We are pleased to welcome FSC^® as a recent addition to our client list. Established in 1993 the FSC (Forest Stewardship Council) is an independent, not-for-profit organisation established to promote the responsible management of the world’s forests.

We are delighted to have the opportunity to work with such a reputable company and are looking forward to contributing sustainable print design and marketing solutions to such a worthwhile cause.

We are currently working closely with the marketing team at BIC and were delighted to be selected based upon our proven track record for conceptual design, innovation and creativity. BIC felt we were the perfect choice to inject new life into their marketing communications within the lighters, shavers and stationery categories.

Trade Marketing Manager Sureyya Hilmi comments “SO have delivered some fanstastic print campaigns for BIC. Very tight deadlines have been met on every occasion and the level of creativity has been outstanding.”

Colourful office mural designed by SO and inspired by the long and successful history of BIC

We have not let them down yet and have successfully completed several projects already, including the colourful mural design above displayed at BIC HQ. Based on the great feedback so far we hope to to deliver many more!

In 2012, brands that try to convey perfection are beginning to look downright dishonest, while those who admit their mistakes and misdemeanors are gathering brownie points for their efforts.

Brand honesty leads to customer trust

In a world where we are punishing politicians, publishers and sportspeople for various lapses of judgment, you know there’s a collective shift in expectations of institutions – and that includes brands. After all, today’s all-powerful consumers are ready to boycott brands they don’t trust.

Gone are the days of a food or fashion manufacturer bleating about how great they are and expecting us to believe it; there’s just too much information too readily available to all of us. There’s no running, no hiding; the only way is to ’fess up.

Admitting to brand mistakes is appealing

Brands that get it wrong are stepping out the wings and sharing their shame – and laughing at themselves. When Lynx was pushed into removing what many deemed a sexually offensive online ad, they swiftly posted a follow-up ad featuring the model Lucy sadly handing back the props that were used in the original execution.

Lynx apologise with this follow-up advertisement

Last year, Innocent emailed customers a money-off voucher that had an incorrect barcode; the follow-up apology email they sent out suggested that their customers ‘keep [the old voucher] as a memento of our stupidity.’

And when an American Red Cross employee tweeted that they were planning to get totally hammered (or ‘slizzered’) from the corporate Twitter account instead of their personal one, the company deleted the tweet and posted “We’ve deleted the rogue tweet but rest assured the Red Cross is sober and we’ve confiscated the keys.” It turned into an overnight viral hit, with readers pledging donations because of their understanding stance.

Don’t stifle the customer’s voice

Negative customer feedback can easily be hidden, but a site that gives just rave reviews is now seen as suspect; to address and act upon complaints is far more effective. So when Virgin America upgraded their reservation system, customers were frustrated by the difficulties and complained en masse; Virgin didn’t delete them, but replied to the 12,000 comments individually, winning loyalty and a lot of positive feedback. After complaints about quality, Domino’s Pizza launched a month-long campaign in New York’s Times Square, where a digital hoarding communicated live-streamed both good and bad customer feed-back from Twitter. A bold move by any standard.

Domino’s Pizza live-stream of customer reviews in Times Square, New York

For some brands, even being actively disliked becomes something to not just acknowledge but celebrate as a point of difference. Marmite and Miracle Whip are both playing on the idea that people are divided between lovers and haters. So Marmite asked online consumers what their stance was under the slogan ‘Love it or Hate it’, and opened up a Facebook page that encouraged both praise and abuse.

'Love it or Hate it'

Real models add authenticity to a brand

Many fashion and cosmetics brands are finding it difficult to adapt to the new drive for honesty – after all, they’re selling themselves on the basis that everyone wants to look attractive. While M&S’s oversized model campaign of 2000 was too far ahead of its time, Dove picked up the baton and began using real people and not models in their campaigns; French cosmetic brand Make Up Forever has taken it even further, refusing to use retouched images in advertising, and basing their entire brand proposition on it.

Make Up Forever refuse to use retouched images in advertising

And finally, the ultimate in branding trust: Honest Tea set up unmanned pop-up kiosks in six US cities, asking people to leave $1 for each bottle of the product they took. The social experiment was filmed on hidden cameras and streamed live to demonstrate honesty in action. A brave move, but one totally in tune with the zeitgeist.

Jo Stedman, SO Creative, London Creative Agency

We said goodbye to one of our favourite designers this month. Bret Syfert is off to Kigali in Rwanda. Along with his wife, Dorota, Bret is going to a very special place: Les Enfants de Dieu, just outside of the capital. It will be their home for the next four and a half months. It is also a home to many boys, who formerly lived on the streets.

Bret and Dorota have volunteered themselves and their time to this very special cause and we wish them all the luck in the world!

For total immersion, many brands are creating a physical presence where customers can ‘feel’ the brand’s values in the real world. It’s part of the continuing trend to create something new to capture customer attention.  Best London Branding Agency

Last week, floral champion Laura Ashley announced their intention to open a £5.8m, 49-room ‘brand showcase’ hotel, allowing guests to immerse themselves in its products and interior design sensibilities – albeit, rather bizarrely, in Hertfordshire, but that’s neither here nor there. The brand is experiencing an increase in sales with the current fashion for florals and English interiors – plus the rediscovery of 1980s colour.

It’s interesting that the brand which fell off our collective radar years ago is reasserting itself in the manner of Ralph Lauren, Armani, Versace, Bulgari and Missoni – who themselves recently provided the soft furnishings for two of the Four Seasons Resort Maui’s ultra-luxury poolside cabanas.

It’s a reminder that in this world of too much, too little, too late that brands have to adapt to hold our interest – and appeal to consumers in new and novel ways. With brands faltering, flailing and failing, it pays to think differently, reinforce your core message or even branch out into different areas.

Brands get creative for physical stand-out

Gregg’s bakery chain launched their own-brand café in Newcastle, promising to challenge the big chains with lower prices and free WiFi…

Gregg’s bakery chain launched their own-brand café in Newcastle

Cadbury set up a Cocoa House at Bluewater shopping centre, creating retro ice-cream, afternoon teas and pastries to capture the essence of the nostalgic British brand…

Novelty value makes headlines in a fast-paced retail environment where standing out is a constant challenge for marketers; Amazon and eBay both took their presence into the real world for a limited period…

eBay took their presence into the real world

…and Net-A-Porter created a Window Shop in Covent Garden that brought fashionista customers together using a combination of augmented reality, app and real store.

Net-A-Porter window shop in Covent Garden

Truly clever brands keep evolving

Truly clever brands are limbering up before the race for the finish line; adidas launched a new Runbase concept store in Tokyo that not only allowed customers to buy but hire running shoes and clothing, attend weekly running workshops, and make use of showers and lockers after a run on the nearby track. Ikea – the retailer who pioneered the idea of customers walking through room sets – is now selling flat-pack homes with their own plot of land at their store in Gateshead. And Mercedez-Benz debuted its latest range of super-stylish ergonomic furniture at the high-minded Milan Design Week in March, blending the brand’s luxury credentials with designs inspired by its cars.

Mercedez-Benz super-stylish ergonomic furniture

Even the humble Hellmann’s mayonnaise recently launched some new peppy flavours that included introduced hints of caramelized onion or a hint of wasabi to their traditional formula, showing how tastebuds have changed since the 1970s.

It’s this kind of risk-taking that brands need to build into their DNA, or risk falling into the Jurassic Park of branding – when you ‘stand still and they can’t see you.’

Jo Stedman, SO Creative, London Creative Agency

We would like to thank everyone who took part in our competition to win a free taste of our London packaging design agency expertise. We were delighted with the number of entries from such an interesting and diverse variety of niche food and drink brands.

Due to the great response we decided that, along with drawing for the £2,500 first prize, we would extend the competition and offer a selection of runner up prizes to the value of £500 each. Over the next few weeks we will be speaking to the winners below to discuss their brand and packaging requirements in detail.

First prize

Little Devil – We are looking forward to delivering some great creative to Little Devil who currently have two unusual and very successful products in their portfolio: Bloody Spice is an innovative Bloody Mary beverage and Bloodshot Vodka is the world’s first Bloody Mary infused spirit. We can confirm that these two products combined make the PERFECT bloody Mary!

Runner ups…

Bendylegs - Bendylegs Granola is a healthy, award winning breakfast cereal, snack or simple pudding. Granola is traditionally a mix of nuts, seeds and fruit with an oat base that is lightly toasted using various oils, sweeteners and flavouring.

The Chocolatier – Hand-finished artisan chocolates using real ingredients. Truffles, after-dinner mousses, bars, decorations, 3D structures and extravagant chocolate creations made to suit individual specifications. 

Nutshot – Portion control snack packs with 100% natural ingredients: Gourmet Californian Jumbo Pistachios – Malabar Pepper, Gourmet Queensland Macadamia Pieces – Wicked Wasabi and Gourmet Crunchy Jumbo Virginia Peanuts – Cajun Spices!

Mawsons - From 1933 through to the sixties, the most popular tipple was Sarsaparilla or “Sass `n` Soda” as it became known. Mawson’s Sarsaparilla cordial is made from natural ingredients and produced by the same family and to the original recipe.

Sea Island Coffee - Sea Island Coffee imports and sells gourmet coffees from some of the finest, most exclusive coffee growing regions in the world. Their partners are often small estates producing rare, exotic coffees in limited quantities.

Awfully Posh Snack Company – Manufacturers of Great Taste Award winning Anglesey Sea Salt Crackling. Pork rinds from outdoor reared pigs, which are hand fried in small batches and then sprinkled with organic Anglesey sea salt.

Picture the scene: you’re doing the weekly shop. There are 50 aisles to walk up and down, and an average of 40,000 products in the supermarket. You have just 20 minutes to get around (that’s officially a measly 0.03 second per product).

It’s easy to see how responses to packaging happen in a split-second, and it is these responses determine whether a customer chooses to pick up your product or walk on by.

Go wild in the aisles

Research shows that more than 70% of purchasing decisions are made at the point of purchase, depending entirely on how we feel at the time and shoppers spend less than three seconds scanning a shelf of products they’re interested in. It’s these reasons that compel brands to always communicate the right product messages on pack with as much impact as they can muster.

Packaging should especially be a major focus for brands that don’t spend a lot (or anything at all) on advertising, as it’s the one form of communication that people choose to bring into their homes. It’s also one of the foremost ways people define who they are: whether you buy Lindt or Green & Black’s, Tiptree or Bonne Maman, it communicates something about your identity and values. So packaging is an extremely powerful tool in brand positioning, and needs to clearly reinforce a product’s positioning.

Standing out from the crowd

Stand-out on the shelf is a primary need for food manufacturers. After all, you may have the most beautiful packaging, but if customers overlook it, it’s entirely useless.

The four key elements that can help differentiate your product packaging are:

COLOUR: One of the major factors that differentiate a product or brand, in terms of recognition and also stand-out on shelf. Brands who ‘own’ a particular colour and maintain consistency over time have stronger places in people’s minds, eg Coca Cola, Cadbury, Selfridges and Veuve Cliquot.

SHAPE: Some brands develop a unique product or packaging shape. A Coca Cola, Evian or Perrier bottle is immediately recognisable. Likewise with Toblerone, Marmite and Dorset Cereals.

IMAGES: Pictures convey an idea with impact and can create a powerful emotional response. Whether your brand is innovative, uses natural products, is witty or has heritage, you can make the point with a carefully chosen image. Gü redefined its category by making its puddings sexy.

COPY: Packaging copy has been largely overlooked in the past as it was used to communicate the contents briefly and dryly. But brands are using it more to lend themselves a personality. A great example of this is Innocent, who communicate their brand with unflagging humour.

Different strokes

It’s interesting to see how many brands are producing great packaging design to capture those consumers treating themselves to small luxuries in a difficult market. Evolve has developed a premium brand identity for its series of organic cold pressed oils, using carafe-style glass bottles with a pour spout in the lid, while Babees honey has used hand-drawn calligraphy and stripes on each jar that reference bees and create a stylish design. Gouash fruit spreads from Canada quite literally raised their brand to great art by launching its products in paint tubes, while Russian haute couture spirits brand Denis Simachëv Vodka took inspiration from the iconic bottles of local Troynov eau-de-cologne, strongly identifying its customers as stylish and sophisticated. It fits in with the thinking that customers don’t differentiate between product and packaging, attributing the same values to both.

Innovating in your pack design also grabs attention as it challenges the norm – and stands out on shelves. Pringles changed the perception that crisps should always come in a bag – and elevated the product to something more valuable (and less shattered). German Hauswein launched new packaging that reclassified wines, using Pantone-inspired labelling that is easy to identify, and Rocombe ice cream reinforces its premium positioning with a pack design that uses witty character stereotypes, shying away from the expected ‘hand-made in Devon’ proposition. Tea, too, has mostly been about heritage until the Damn Fine Tea Company in London produced limited-edition gourmet leaves in tins with stunning hand-printed labels, while Nusa Kitchen used high-resolution photos of winter knits to highlight the handmade quality of their seasonal soups; they quickly became collectors’ items and customers requested more patterns. And finally, Jomon rice manages to straddle ethnic authenticity and contemporary designer in a fabric bag.

That’s packaging for you. It can entertain your customers, make them think,
surprise them or help connect with them on a deep emotional level.

All in less than three seconds.

Jo Stedman, SO Creative, London packaging designers

Our London creative agency is hungry to help niche food and drink brands communicate who they are. With this in mind we are running a competition to win a taste of our brand and packaging expertise to the value of £2,500.

Whether you are launching a new product or your existing product needs an image overhaul, this is a fantastic opportunity to taste the expertise of our London creative agency and keep your marketing spend to a minimum. Competition closes 31st January 2012.  To enter click here >

Our website is currently appearing on page 1 of Google for over 30 keyphrases. SO Creative are not experts in search engine optimisation, but surprisingly we achieved this without the need for a specialist search engine optimisation company (SEO).

When you consider that three independent, UK based SEO companies estimated £500 per month (PER MONTH!) on a minimum 6 month contract to achieve far less results than this (page 1 for just the 3 keyphrases above), it’s pretty unbelievable.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not questioning the value of SEO in general. It’s effectiveness is undisputed and some SEO challenges involving highly competitive, broad keywords or keyphrases obviously take a huge investment of expertise, knowledge, time and money to hit the top spots.

What I am questioning though, is the honesty and integrity of three independent, UK based, ‘award winning’ SEO companies. One of whom seemed quite confident that to get my home page to rank on page 1 of Google for ‘London creative agency’ alone, would take nothing short of rocket science and up to 6 months. With an average of 4,400 monthly UK searches, it would apparently involve not only well optimised copy, (and a lot of it), but also internal link building, external link building, article writing, postings, a dash of this, a dusting of that and £500+Vat per month (indefinitely and with no guarantees offered). Why per month? Because apparently these processes would need to be added to or tweaked on a monthly basis otherwise the rank would start slipping again. Wow! SEO sounded really hard.

It is important to remember here that I did not ask to rank page one for a highly competitive, broad keyphrase such as ‘design agency’. No, I was advised to choose less competitive, longtail keyphrases (more words) in order to stick to this ‘low’ budget.

So, how did we do it?

Whilst I was in the process of selecting an SEO company to work with, my senior designer, in-house web developer and I were busy revamping our website. The design was complete and the build was underway. I was assured by all three SEO companies that work should start immediately and did not need to wait until the build was complete.

Despite this advice, I was not convinced I would get my money’s worth by signing on the dotted line before the site was launched, so I stalled. And while I was waiting I did a bit of internet based research to make sure I fully understood what my money was going to buy.

The interface of our content managment system (CMS) is very intuitive and user friendly and we have control over many aspects that search engines use to organise and make sense of web page data. As I was in the process of uploading content anyway and had access to these areas I thought I may as well also complete the SEO information. Obviously, it would take more than this (£500 per month more I assumed) to rank on page 1 of Google, but I was curious to see what I could achieve before the experts worked their magic.

So, I set to work and optimised not just three, but every single page of our website. A laborious process requiring basic SEO knowledge and common sense.

The waiting game

The results of optimising your site are never immediate. It takes a while for Google to ‘crawl’ your site and pick up on the changes and up to six months for the full effects to be realised. So initially (after about a week or so) I noticed that I was at least now appearing on pages ranging from 1-5 for some of my keyphrases. Page 1 for keyphrases with seemingly little competition (e.g ‘luxury brochure design’) and page 5 for more common search terms (e.g ‘London creative agency’). Pretty cool I thought and wondered what would happen if I sat back and waited.

Every so often I checked our rank for ‘London creative agency’ – my most ambitious keyphrase. Starting at page 5, it took about two months to reach page 3 and that is where it stayed until all of a sudden, after six months, a few in-bound links and a small number of articles later, there was a huge shift and we arrived at page 1.

Upon further inspection we discovered we also now ranked on page one for over 30 highly relevant keyphrases (with varying degrees of competition and popularity).

Perhaps I am missing something and I welcome any comments to prove me wrong, but if the advice I was given is to be believed, in order to maintain our positions we will need to invest significant time (£500 worth) in our SEO every month….we’ll see. For now the number of hits we receive is increasing week on week as are the number of new clients who have found their way to us through a search engine.

Sound SEO advice

As a London creative agency we have designed, built and maintained many websites over the years, but we never previously offered search engine optimisation advice or services believing it best left to the experts. Whilst this is often still the case, many of our clients require nothing particularly complex and now, along with great website design and robust build we can also give sound advice on how to rank on page 1 of Google without breaking the bank!

Search Engine Optimisation London

Old brands have been telling us their stories for years – through TV ads, poster campaigns and snappy slogans that reached out to as many people as possible. And it worked. We sat through thousands of ads on TV and at the movies that are big, glossy and totally interchangeable.

Dictating your message to the masses seems quaintly old-fashioned in today’s world of social media, flash mobbing and word-of-mouth. Now, consumers are allying themselves with brands that have a unique perspective, authentic point of view or engaging personality.

Here’s a thumbnail guide that shows how to make a start in telling your story:

Get right to the core of who you are

What does your organisation stand for? It sounds like an easy question but it’s notorious difficult to pin most brand guardians down on. So many companies produce similar products to others that many get overlooked; but what makes them truly different is their belief in fairness, their insistence on excellence, their super-quick service or their quirky way of communicating.

When you clearly and succinctly define these three or four ‘core values’, it creates clarity for a brand – and should determine everything the organisation is, does or produces – from the product and its packaging to staff uniforms and the environment you work in. Think of the environmentally-friendly Body Shop throwing away mountains of unwanted product or treating suppliers disrespectfully; it would chip away at what the brand stands for.

What’s the big idea?

Some brands have one really strong idea behind them that determines who they are and what makes them different from anyone else. Project 7 Purified Water in the US are dedicated to addressing worldwide issues from poverty to building the future, and the premise drives every aspect of their business from how they hire to where they work to their packaging, and it makes them unique. Gü believes in indulging in pure pleasure in life; Innocent believes that being healthy is fun and life-enhancing. Simple.

What’s the one big idea behind your brand? Be as specific as possible, so you can ‘own’ that area of the market. It could be using natural products, exceptional design, innovation…

What are your brand’s values?

Your values can define your big idea, or just be one element of your brand. Either way, it is incredibly useful to define what your brand believes in – whether cutting-edge design, sourcing local ingredients or fair trading. Tesco launched LocalChoice milk to help raise the price per litre that went to farmers; Nespresso believes in promoting fine coffee through expertise and education, so they have a dedicated concierge service is available to members. Innocent’s values are about openness and honesty, integrity and caring; you can see it in the ingredients they use, their charity work and their packaging – and they always encourage people to drop in and see them. And what’s not to love about little bobble hats on bottles to help the aged?

What’s your brand vision?

Some brands define themselves by where they want to be; as one car maker announced in the early 1900s, ‘Ford will democratize the automobile’. Maybe you want your brand to revolutionise its sector, and this in turn should define how you advertise, package, manufacture and treat your staff.

Gin artisans Sipsmith wanted revive London’s gin heritage, and handcraft in the old style the way old London gin houses did; even their name mirrors it through using the old English artisan word ‘smith’. By contrast, Absolut Vodka wanted to be the ultimate urban brand, so launched a range of city-based bottles from New Orleans to Vancouver, each with different ingredients that reflected the city’s character.

What’s your brand’s personality?

It’s once again up to you to determine what your brand is like to hang out with. Is it an authority, militant, quirky, fun, unpredictable, a best friend, super-efficient…? These character traits will translate into all your communication streams, from design and copy to customer service, presentations and even what you wear. Snog positions itself as individual, healthy and appealing to all, so its straplines of ‘Less talk, more snogging’ and ‘I like snogging more than ice cream’ hit the cheeky, all-inclusiveness on the head.

Jordans Cereals launched Macho Muesli using nutritionalists and men’s health statistics to work out the ideal ingredients for blokes, and speak in a no-nonsense, down-to-earth way: ‘It’s not bird food!’ The muesli comes in a big man-size tub and is chunkier than competing cereals. Finally, the ultimate brand expression comes from the Austrian Gut Oggau vineyard, which features a line-drawn member of the family on each different vintage, demonstrating how wines have different personalities. So grandfather Berthold’s vintage is full of energy and down-to-earth, but is mature with many stories to tell; the daughter Winifried’s wine is young, animated, refreshing and charming. Very personal and very engaging.

If your brand was sitting in a chair opposite you, how would you describe it?

Answer this question and your brand has a great starting point
to telling an authentic and compelling brand story.

Graham Parker, SO Creative – London branding agency