - designers or illustrators. A physical pack designer could team up with a graphic designer - or an illustrator or photographer could be commissioned by a designer to create imagery. Teamwork is not essential but is much more representative of working in a commercial environment.
Deliverables, Artwork and Additional Information
For guidance on how to submit your work please adhere to the main deliverables information in the Student Awards section of the YCN website. Any additional supporting information referenced in the brief can be found in the supporting project pack.
5 Reasons we like each of the briefs:
M&S
- Befitting to both of our skils. Layout and packaging (Marty), Hand craft and mock up (Steph)
- Personal Interest. I personally like packaging, Marty likes Layout and Net design.
- Opportunity to work within a range of medias. 6 Colours, Flexible target audience, range of imagery available.
- Target Audience. Free to pick and choose who to aim at, more open range than other brief.
- Knowledge of print. Both have personal interest in print. Both have a general / excellent knowledge, Chance to test out skills for eco friendly elements of brief.
Feel Good Drinks
- Both interested in advertising. Both worked with advertising before, both passionate about subject.
- Any media. We both work in different medias primarily, chance to put both to use.
- Rather like restrictions. Have to use their logo.
- Tone of voice. Can be humorous and laid back, so cheeky it'll make your granny cry.
- Target audience. Can familiarise ourself with age range, young and youthful.
Noting 2 briefs we like, 1 we dislike.
Points we like about each of the briefs.
Contract - Written agreement between us for the following elements:
- Why have you chosen to work with your creative partner? What are your aims?
- What are your specific areas of creative interest in this brief?
- What specific design skills do you have to offer in relation to your collaboration?
- What non specific design skills do you have to offer?
- What will your specific roles be in relation to your collaboration?
- What will your joint responsibilities be?
Final decision:
Overall we have agreed that it would be best to work with the M&S brief, the reasons for this are stated below:
- Research. There is a lot more information about M&S that the feel good company, they have more history, more customers and reputation.
- Its design direction is clear. It will be easier to begin this brief, knowing that we have to produce packaging - the restriction in this case are an advantage. The other is too open ended.
- We know a lot about print. This will give us an advantage in regard to finalised products.
- Motivation. We both have a personal interest in packaging, so we will 'want' to get on with it.
Further tasks
We were then given another task, to come up with 5 words for each of the following, in relation to our chosen brief:
- Content / subject - Food, M&S, Summer based, Quality, Product
- Media Distribution - Retail, Store, Purchase, Sell
- Audience / Context - Open, Range, Specific, Age, Lifestyle
- Product Deliverables - Packaging, Picnic, Pack, Eco, Media
But after speaking with Lorraine it became apparent we were being too broad in our word choices, that this workshop was to help us re-write the brief, to be specific in everything we wrote., and simply writing 'food' wasn't enough. So from this, we as a collaborative gained a lot of questions we needed to ask ourselves:
- What food are we going to package? (Look on the M&S website for food products available)
- Cold, hot, English, Chinese?
- Who is our specific Target audience?
- How are we going to promote this in store? Aisle design?
- What is going to be the event / tone of our pack? New or existing idea with M&S
- Is the pack going to be eaten / used inside or outside?
- Audience - Are we going to stick to M&S's target market of upper class, or try and bring in a new, wider audience?
Another task Fred set us was to come up with 5 things, in relation to the brief, to what we need to do in response to the above task:
- Specify a target audience
- Specify a food type / selection
- package food products (design)
- Produce a carrier to hold 'pack'
- Create a theme to design for
Next was to come up with 5 questions which need to be solved in regard to the brief:
- To find suitable packaging (design) for chosen food products?
- How can we keep this product consistent with brand?
- How can we create packaging suitable for theme / event?
- How can we create packaging with minimal waste refuge?
- What food products would be suitable for chosen theme?
Direction
From this session me and my collaborative partner had lots of idea about whch direction we wanted to take this brief. We began to think about what sort of theme we could give our pack, the idea of a romantic day out came into play. But we realised this was very cliche and possibly not befitting to M&S's old target audience - we were thinking of our own age range. We then began to think about having a dessert pack, a pack which can be taken home to any household, of a range of ages, lifestyles and class. In regard to this we thought about creating a range of packs, each to a different price range. For instance a budget pack of biscuits and pastries, a luxury pack of cakes and desserts.
Then an idea of having a pack which is fridge friendly, similar to a pack of coke cans, a mechanism is in place which means it fits in a fridge, the drink products can be accessed due to a tear down flap within the packaging. We could create a dessert pack, suitable to feeding a family 3 / four desserts over 3 / 4 days ( a different dessert for every day, after dinner)
A few more questions we have to ask ourself is how we would make the packaging biogradable, whether it be recyclable through recycling resources, or to be re-used within the home, for example, a hamper wicker basket. Another element we thought about was how it kept the food, whether it be hot, cold or dry, depending on content.
I think completing the given form, once meeting up with my collaborative partner again, will really give us a step in the right direction.
Tasks given to complete by 28th February:
- Complete handout - concept statement
- Bring along research and visuals needed to complete concept statement
