Truly Deeply/Madly

12.03.10

A Mouthwateringly Creative Brand Gesture

Design­ing Bril­liant Brand Ges­tures
As a cre­atively minded brand strat­egy and brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions design agency our­selves, we at Truly Deeply are always moved by a well crafted brand ges­ture. And one that tastes as good as it looks and gets real, mea­sur­able results for the client — well that’s just too good to ignore.

Kansas City’s Christo­pher Elbow has a dis­tinctly artis­tic, arti­san approach to choco­late, endear­ing him to choco­holics nation­wide (includ­ing Oprah her­self thanks very much). To drive traf­fic to the grand open­ing of Christo­pher Elbow’s new store loca­tion, an out­door “instal­la­tion” of Elbow’s choco­late artistry was cre­ated and exhib­ited in the heart of Kansas City’s arts dis­trict timed to coin­cide with a monthly gallery crawl. Twelve indi­vid­ual choco­late pieces were turned into “framed art” and mounted on walls, with a title card placed adjacent.

The result of this tasty brand ges­ture?  Sales tripled for the period and the store had to stay open two hours later than nor­mal to accom­mo­date the tor­rent of cus­tomers. That’s what we’d call a sweetly suc­cess­ful piece of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion.

Dave Ansett, Bran­da­men­tal­ist
For monthly updates of our think­ing, click here to receive our free Brand Newslet­ter
Lover of Deli­cious Choco­late and Brand Gestures

This rich brand ges­ture was the work of North Amer­i­can food and bev­er­age brand agency Stir. Nice work guys.

Related arti­cles

• Best of Arti­san Choco­late (fastcompany.com)
• Mmm Choco­late (brighthub.com)

Tags: Brand Agency, Brand Communication, Brand Communications, Brand Design, brand designer, brand designer Melbourne, brand designers, Brand Experience, Brand Identity, Brand Personality, Brand Strategy, brand-designers-Melbourne, brand-gesture, Brand-Storytelling, brandamentalist, Christopher Elbow, Corporate Image, Creative Ideas, Dave Ansett, David Ansett, Graphic Design Melbourne, Melbourne Brand Strategy, Visual Language

This entry was posted on Friday, December 3rd, 2010 at 7:00 am and is filed under Brand Agency, Brand Design, Brand-Storytelling, Corporate Image, Experiences, Graphic Design Melbourne, Small Brands Big Personalities. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

15 Responses to “A Mouthwateringly Creative Brand Gesture”

1. Tim says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 7:24 am

   A tasty brand ges­ture indeed! A great brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion idea that pro­motes Christo­pher Elbow’s cre­ative ‘out­side the box’ think­ing. Yum, i need some choco­late now.
2. Domma says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 9:31 am

   Stir have well and truly smashed this brand expe­ri­ence out of the ball park! What a delight­ful cre­ative exe­cu­tion and piece of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion not to men­tion mak­ing me feel like some choco­late this early in the morning.
3. Ron says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 11:00 am

   This is an excel­lent piece of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion. It falls out side tra­di­tional brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion and visual lan­guage, but is truly a stroke of genius. A great idea like this one, done with a bit of style is what brand­ing is all about.
4. david says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 11:11 am

   Tim, I really liked the way they com­mu­ni­cated the choco­late brand through a very pub­lic art instal­la­tion to lever­age the arts dis­trict and gallery crawl. A very smart piece of brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion design.
5. david says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 11:11 am

   Thanks Domma, there’s noth­ing like a choco­late brand iden­tity design to get the juices flowing.
6. david says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 11:12 am

   I couldn’t agree more Ron. Such an intel­li­gent solu­tion that sits in that space between adver­tis­ing and graphic design. A true piece of brand expe­ri­ence design.
7. Rachel says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 2:38 pm

   An extremely thought­ful, rich and sophis­ti­cated brand ges­ture exam­ple Dave. No won­der they had to stay open late!
8. david says:

   Fri, 03/12/2010 at 2:44 pm

   I agree Rachel, It’s a great met­ric for a small busi­ness to mea­sure brand com­mu­ni­ca­tion effec­tive­ness — ‘we had to stay open for two extra hours to han­dle all the customers’.
9. Brent Anderson says:

   Sun, 05/12/2010 at 11:44 am

   Huge props com­ing from you, Mr. Ansett and Truly Deeply. We’re mighty appre­cia­tive of your work and author­i­ta­tive brand voice. And Aus­tralia and Aus­tralians for that mat­ter. Thanks to you all for your time and expres­sions of approval. And cheers from Stir in Kansas City, Mis­souri, USA.
10. david says:

    Wed, 08/12/2010 at 8:28 am

    Kudos back Brent. Keep pro­duc­ing great cre­ative ideas to build your clients’ brands, and we’ll keep telling the world about ‘em. Look for­ward to catch­ing up for a meet­ing of cre­ative minds if we’re ever in Kansas City.
11. Brent Anderson says:

    Wed, 08/12/2010 at 2:36 pm

    Bet­ter believe it. Same goes when we get back to Oz. Way over­due. Cheers for the support.
12. Ann Rimmer says:

    Wed, 15/12/2010 at 12:52 am

    Love this. A superb idea, I have shown this to Ramsbottom’s lit­tle choco­late shop so they can con­sider doing some­thing out in the com­mu­nity too. Thanks for inspir­ing even small businesses!
13. david says:

    Fri, 17/12/2010 at 10:55 am

    Thanks Anne, glad you liked the post. The thing about cre­ative brand ges­tures is they can be lever­aged by busi­nesses of any and every shape and size. We find small busi­nesses actu­ally have an advan­tage when it comes to express­ing an authen­tic brand per­son­al­ity through their brand com­mu­ni­ca­tions over large organizations.
14. Judy says:

    Tue, 18/01/2011 at 10:30 am

    Inter­est­ing to see lever­ag­ing of the sta­tus and value of “art” ‚espe­cially in the pub­lic sphere, to attach to obvi­ousy very good chocolate.
15. david says:

    Tue, 18/01/2011 at 5:58 pm

    I agree Judy, we weren’t involved in the project, and maybe Brent can add some insight, but I’d expect the brand def­i­n­i­tion for Christo­pher Elbow would have included the term ‘arti­san’ — a fit­ting ‘art link’ for this piece of brand communication.