soulsight®

Unplug Design's Dreamball is simply awesome. It's a perfect example of how inventive design can serve a greater purpose, something more than just nudging one towards one product or another.

Dreamball is a cylindrical, custom aid package delivered to children in developing Third World countries ravaged by war, poverty and famine. It's a new way to think about creating a sustainable package that can be more than just a throwaway vessel for a product.

When the children take the paper off the package and follow the simple patterns and instructions on it, they can building themselves a pretty cool soccer ball. The leftover cylinder can be used to store the soccer balls and rolled to wherever they want to play, and the cardboard is biodegradable. And because most of the soccer is played barefoot, the lightweight, flexible design works great. This really can bring some joy and hope to kids who have not been afforded too much of either. It's always inspiring to see outside-the-box thinking, of course very literally this time, but even more so when it's impacting lives in the best way possible.

The power of packaging as a billboard for your product was, quite nicely I might add, reinforced over the holiday season.

Like many, I enjoy spying on my neighbors via the boxes they have on the curb the day after Christmas. Yikes, the Smiths got a 72 inch flat panel! The Jones got another treadmill (good luck with that).

What struck me this year was that a company that doesn't even have a package for its product, or ever will, understood this premise so much that it went to all the trouble of creating a nice "little" box to be left on corners throughout the land in a smart guerilla marketing effort.

Mini, one of our favorite examples of a brand that embraced its authenticity, understood this natural human behavior. (I assure you, it's natural!)

Just after Christmas, Mini strategically distributed massive cardboard cartons with torn gift wrapping in trash heaps all over Amsterdam. Each box had a large diagram of the car with the words MINI COOPER across the top as if the car had been packaged inside. Kudos to Ubachswisbrun/JWT.

To us, it further emphasizes the power of good packaging and the tractor beam-like effect that it has. Mini's recognition of this fact makes me feel all warm inside on a freezing winter day. Now if I can only get the Ferrari people to return my call about that custom clam shell.

The holiday season has arrived, and, here at Soulsight, we welcome the turn of the calendar page and the dusting of fresh snow we received this morning.

We began to ponder how our brand equity relates to the holidays. Should our holiday gifts be adorned with the traditional holiday color palette or our Soulsight equity colors (as outlined in our shiny new standards manual)?

That opened the door for a confab about how the holidays relate to consumer brands. The holidays are an endorser of many of the products that we will buy this year for friends and family. They do have an emotional connection that fulfills a need state of many consumers, and, truth be told, the holiday season is one of the most globally identifiable emotional consumer touch-points.

It is the challenge of each brand, though, to determine their logical place in the aura of the holiday season. Some consumer brands, of course, will borrow the shiny equity of the holidays to reinforce their essence, polish up their image, or just bask in the halo effect of the beautiful twinkling light. But brands need to to be true to themselves and understand the consumer's perception. The brands that can align the consumer's perception with their own projected brand image will be most successful.

A few brands have made great strides in "owning" the holidays. Coca-Cola is a great example of a brand that completely dominates its category during the holidays. Soulsight has been privileged to be a holiday partner of Cola-Cola for an unprecedented 4 years. The holiday design created for last and this year's season incorporates brand specific holiday iconography. Each brand (Coke, Diet Coke, Coke Zero, Sprite, Fanta, etc.) has their own unique "gift wrapping" that exudes their respective brand personality and ties into the parent brand essence.

Hershey's brands also have a strong association with the holidays. Who doesn't have a bowl of red, green and silver wrapped Kisses in their home for guests to enjoy this time of year?

Williams-Sonoma has a notably beautiful collection of holiday design. It does a terrific job of adopting the spirit of the season into the design architecture to further elevate their respective brand image.

What these brands do so well is make sure that the projected holiday personality is in line with the consumer's current brand perception and expectations. In this way, the promise perfectly aligns with the experience, just like the heartwarming feeling you get on a snowy winter morning.

It's Cinco de Mayo – a celebration that began with the Battle of Puebla, and one that continues hard fought in coolers today. Miller Chill, the first "light beer with lime, " was a reveler favorite in 2007 until the competition took note and launched a "me too" offering backed by aggressive distribution and above-the-line support. In an effort to regain lost volume and reconnect with consumers, Miller Chill tapped into the growing trends of health consciousness and the Latinization of American culture and reformulated its recipe to only 100 calories, with a splash of natural lime flavor. Optima Soulsight breathed new life into the packaging and delivered a design that reflected the new “light beer with lime” proposition. The result? A dynamic and distinctive new look for the brand that boldly takes over the limelight, offering 100 calories of refreshing, Latin fun – the perfect party starter for Cinco de Mayo! Read the complete Chill Restage case study.

Faced with growing competition, FTD needed to revitalize its floral business. Optima Soulsight created a brand identity and package design system centered around their globally recognized brand icon, the fleet-footed Mercury Man. We removed him from the constraints of the FTD logo and gave him a life of his own, making him bolder and more dynamic. Drawing from FTD’s strong black and gold equity, we put the emphasis on black — an unusual choice for a flower company — and created a striking backdrop for FTD’s colorful floral arrangements. The beautiful shipper also became an eye-catching advertisement – the ideal place to bring the brand icon to life. Read the complete FTD case study.