Coco di Mama is an award-winning Italian-To-Go brand with >190 points of sale all over the UK. From brick-and-mortar stores to over 135 nationwide delivery kitchens across 6 Partners, 30 Sainsbury's Food to Go (and growing), as well as 1 motorway services pasta counter trial, the company is growing fast with new Partners in new channels all over the United Kingdom.
My Role:
- Concept
- Art Direction
- Creating Print and Digital Assets
Problem I Was Solving:
At Coco di Mama, there are four seasonal campaigns every year (formally five) where we introduce new seasonal dishes, as well as introduce new counter items and delist any products that have been deemed unsuccessful. The other campaigns are Autumn (the biggest one of the year) Winter/Xmas and January. This year marked the first time that the Spring and Summer campaigns would be combined into one. It was also the first time the campaigns were being approached from a 'digital first' angle to make sure the content worked on aggregators (Deliveroo, UberEats and JustEat). My brief was to come up with the visual concept that would run through the Spring/Summer ’22 campaign, while taking onboard the changes to approach.
My Research and Initial Ideas:
The brief I was given highlighted the main theme for this campaign, Live the Italian Dream. The focus was to be on fresh ingredients (playing up lemons and courgettes) and lighter dishes. With a digital first approach, we had to start approaching aggregator banners as digital window storefronts. From there, I started thinking about potential concepts and came up with two options: Come Dine With Coco (a spin on the Come Dine With Me TV show) and Al Fresco Dining, both of which I presented to the rest of the marketing team. For both concepts, I suggested them as they both had the potential to showcase a range of dishes and how they’d look in our packaging and in a natural setting, whether it’s in a home or in an outdoor dining setting. For aggregators especially, they recommend having multiple dishes in a shot. For past A-Board shots, the focus tended to be on one hero product per board. I wanted to show that you could essentially get a 3-course meal of sorts from Coco di Mama.
While both ideas had some crossover, we ultimately decided we liked the Al Fresco dining concept. I presented the concept as a good fit for this campaign because of its connections to Italian culture (Al Fresco meaning ‘in the cool air’) and it was a way to play on picnics being a big part of Spring and Summer, but to make the concept more Coco. I really wanted to highlight the idea that Coco di Mama’s food could be enjoyed with multiple people, bringing them together. I also wanted to show the versatility of the dishes by having a combination of the food in packaging and on dishes, which hadn’t been tried in campaigns before.
For this concept, I also wanted to do more with the digital/moving imagery aspect. One of the biggest changes I made when I started at Coco di Mama was to take the moving imagery for seasonal campaigns further. In previous campaigns, still imagery was used and then it would slowly zoom in but I wanted the digital A-Boards to have movement within the shot. For my first campaign there (Autumn '21) I started building in stop motion/gif elements into the campaigns and photoshoot briefs to make the content on digital A-Boards more engaging. This is a theme I continued with planning to have one aspect of the imagery being animated and using this as a way to focus on toppings/customisation of dishes.
With this campaign, we also wanted to expand the assets/areas covered, so I included proposals for window vinyls and a potential in-store experience at a selected store that would draw in customers. As a brand, these were two areas they felt hadn’t been quite nailed yet, so I was open to the challenge. Taking inspiration from the task I presented during the interview process for my role at Coco di Mama, I proposed using the Coco Pearlfisher pattern (pattern from the packaging) as the window vinyl (just the linear aspects) as vines and to add flowers to it. This would continue the Al Fresco dining to the exterior of stores will keeping it in a Coco style. For the flagship experience, I wanted to keep it eco-friendly and either have paper flowers (made from recycled paper) hanging from the ceiling in the key colours from the seasonal sauces or acetate shapes and curls hanging from the ceiling with those colours. Ultimately, due to cost restrictions, we were unable to proceed with the window vinyl and flagship installation ideas for this campaign. The Al Fresco concept was signed off and it was on to creating the photography brief.
Design Process and Deliverables:
With the seasonal campaigns, I present my initial ideas to the rest of the Marketing team first and once we’ve gone through it and are confident that it can work, I present it to the wider Central team. This includes the Food and Delivery teams. After that, I begin creating the photography brief which we send to the food stylist and photographer prior to the photoshoot days. This forms the basis of how the photoshoot days are run. It includes an introduction to the new campaign concept, the goals we hope to achieve, moodboards (stills and animated) a breakdown of all the A-Board and aggregator header shots including sketches/mockups and the running order of the days. I also include a food product list that the food team will expand on for the food stylist and a packaging list for the marketing executive to know what to bring to the shoot.
With this concept, we also required a trip to the prop store to create our Al Fresco dining experience in our photoshoot location of choice, a Coco di Mama store basement. As this was the first time we were shooting on tableware along with the Coco packaging, we needed to find the right forks, bowls, table, tablecloths, and glasses. We also needed to create a believable outdoor space... indoors. Working with the photographer on the lighting and some of the greenery, we were able to combine fake greenery, real greenery we provided and fencing along with the props to set the scene. We tend to divide our photoshoots into two days. The first day is product shots, so the food stylist can get used to working with the new products. The second day is for A-Board and aggregator shots and stop motion shots. On the photoshoot days, I’m in charge of making sure things run smoothly and that the concepts are coming to life in the way that I want, as well as making sure I have enough imagery to create the assets afterwards. We also have someone from the Food team to make sure the food is being made to spec and that it looks realistic/representative of what a customer will receive. Then, we have another member of the Marketing on hand, in case we need any additional materials for the shots.
Once the shoots are done, it’s straight into the editing. I start with the product shots as those are needed by other team members for launch packs that we use to brief the in-store teams. I also include the aggregator product shots in their various sizing. Then it’s on to print assets. Those are needed earlier as different stores have different sizing. We tend to use seasonal campaigns to do our menuboard changes and those changes include product names and imagery, pricing, descriptions, and calorie information. There are 8 different menuboard groups to update (print, which includes numerous placards, and digital menuboards.) There are also between 4-6 A-Boards designs per campaign to edit and these provide the main introduction to the new campaigns and dishes. I also create in-store posters, update product tickets (we have over 100 products in-store and a separate product ticket system for our Sainsbury’s Grab and Go range with has 8 products) and labels for new products. For all the assets, we use the Coco di Mama fonts: Alternative Gothic ATF for headers and Brandon Grotesque as their body text and occasionally for headers. The creation and edits to these items takes about 2 weeks for me to turn around to meet the print deadlines.
Once the print assets are checked and signed off by Marketing, Food, and our Brand team lead, we send them off to print. Then, it’s on to digital assets. This includes the digital A-Boards with the stop motion aspects, assets for social media, the website, aggregator headers and the mailers we send out to customers. With our mailers, we had been making a move to make them more engaging by creating gifs, so for the mailer headers I used the stop motion animation from the digital A-Boards. For the body imagery, I created and resized new gifs and imagery.
Lastly, all there is left to do is to launch all the campaign! The Central team divides the stores between us, and we go round to make sure that everything is set up correctly and admire how everything has turned out. It’s also a great opportunity to see customers react to the new campaign in real time, especially when you get to see the A-Boards bringing customers into the stores.
Client’s Opinions:
Coco di Mama felt that this campaign had one of our most ambitious concepts yet and that it truly captured the theme of ‘Living the Italian Dream’.
Tools/Programmes I Used:
- Adobe AfterEffects
- Adobe Illustrator
- Adobe Photoshop
