This issue, we’re happy to bring back an old favorite, the Makeover Challenge. One of the community’s most favored editorial projects, there was no question that we needed to carry over the blue-sky contest to Brand Experience magazine.
This year’s competition, we will be working with a longtime reader Ellie Thomas of Huber Winery. The 2017 Makeover Challenge is sponsored by Sun Chemical. Caps57, again, has offered its prototyping services to the competing agencies.
Thomas was excited to be part of the academic exploration because of her belief that design is an omnipresent and powerful force behind just about every experience a consumer has with a brand. She notes that she approaches everything in her life with a fascination for the design behind the product and is constantly picking apart end products to discover the design strategy behind them.
Thomas is also excited to show others in the company what’s possible with more resources—both time and people—when developing new brands and creating new designs. Not to mention curious about how the different agencies will approach the project. “This is a good opportunity to see something that I’ve made, be made over,” Thomas eagerly remarks.
The timing’s perfect to spotlight Huber Winery’s Starlight Distillery business, she adds, because the spirits business is growing rapidly but it is also fairly new, unlike the fruit wine business. That’s not to say that the business is nascent. Starlight Distillery was founded more than a decade and a half ago, but that’s young compared to the rest of the business. Huber Winery is a seventh-generation farmer-first business, which traces its roots back to Simon Huber who started growing fruit in Southern Indiana in 1843, committed to agriculture, grain to glass, vineyard to bottle.
Thomas will have the opportunity to work with three different agencies this year, from varying firm size; and backgrounds, including one known for its work in the very hot pet market. The editorial team is especially excited about the cross-pollination of ideas to come.
Learn more about the agencies from their profiles, starting on page 25, and be sure to mark your calendars for August, when we will feature the redesign concepts in the August issue of BXP.