brandopus

With over 500 million registered users, Twitter is one of the ten most visited websites on the Internet and can influence people worldwide.

This couldn't be truer for Twinings. It all began with a tweet from One Direction's Niall... "love your work! Your Lemon and Ginger is great! Drink about 3 or 4 cups before stage." Niall, has 11 million Twitter followers worldwide so you can imagine the impact this has had for Twinings.

The brief from Twinings was to create something personalised, quirky and fun whilst being a keepsake for Niall. And for me, being a big fan of any boy band at all, this couldn't be more of a dream brief to work on! The idea was that it would be a bonus for Niall to receive packs of his favourite cup of tea... after all, we want those vocals to be at their best whilst on stage! We worked with the current Lemon and Ginger packs, which we at BrandOpus re-designed as part of the Infusions relaunch in 2012, making it feel like a limited edition pack especially made for Niall himself.

Tweaking the illustrations on pack and also working into the copy made it feel more personalised, we even managed to get a few song titles in there too: "Naturally caffeine free... that's what makes you beautiful".

Speaking about the custom made tea, Niall said: "Thanks very much @TwiningsTeaUK! love the ole Lemon and Ginger tea! Love the boxes aswell haha." He then photographed this and shared the picture via Twitter.  To date, over 52,000 people have retweeted Niall's references to Twinings, and over 65,000 people have 'favorited' his posts.  

Since Twinings first interaction with Niall in April, they have seen their Twitter followers increase from 11,326 followers 18th April 2013 to 18,626 followers 13th May 2013, which is pretty amazing.

This just shows what how powerful social networking sites can be and how a brand's packaging can interact with an audience in a fun and engaging way whilst broadening Twinings social reach.

On my adventures through the internet I recently discovered the Ghostsigns Project, a collaborative national effort to photograph, research and archive the remaining examples of hand painted wall advertising in the UK and Ireland. 

Ghostsigns are the typically faded remains of advertising that was once painted by hand onto the brickwork of buildings. They can be found in cities, towns and villages across the country advertising many different products and services, some still familiar, some now sadly defunct. 

Although it is possible to find Ghostsigns in France, Belgium and the USA, the UK and Ireland have the strongest heritage in this field of advertising. An interesting mark of economic and cultural baring is the list of countries that still embrace hand painted signs to advertise wares, especially prevalent in India, Mexico and across Africa.

London is a great place for spotting these signs, and although many examples were sadly lost during The Blitz, traces of paint are still visible on many brick buildings across the capital. The key to finding them is paying attention to the buildings you pass and looking up as they are often high up on the walls, which is why I imagine a lot of Ghostsigns go unnoticed as most Londoners tend to keep their heads down when hurrying along the pavement.

Businesses of all types and sizes once used hand painted advertising to publicise themselves. These included smaller local companies who may have had a sign painted on their premises, all the way up to big brands such as Gillette and Hovis who paid for signs across the country. There are also many examples of signs that have outlived the company or product being advertising, or even examples of long-lost brand mascots, such as Little Miss Barber who appears on painted advertisements for Barber's, Orantips and our very own client, Twinings.

Twinings started using the advertising character 'Little Miss Barber' in the mid twentieth century. The curious tea enthusiast appeared in ghost signs in the West Midlands, UK building audience interest. But besides these photos there seems to be no record of this energetic tea promoter. The mystery of this lost character continues...

Dicsover some Ghostsigns for yourself: have a root around the archive here  

On a chilly January morning at just about elevenses time, a parcel arrived from Twinings. This was no ordinary box: not a sample for colour review or a tea caddy for sizing reference, but a small flat box delicately tied up in bubble wrap. Inside was a little card of thanks, to the BrandOpus team for all our hard work on the redesign of The Everyday Tea range, "It's glorious and we are delighted!" they wrote. And below the card was a bespoke teapot biscuit, a replica of the new pack design. 

The perfect accompaniment to a glorious cup of Twinings Everyday Tea!

We've helped Twinings to reorganise their Infusions portfolio and launch an innovative range of premium fruit & herbal infusion teas. Twinings tasked us to simplify and redefine the architecture and pack design across the large Infusions range, with the ambitious objective of significantly growing category penetration. In response we have introduced a clean, white background across all four sub-ranges within the infusions portfolio. Each blend also features swirling imagery to reflecting the moment that the tea infuses into hot water. 

The Fruit Infusions range uses bold typography, real imagery and illustrative touches to signify the hit of great flavour that the fruity blends create on the palette. Whilst Herbal Infusions use illustrative elements and accents of colour to signify the unique health benefit of each flavourful blend.

As part of the refresh Twinings are launching a new range of sensational tasting infusions, based on consumers favourite blends with an extra intensity and featuring interesting ingredients. Each variant has been developed by expert master blenders to ensure the depth of flavour matches the aromatic scent; combating the misconception that infused teas do not deliver on taste. We communicated the distinctiveness of this special range through the pack designs, which feature an intricate quilling technique reflecting both the infusion process and sensational tasting notes of the teas.

Although blends within the Benefit range are purchased with a specific health issue in mind, for us it was key to move away from the medicinal nature of the previous packaging, to a range of new designs befitting the great flavour of the blends. The result is a simple, clear range that is easy to navigate and which reassures the consumer that Twinings are on hand to help when it they need it most. 

Across the entire portfolio colour schemes compliment, allowing the consumer to easily identify a favourite ingredient irrespective of which sub-range each blend belongs to. All packs in the portfolio also feature block colouring on the side of pack, so that the blends are just as recognisable on the shelf at the supermarket as in the tea cupboard at home.

Our CEO Nir Wegrzyn, says of the project, "Following on from the strategy we created for Green Tea, Twinings Infusions has been transformed from a fragmented portfolio to a simple strategy that is easy to navigate on shelf."

Lindsey Williams, senior brand manager at Twinings, comments, "We have a range of great tasting products that have wellbeing at their heart, our challenge for the relaunch was to communicate these benefits to the consumer through impactful simplified design, and on-trend innovation. Our aim is to re-ignite the infusion category at a time when health is very much on consumers agenda and we feel that BrandOpus' pack designs will help us to achieve this"

We picked up three awards at last night's Design Effectiveness Awards, hosted by the Design Business Association.  Our work with Twinings landed two silver awards, whilst our redesign of UK's leading honey brand Rowse scooped us a bronze in the branded packaging design category.

We also celebrated making a massive jump forward in the effectiveness league tables.  We are now among the five most financially effective agencies in the UK, meaning that when clients choose to work with us they know that they are getting the all important return on investment that great design strategy can achieve.

For those not in the know, the DBA's annual Design Effectiveness Awards are the most prestigious accolade in design, being the only award scheme that uses commercial data as a key judging criteria.  We're particularly proud of the wins, which are the design industry's equivalent of the advertising industry's IPA awards, because all entries had undergone two stages of rigorous judging by business leaders, including company directors from Lloyds TSB, Sainsbury's, Samsung and GlaxoSmithKline.

In terms of results Twinings Florals, the limited edition range of four fragrant blends that we created, overachieved first year sales forecasts by 157.7%. Whilst Twinings Earl Grey became the number one selling Earl Grey blend across all retailers following our redesign, allowing a 29% increase in the rate of sale of Twinings Earl Grey and helping the brand to achieved it's highest weekly share for three years in both the speciality and Earl Grey markets. Rowse honey benefitted from 11% increase in distribution across major accounts and a 28% increase in consumer brand awareness following relaunch with new designs created by us.

For more examples of our award winning work, take a peek at a few case studies, if you want to find out more about how BrandOpus can create effective design for your brand drop Avril Tooley a line avrilt@brandopus.com