Win With Tin: Critical Reflection
In tackling the campaign to promote canned food, the brief had to firstly be dissected to fully understand the scope of the project and its requirements. Once this was done, I read the resources available through the RSA website to get a better idea on how to begin mapping the project.
Fortunately, the mapping exercise done in groups in class provided a boost in throwing up areas of the brief that I lacked sufficient knowledge in. These ranged from the recycling process, the steel manufacturing process, facts and figures on canned food and consumer perceptions, to more ‘upmarket’ food and drink items that were packaged using some form of metal. Additionally, I kept myself updated on the research that fellow classmates conducted via their blogs to gain further insight.
While secondary research on the above areas was reasonably easy to obtain online and through trade journals such as The Grocer, I conducted my own questionnaire in the form of an online survey and circulated it amongst classmates and friends to obtain actual consumer perceptions of canned food. I also drew up a short list of questions and posed it to UK Canned Food and Sainsburys. Visits to Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols provided observations on types of food that were sold in tins there as well as the design of the packaging.
Although repeated efforts to get a response from Sainsburys failed, UK Canned Food kindly shared some interesting findings on the campaigns that they had rolled out. The latter presently rely on the appeal of celebrity TV chef James Martin with podcasts, webcasts and roadshows while using a largely informational approach in schools. Interestingly, these roadshows had only been held in the Midlands, instead of nationwide.
In summary, the consumer perceptions survey confirmed that the prevalent view of canned food was very much a negative one despite nutritional and environmental facts being widely available. What was unexpected was finding that a percentage of people did not realise that cans were easily recyclable.
Based on the research conducted, I decided to reframe canned food in a positive light, tapping into the emotional aspect of winning or gaining. This would ideally be more engaging to consumers as opposed to a campaign that was merely informational in nature. The campaign would set out to target busy adults likely in their 20s to 40s who stood to gain from the quick recipes that canned food lended itself to without compromising on nutrition – simultaneously, helping the environment through the sustainable packaging.
The design concepts were then developed by exploring different ways of expressing ‘winning’, positive messages playing on the word ‘can’, sustainability, nutritional benefits and canned food’s ‘green credentials’ amongst others. Through this, Win With Tin emerged as the strongest proposition, which led to more mapping and brainstorming for visual solutions.
While considering visual analogies such as the use of a podium, vault, medals, and jackpot machines to name a few, the idea of using a ‘scratch & win’ card seemed like an irresistible fit for the campaign. This was chosen to offer a more personal form of interaction for the consumer while providing an easy platform in which to convey little-known facts about canned food and act as a driver to the campaign website. The potential incentive could be a chance to win a range of prizes from a can of artichokes to a Waitrose hamper of organic canned food. The scratch & win cards would ideally be distributed with every £20 spend in supermarkets.
Outside of the supermarket arena, I came up with the idea of a lenticular poster using an image of the top of a can to resemble a vault. Placed in high commuter areas such as tube and train stations, the poster would appear to reveal itself with the message “You’re on to a winner with canned food” to entice viewers to find out more about the campaign.
The campaign website, key to housing the myriad of benefits of canned food using different can forms, incorporated the ‘revealing’ aspect that had surfaced in the overall design. I also designed an iPhone application as a handy way to access canned food recipes that only took 10 minutes to prepare, providing an easy point of reference when grocery-shopping or cooking.
Where possible, I simplified the can forms that I used in illustrations and chose photographs that were stripped of all labels, highlighting the bare metal, and kept to a basic colour scheme using lime green as an accent with black and white on metallic backgrounds. The graphics were executed in a contemporary, clean fashion to project an image of canned food that looked fresh and stood out from similar campaigns.
To test the scratch & win card with my target audience, I designed a short questionnaire asking if consumers would be interested in getting such a card, whether they liked its design and if they thought the logo was easy to understand. Armed with mock-ups of the scratch & win card, I then approached random shoppers in Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose, noting their age groups and gender. While I am happy to report that the card was a resounding success with all 10 people surveyed, one person was not interested in receiving the card, explaining that he did not live in the UK.
Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of the campaign, although It would have been a great learning experience if I had been able to develop working prototypes for the website and the iPhone application. I would have also liked to be able to conduct more research, and the prototypes would have certainly been useful for this process.
This would include persisting in getting information from the main four supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons, conducting focus groups as well as getting feedback from UK Canned Food and supermarkets to test the design of the entire campaign. In this way, I envision that the campaign would take on a more realistic edge in arriving at a solution that could be effectively implemented.
While secondary research on the above areas was reasonably easy to obtain online and through trade journals such as The Grocer, I conducted my own questionnaire in the form of an online survey and circulated it amongst classmates and friends to obtain actual consumer perceptions of canned food. I also drew up a short list of questions and posed it to UK Canned Food and Sainsburys. Visits to Selfridges, Harrods and Harvey Nichols provided observations on types of food that were sold in tins there as well as the design of the packaging.
Although repeated efforts to get a response from Sainsburys failed, UK Canned Food kindly shared some interesting findings on the campaigns that they had rolled out. The latter presently rely on the appeal of celebrity TV chef James Martin with podcasts, webcasts and roadshows while using a largely informational approach in schools. Interestingly, these roadshows had only been held in the Midlands, instead of nationwide.
In summary, the consumer perceptions survey confirmed that the prevalent view of canned food was very much a negative one despite nutritional and environmental facts being widely available. What was unexpected was finding that a percentage of people did not realise that cans were easily recyclable.
Based on the research conducted, I decided to reframe canned food in a positive light, tapping into the emotional aspect of winning or gaining. This would ideally be more engaging to consumers as opposed to a campaign that was merely informational in nature. The campaign would set out to target busy adults likely in their 20s to 40s who stood to gain from the quick recipes that canned food lended itself to without compromising on nutrition – simultaneously, helping the environment through the sustainable packaging.
The design concepts were then developed by exploring different ways of expressing ‘winning’, positive messages playing on the word ‘can’, sustainability, nutritional benefits and canned food’s ‘green credentials’ amongst others. Through this, Win With Tin emerged as the strongest proposition, which led to more mapping and brainstorming for visual solutions.
While considering visual analogies such as the use of a podium, vault, medals, and jackpot machines to name a few, the idea of using a ‘scratch & win’ card seemed like an irresistible fit for the campaign. This was chosen to offer a more personal form of interaction for the consumer while providing an easy platform in which to convey little-known facts about canned food and act as a driver to the campaign website. The potential incentive could be a chance to win a range of prizes from a can of artichokes to a Waitrose hamper of organic canned food. The scratch & win cards would ideally be distributed with every £20 spend in supermarkets.
Outside of the supermarket arena, I came up with the idea of a lenticular poster using an image of the top of a can to resemble a vault. Placed in high commuter areas such as tube and train stations, the poster would appear to reveal itself with the message “You’re on to a winner with canned food” to entice viewers to find out more about the campaign.
The campaign website, key to housing the myriad of benefits of canned food using different can forms, incorporated the ‘revealing’ aspect that had surfaced in the overall design. I also designed an iPhone application as a handy way to access canned food recipes that only took 10 minutes to prepare, providing an easy point of reference when grocery-shopping or cooking.
Where possible, I simplified the can forms that I used in illustrations and chose photographs that were stripped of all labels, highlighting the bare metal, and kept to a basic colour scheme using lime green as an accent with black and white on metallic backgrounds. The graphics were executed in a contemporary, clean fashion to project an image of canned food that looked fresh and stood out from similar campaigns.
To test the scratch & win card with my target audience, I designed a short questionnaire asking if consumers would be interested in getting such a card, whether they liked its design and if they thought the logo was easy to understand. Armed with mock-ups of the scratch & win card, I then approached random shoppers in Sainsburys, Tesco and Waitrose, noting their age groups and gender. While I am happy to report that the card was a resounding success with all 10 people surveyed, one person was not interested in receiving the card, explaining that he did not live in the UK.
Overall, I was pleased with the outcome of the campaign, although It would have been a great learning experience if I had been able to develop working prototypes for the website and the iPhone application. I would have also liked to be able to conduct more research, and the prototypes would have certainly been useful for this process.
This would include persisting in getting information from the main four supermarkets – Tesco, Sainsburys, Asda and Morrisons, conducting focus groups as well as getting feedback from UK Canned Food and supermarkets to test the design of the entire campaign. In this way, I envision that the campaign would take on a more realistic edge in arriving at a solution that could be effectively implemented.
20/20 in flesh
With "the medium is the message" in mind, I tackled a new software to showcase my presentation on The Digital Arena.
Often, I found that the samples of work I've chosen to collect as references for this presentation cultivated new perspectives in creating solutions. Experimentation here seems the key as the digital space is still such a young field. What I'm really keen on is to marry the use of analog and digital successfully, so the end-product is almost intuitive in operation – now where can I find a digital genie to grant my wishes?
Often, I found that the samples of work I've chosen to collect as references for this presentation cultivated new perspectives in creating solutions. Experimentation here seems the key as the digital space is still such a young field. What I'm really keen on is to marry the use of analog and digital successfully, so the end-product is almost intuitive in operation – now where can I find a digital genie to grant my wishes?