New Media Age

Mindbubble, branding and web creative developed by BCC,  is Face Group’s online co-creation community for the historically challenging to target 25-50 female market. The innovative tool was included in a very informative article on the New Media Age website earlier this month. It included Mindbubble as an example of an effective tool that brands can use to collaborate and connect with their consumers, something we at BCC strongly believe is the future for brand development.

The article discusses strong examples of how brands are successfully using all sorts of social networks and communities to close the void between themselves and their target market:

Other FMCG brands are experimenting with tapping into third-party communities. Mindbubble, an online community aimed at women aged 25 to 50, was launched in May 2009 by co-creation agency Face, allowing collaboration with brands on product development and marketing.

Aquafresh, Boots, Comfort and Surf have been involved in piloting the concept. “It provides a platform for exploring ideas more dynamically, building on consumer feedback iteratively with input from various people internally as well,” says Joel Dawson, head of digital marketing at Boots UK. “This approach has proved to be a useful tool for product innovation and has provided us with a number of ideas which are currently being brought to market.

To see the full article click here

Ben & Jerry's make the finals...

We are pleased to announce that this year we have two of our front cover designs nominated for The Grocer front cover of the year. Ben and Jerry’s and Surf Twilight Sensations are just two examples of the ways in which Blow Creative are pushing the boundaries with printing techniques as well as using good old teaser messages. Fingers crossed whilst we wait for the results…

Timothy James Consulting website and rebrand

Timothy James Consulting are a senior appointment specialist based in central Bristol with an impressive client list. They originally approached BCC to create a new website and, after consultancy, realised that it was time to refocus their brand and its strategy. We developed a brand and web creative that truly reflected the TJC brand in every way.

Certus Sales rebrand and website

Certus Sales are a specialist sales recruitment consultancy based in London, Reading and Leeds. They provide sales recruitment services to the business to business marketplace. Following a multi-agency pitch they chose BCC to refresh their brand proposition and online web offering. We delivered a unique, dynamic CMS website allowing jobs to be found easily with functionality such as CV uploading. The site was of course fully optimised for search engines (SEO). Like Certus their website is unlike any other, driving the unique selling points of their service offering,

Macmillan De'Longhi Charity Art Auction

For the 3rd year in a row Blow Creative supported the annual Macmillan De’Longhi Art Auction by providing free design and consultancy. Even in the current climate the evening raised over £80k for Macmillan, an extremely worthwhile cause. Some of the BCC team went along (the photograph shown is Tony Steadman – BCC Client Services Director, Fearne Cotton from Radio 1 and Nicholas Feurtado – BCC Creative Director) to take part in the auction and picked up a wonderful piece for the studio by James Jessop! Other Artists from this year and past have included Sacha Jafri, Gavin Turk, Sir Peter Blake and Damien Hirst.

Macmillan Cancer Support improves the lives of people affected by cancer. They provide practical, medical, emotional and financial support. They are a force for change: listening to people affected by cancer and working together for better cancer care. Click here for more details on Macmillan.

Packaging Design Trends

Packaging design in both visual and physical sense is inextricably linked to consumer preferences. The difficulty is that with trends there can be a wrong time and a right time to use these to a company’s best advantage. If you are too early you could miss the attention of your target consumer and if you are too late the early bird will have defiantly taken the worm.

The application of trends within packaging design need a great deal of consideration. Many questions need to be asked and considered and decisions made to ensure the designs fit with the brand strategy in the long term. Big brands can be very hesitant to market due to the potential pitfalls of following trends early and often the difficulties put in place by the logistics of the organisation. Unusually Coke have taken a big step with 5 limited edition cans for this summer which, following a packaging fiasco for Tropicana, is a brave move. A move that we like though, with its clean and crisp design that does not stray too far from the can design we are familiar with. This usual hesitancy of big brands normally paves the way for smaller innovative brands taking the reign and heading towards the fire of early adopters in the hope they have got it right. The bigger brands will follow later when the trend is ’confirmed’ and the business case is strong to follow.

It’s no easy task to discover an emerging trend and there have been many cases when brands have got it wrong which can be a costly mistake (as with Tropicana).  The best safe guard would be to arm your organisation with real time consumer understanding collected specifically to feed into a brands consumer understanding.  Within packaging you must understand the views, opinions and motivations of consumers when they are making their purchase decisions. It is important to understand not only what they think but also what importance they put on each consideration they make.  The critical factor here is also what effect price has on these motivations. Working within packaging boundaries that motivate your key target demographic will keep a brand on a steady path. In an ever growing packaging savvy market place the understanding of trends is imperative.

Utilising Trends
Too often design agencies are blinkered or rely on out of date information when looking to understand packaging.  Trends in the fashion industry tend to filter through relatively quickly and fashion moguls are hard wired into the key areas where fashions trends are born. For example leading fashion stores often trawl fashionable London markets like Portobello looking for ideas from small designer stalls selling their wears. Music, internet, theatre and underground sport are also breeding grounds of early trends which often make their way into the mainstream market place. As they filter in and influence the mainstream they take many twists and turns and can become diluted, which is a safer bet for the big brands.

Timing
Knowledge is key but with action in the right place at the right time the output will not be as fruitful.  Brands need to understand when, how and why to use a visual trend. We are looking to motivate, excite, inform and improve the purchase experience at the key point of the shopper journey. To understand consumers you cannot look at them from afar you must work with, listen to, and understand them. To discover an emerging seed of a trend we must understand how cultural, political and social trends are shaping the society we live in.

Politics are interesting as politicians seek out trends to be an early adopter and a leader of ideas. When they get this wrong they ensure amends are made as quickly as possible whipping up plenty of spin on the way. The issue they have is the opposition will always be quick to remind them (with supporting recorded evidence) of the mistakes they made. Luckily packaging design is often far more considered…

In the time of a recession understanding trends is important. Yes it was foreseeable that the likes of Aldi and Asda would do well in an economic downturn but consideration must be taken at the tail end when consumers who have traded down return to the more premium brands. Their experiences in this downturn will directly affect their purchase decisions in the future.  Will many have realised that a well known baked bean brand tastes very similar to its Value rival? The only real difference being the packaging? This is the time to protect and enforce the brand message but will this be effective enough to motivate?

The end is nigh! 
The environment, and the protection of it, is not new news but it seems that way in the past few years. The trend to be environmentally protective is on its way to the top of the bell curve and gaining momentum. Everyone is jumping on the me-too band wagon with very few left behind. The early adopters such as Toyota with its Prius, which is the car of ‘choice’ for celebrities all over the world (parked next to their petrol guzzling Hummer no doubt), are keen to ensure consumers know they sold the original hybrid car in their latest campaign. Looking back this trend seemed obvious so why such late adoption by many key brands? Did they not foresee the power and impact of such a behavioural change in the market place? Or was it a case of waiting for others to try the water first? Now everyone is swimming.

So what’s the next big trend for your brand and its packaging? What will your consumers be doing next? What do they think? find out: trends@blowcreative.co.uk

Axe Core Creative

We have developed a great deal of brand style guides for some of the worlds biggest FMCG brands. We have refined this process of design development and delivery of the final guide to ensure we can meet deadlines and budgets. Whether you need us to create the guide with assets from the advertising  agency or originate the whole guide we are on hand to help. For more on the subject of style guides click here.

AXE, one of the worlds best known brands, (Lynx in the UK) wanted to develop a below-the-line creative that would roll out around Europe (and subsequently Asia) for their new exclusive variant – AXE Summer.

Our brief was to originate the core creative idea and in turn develop a brand style guide that would be used from Austria to Dubai. Blow delivered a high impact visual creative with an engaging strap line making AXE ‘your passport to an endless summer’. This in turn is optionally supported by a competition with a chance to Win a VIP trip to Ibiza and a bespoke AXE passport give away.
From idea origination all the way through to production of key materials Blow were able to 
make this an AXE Summer 
to remember.