Design_at_the_edge

The consumer connection

  The Consumer 
  Originally uploaded by Tub Gurnard

I spent 15 years having fun with packaging design and packaging design processes so when I read about B_E_E - a cool green household cleaning products company in New Zealand I was intrigued. The world is dominated by 3 or 4 global players- Unilever, Proctor and Gamble, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitt Benckiser who have exerted enormous influence on the consumer for generations delivering tried and tested brands to generations of families.
After having some interesting stints in various organisations, Brigid Hardy wanted to find some sort  

of union between her hard-earned business savvy and her idealism. “I knew that I wanted to work in an area that had a bit of purpose and soul,” she says. “Business has all this efficiency, all these systems. I thought if you brought that together with passion and beliefs and goodwill you’d really have something…”  Perhaps not surprisingly the eco-friendly cleaning products idea was not Hardy’s. It came from Stephen Tindall, who she’d met through her work at McKinsey. But once Hardy had given it some thought and managed to spark up her imagination, cleaning products had their most principled and passionate advocator in history. Brigid Hardy doesn’t puddle around. “It’s businesses that change the world and we really want to change the world with this,” she says.

Research confirmed that, despite their growing concerns for the environment, consumers would ultimately choose cleaning products from Unilever, Colgate Palmolive or Reckitt Benckiser – trusted household names with pocket-friendly prices. To succeed, B_E_E’s new products had to achieve real stand-out, with hardcore performance, eco-ethics and enormous shelf-appeal. The strategy was to sex-up the products, making them an irresistible purchase, despite their premium pricing. Design was crucial to the success of the strategy and Designworks Enterprise IG was appointed as partners right at the beginning of the process, involved in every stage. Design had to be at the very core of the range, which launched with three products: a washing-up liquid, a surface cleaner and a wash for delicate fabrics.

To cut a long story short....

You have to cut through the dull fog that descends on the soul of the average shopper as they wheel their trolley down the supermarket’s least inspiring isle. Not only do your labels have to be wittier and your bottles more easily recycled, but your products must be more bio-degradable, they must work better, smell nicer, leave your hands softer…

The product range is very different from the big players's offerings and in Design Space the B_E_E team resolved Design Space issues in a way that did not compromise their green credentials... but could not be solved in more conventional, industy standard ways.

We can see other initiatives in Europe (Ecover- launched 1980) and the USA (Method-launched 2001)which attempt the same to be more environmentally responsible in their own markets:

 

Looking at each company my feeling is that Ecover is a conventional cleaning products company but with strong environmental goals; Method is attempting to improve the American way and makes compromises (e.g. refill packs that are not necessarily as environmentally friendly as we imagine). Also the aesthetics of packaging are not necessarily what I believe are the right balance between aesthetics, geometry and structur . B_E_E (launched in 2005) is a without compromise company with strong ethics to drive its environmental point-of-view.. and is fun too! Not handled their packaging but looks acceptable....?
I connect emotionally with its story and products. Like I do with Innocent Smoothies...


Picture uploaded by Daniel Morris. Used with thanks under CC- link.

To be capable of moving into areas like this means taking a holistic, collaborative approach which I call Design@The_Edge.
 

 

After party... but whose party?

  After party 
  Originally uploaded by Fimb

Following on from this post... One of the cheap-quick-dirty tests that Marty Neumeier refers to in Brand Gap is the HAND TEST which is a proof for a distinctive voice
"If you can’t tell who’s talking when the trademark is covered, then the brand’s voice is not distinctive."
I guess Innocent are guilty for this piece of quirky communication!

Stop being lazy...or your customers will punish you

Stop being lazy...
Originally uploaded by divinemisscopa.

Design Space puts the consumer at the top of the octagon for good reason... if you put them anywhere else... below the top factor you will live, if you are lucky, to regret it. Yesterday's Independent on Sunday headlines "Drinkers win the battle of Lewes".

" What began as a walkout by regular drinkers, and then turned into a campaign uniting the residents of a rural Sussex town against the might of one of Britain's biggest breweries, has finally ended.

Drinkers at the Lewes Arms were furious when the pub's owners, Greene King Brewery, decided to pull the locally brewed Harveys Best Bitter from the pumps last year in favour of its own beer.

It prompted a boycott that lasted for five months, with the 220-year-old pub's takings decimated. Drinkers formed the Friends of the Lewes Arms and took refuge in the town's Constitutional Club, which became the unofficial headquarters of the campaign. Profits plummeted with the pub left almost deserted.

In a humiliating climbdown, the brewery has now decided to reinstate the award-winning Harveys bitter - promising that it will be back on sale by the end of this week. Greene King's chief executive Rooney Anand admitted the company had underestimated the depth of feeling and said: "The decision to return Harveys to the bar is the right one."

photo link

The ability of consumer groups to organise themselves around what they want and to say "No" to the brand owner or supplier who has better ideas undermines the brand unless they can find more new customers than the ones they loose (which ultimately costs them more than keeping the ones they have got)...in Tom Asacker writes

" A brand is an expectation of someone or something delivering a certain feeling  by way of an experience." So a strong brand must deliver that experience to a level that delights the customer. Tom Asacker continues

"What expected feeling attracts people to our brand?

Are we communicating it?

What expected feeling keeps them engaged with us?

Are we delivering it?

What expected feeling will draw them away from us

Are we monitoring it? "

The brewery failed to think through its (bottom-line driven ) actions, and paid the price

The IOS article continued

" Getting Greene King to do a U-turn has been incredible. I think a combination of the drop in profits and bad publicity has made them change their mind."

See their campaign website for the "whole story"; the customer is King even when ranged up against Greene King. It is good if we remeber that bottom line efficiency improvement can be divided into two segments... those that are customer neutral in their affect and those that do affect the customer.