How do you scale a brand without losing what makes it special?

Client: 

200º Coffee

Timeline: 

9 Months

Align With Leaders

200º originally approached us to redesign their packaging for their 10th anniversary. But as we started to dig into the brief, we discovered a tension at the heart of the organisation. The business was growing rapidly, but its leaders worried the brand had lost something special along the way. This felt like an opportunity for 200º – to spend some time understanding what sort of business it wanted to be, and use that as a base to make bigger, more confident moves in the future. 

We spent many hours talking with the founders to understand what defined the 200º experience, which elements of the brand needed to be protected and strengthened, and what might be jettisoned, changed, and added, to ready the company for the next phase of its future. 

As part of this process, we presented the leaders with more than 50 words or phrases that were being used in the brand’s comms. Having been added piecemeal over the years, this huge and sometimes contradictory list demonstrated how the brand had become confused. We ran a workshop where the 200º team picked through and aligned on which ideas were still relevant, and which weren’t.   

Become The People

Once we had a deep understanding of the leaders’ vision for where they wanted 200º to go, we immersed ourselves in the brand and how it was experienced, externally by customers and internally by employees. 

We spoke with customers and visited the stores, on both arranged visits and Secret Shopper style drop-ins, to see what made a visit to a 200º shop special (and if that tallied with what the leadership team thought made it special). We also went behind the counter, spending time with staff across the organisation, from its Head Roaster to casual Saturday staff. 

We even underwent its barista course, to see first-hand how staff are trained. Through all this we pieced together a nuanced, in-depth picture of what made the company unique. We discovered a shared love of coffee that animated the brand in a very specific way – passionate, but never snobby or elitist.

From here we were able to map the brand’s potential customers along a trajectory of how much they cared about great coffee. We realised the opportunity was to move beyond people who already know a lot and prioritise high-quality, and become a transition brand that helps people with less knowledge, but some interest, become more engaged with the coffee they drink. 

Create New Solutions

We took these strategic insights and built them into assets that defined who 200º is, what it stands for, and how that shapes the way it works. These included: 

• A new brand narrative that communicates who the company is and why its mission matters 
• New company values that clarified and doubled down on its core beliefs 
• A refreshed visual identity that captured and communicated the new brand positioning  
• Special packaging to mark the brand’s 10th anniversary

Deliver Sustainable Change

As well as helping the 200º team make immediate changes, we also set them up for future success, with deliverables that help the brand scale in a flexible, but consistent way. These included:   

• A brand toolkit (illustrations, fonts, textures etc) so the team can apply the new look and feel across multiple touch points
• An actionable brand persona that helps future employees, especially casual staff, step into their role 
• Concepts for potential new marketing tactics, including a magazine and a new social strategy 
• Packaging templates so the in-house team can make updates and new versions for seasonal promotions.

The new packaging drove a 56% increase in annual sales.

It also won a Restaurant Marketer and Innovator (RMI) Award for Best Use of Research, Insight or Data.

Contact Us

If you’re curious how we could collaborate, we’re ready to talk: [email protected]

Improve, all ways.

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