Month: December 2017

Evolve your business with design thinking #ImWithTheBrand

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Design solves business problems; it’s that simple.

Struggling to reach your target audience? Join us for the 4th event in our #ImWithTheBrand series, where we’ll take you through our full design process and help you grow your business with design thinking.

This workshop will introduce you to the tools to build and evolve, showing you how to bring a brand to life, both online and offline, adding value to your business.

Design thinking enables you to identify unique selling points of a business, identify key messages, generate stand out marketing campaigns and develop the overall ethos and goals of your business to allow for growth. These tools can be used to build, revitalise and strengthen any brand, from start ups to large corporations.

This event is perfect for owners of local start up businesses and established SMEs, and marketing/business development professionals who would like to see their businesses grow and thrive.

The workshop takes place on Jan 19th from 8am until 10am, at The Academy Restaurant in Ulster University. Early bird tickets are £5 until Jan 3rd (£8 after this date). If you’d like to book a place, you can buy tickets using the form below.

Speakers

Ryan Stanfield – Design Director at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Ryan leads the branding team that create and manage some of Ireland and the UK’s most recognised brands. After numerous years in branding agencies, Ryan has learnt that designing for the client, building relationships and getting to the core of the business is key when undertaking any brief. His creative take on the branding process enables him to build brands that present the core values and mission of a business in visual form. His unique approach delivers deep meaningful change across our clients businesses, brands come to us when they want results.

Lizi Daley – Digital Designer at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Lizi pushes the envelope with functionality online while keeping the user in mind at all times. Her approach to design focuses on user experience and engaging content, which always results in a positive impact on the bottom line of our client’s businesses. As well as interpreting the brand message to digital format, Lizi also offers training on functionality and purpose so that clients are fully equipped to get the best from their online presence. Online conversion is core to any business, acting as an extension to your sales team.

1 to 1 Sessions

Connor McAuley will also be hosting 1 to 1 brand consultations after the speakers as part of the event. If you would like to book a consultation, please contact us here.

Connor McAuley – Managing Director at Kaizen Brand Evolution

Connor has been in the business of design and marketing for over 16 years and as the industry landscape changes and adapts so does Connor’s technique. Under Connor’s leadership Kaizen Brand Evolution has grown from a small Ireland focused studio to a much larger business working with major international, national and regional clients in London, Dublin, and Belfast. Connor’s ability to get under the skin of a businesses core beliefs enables him to advise of how best to reach markets and communicate effectively.

Backlash Burger

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Backlash is a brand new culinary offering in Belfast, serving up the meatiest, freshest burgers paired with beautiful craft beer and ale, what more could you ask for? Backlash is exciting new venture from local food tycoon Gary McIldowney that aims to focus on great burgers with an exciting dining experience to-boot. The dining experience at Backlash will transport you to a contemporary, urban landscape where burgers are king and craft beer pairings with every unique flavour. The Backlash restaurant is a modern take on 80’s burger joints with urban interiors, music and overall ‘cool’ vibe.

Our mission for the Backlash brand was to bring the urban vibe and culture into the identity and narrative. We explored a myriad of contemporary and vintage urban style fonts and typographic techniques as well as the bold colour palettes of late 80’s and 90’s hip-hop. What we created is a blend of all our research and development into the urban/burger & beer culture. The identity comprises of layered, contemporary type with an eye-catching Neon Pink colour scheme. In order for the identity to be justified we developed a clever narrative for the brand – taking inspiration from a classic Tupac Shakur song “Backlash – home to 3 of Belfastz most wanted – burgers, beer and shakes.” With this in place we were ready to begin exploring plays on relevant words and phrases such as ‘HIP HOPS” for craft beer campaigns and “BUN DMC” for burger campaigns and posters. This introduction of clever, witty language sets the Backlash brand apart from the traditional burger joints in Northern Ireland, developing a sense of ‘coolness’ when engaging with the brand. This idea of ‘cool’ is developed and visualised throughout their interiors, menus and uniforms. We proposed that staff were snapback baseball caps with dark denim aprons. Backlash is a young brand at heart however nostalgia is introduced through language and audio in the restaurant which sets to attract the 30-40 year old market, harking back to their years of breakdancing and 90’s hip hop.

With the language and identity up and running we began work on the menus, loyalty cards and website to act as the initial brand collateral for Backlash, preparing them for launch. The menu is reflective of the proposed interiors for the restaurant, focussing on strong, striking patterns with a contemporary, stark layout. Colour palettes begin to flourish though out the printed materials with bold greens, pinks and blues (echoing the forefathers of urban culture). We also introduced a set of brand iconography for Backlash that reflects the urban, contemporary theme. This set of illustrations comprises of a burger, a lightning bolt and a beer bottle and acts as an extra brand mascot to be used on the reverse of menus and loyalty cards. The illustrated iconography is planned for way-finding systems across the restaurant interiors and on the website as well as use across a series of homemade sauces to accompany your burgers.

The Backlash brand identity is contemporary, trendy yet timeless, bright and eye-catching, all of the attributes of the business ambition at the beginning of the project. This identity highlights how important ambition setting is for a business. Knowing who you are, whom you are here for and how you are going to do it are essential questions for any business in order to reach their ambition. We look forward to working with Backlash more and more as they prepare for launch in store and online. On the run up to launch we will be developing their social media strategy and working to finalise menus, loyalty cards and the new website.

 

 

The Skinny Sauce Company

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The Skinny Sauce Company approached Kaizen Brand Evolution to create an engaging brand identity and packaging strategy for the launch of their exciting new Skinny Sauce product range. The brand story begins with the owner and entrepreneur Maria Doran. Maria’s passion for sauce has been long standing; from ketchup to curry she has always loved adding flavour to her meals to enhance the eating experience. Maria also embraces the healthy lifestyle, going to the gym, eating right and taking care of herself. She soon realised that despite eating healthy she craved the added flavour that the sauces and dips brought to her meals and the sauces available on the market were full of sugars, additives and unhealthy ingredients in general. Maria’s mission is to revolutionise the sauce market and make healthy dips and sauces for the health conscious consumer.

With this in mind be researched the industry and developed a strategy for the business with the tagline ‘skinny dip more often.’ This strapline acted as the foundation for the creation of her brand identity and packaging. Keeping the target audience (health conscious shoppers who crave sauce) in mind we designed a bold, eye-catching brand that highlights the good ingredients that go into Skinny Sauces. In a world of Heinz and other well-known sauce brands we aimed to reach Maria’s ambition of becoming a household name and compete and stand out on the shelves in major retailers.

The first point of call was the brand mark. We crafted a ‘handmade’ type based logo with a bright, youthful colour palette, which immediately stands out from the competitors. The logo is a reaction to modern brand styles and trends utilising hand drawn type and illustration to reflect the fun skinny sauce experience. The brand mark leads nicely into how we visualise the brand narrative ‘skinny dip more often’ – using the hand drawn script and bold palette to emphasise the text. The language plays an important role in communication the values and vibrancy of the product. Aimed at an audience of 25-35 we have tailored the brand to fit in with that demographics lifestyle. As well as the language and the brand mark we proposed a photographic and typographic direction that would spark an emotional and aspirational connection with the target audience, using young, happy, healthy models to communicate this rings true in the Skinny Sauce marketing strategy and in their brand collateral.

Following the identity, strategy and narrative and artistic direction we began work on the packaging for the Skinny Sauces themselves. Each bottle and flavour introduces a fresh colour palette creating an engaging, eye-catching suite of products. One ambition for the packaging was to make it look suited alongside the likes of high-end sauces within M&S or Waitrose. This ambition was easily realised following the identity and artistic direction for the brand. We were able to utilise the type direction and layout to suit such retailers and realise the ambition for future growth and perhaps buyer in such retail environments. As well as the colour palette for each flavour of Skinny Sauce we introduced hand-drawn illustrations to reflect the core ingredients inside the bottle – beautiful hand-drawn chilli’s, peppers, tomatoes were included to create an all round flavour focussed packaging piece.

In preparation for the Skinny Sauce Company brand launch we worked alongside Maria to ensure that the values set out from the beginning would be strengthened and represented fully in the collateral and packaging. Working as brand guardians for Skinny Sauces we continue to develop and evolve this unique, beautiful brand to ensure the businesses ambitions are realised. We thoroughly enjoyed working on this project and look forward to working more with the Skinny Sauce Company in the future.