WE ARE PROUD to reveal the concepts for the 16th annual Makeover Challenge. For the 2019 Makeover Challenge, sponsored by Hazen with prototyping sponsored by Creative Edge/ IC3D, Brand Experience magazine worked with John Wright, founder of the socially conscious gourmet honey company Bee Wild. Wright blends his passion for real food from nature and his father’s legacy as a dedicated, enthusiastic beekeeper, to deliver raw, wild North Georgia honey, out of the mountains to a wider audience and in support of eco causes. Wright invests in several socially minded causes, including devoting 1% of its sales to One Percent for the Planet —the brainchild of the founders of Patagonia and Blue Ribbon Flies.
This year’s competitors are Gravity Branding and Design, Harper House and Shikatani Lacroix Design (SLD). All three competitors worked with Wright directly, as part of the competition’s directive to re-imagine Bee Wild’s gift set packaging within real business contexts and collaboratively with an actual consumer-facing brand with financial, market and operational concerns.
This year, Gravity Branding and Design , Harper House and SLD had two additional opportunities for collaboration. The competitors met with both sponsors Hazen and Creative Edge/ IC3D, which offered their considerable expertise and services in design execution, from eco-friendly metallic and holographic packaging effects to 3D virtual prototyping. Creative Edge/ IC3D’s virtual prototyping services and/or technologies were used—often along with the team’s internal creative and design technologies and capabilities—to visualize many of the concepts.
All three teams received a written creative brief developed by Wright that underscored the brand’s desire to service its existing client base while exploring a stronger DtC sales and distribution model that will enable Bee Wild to retain more of its profit than a business model that focuses on selling through bricks-and-mortar retailers and their distributor-partners.
As a result of their collaborative conversations, all three teams ended up extending the scope of the design project to make sure either the design could be sized up for a subscription box offering or developing a separate subscription box concept. Make no mistake, though. The concepts are diverse.
“Everybody brought something unique and valuable to the table,” Wright shares. As he worked with the teams, Wright was struck by how different their processes, strengths and philosophies are while each agency demonstrated strong strategic planning, delivered relevant insights, collaborated professionally and delivered compelling and effective concepts.
Those processes and concepts are spotlighted on the following pages to empower the Brand Experience community to thoughtfully consider the competing teams and vote online at www.bxpmagazine.com/moc-2019 for the best collaboration and concept. BXP will reveal the winner in our next issue.