Celebrating insight at the 2019 DBA awards

05.07.19

Dom Michaelides

Director, New York

Categories News

The 2019 DBA Design Effectiveness Awards have come in, and The Big Picture are delighted to see 5 brands we partnered with pick up some silverware! 

These awards are not just about design, but the difference design makes on a business or project. Crucially, the awards are evidence-based, where the impact of design is measured and verified

Insight is often working hard behind the scenes of these awards, and we wanted to take a minute to recognise some of our budding researchers who had a massive part to play on a some of these projects…

Carling: Creating brand equity, while reassuring on quality 

Chris and Sam worked with The Carling Team to develop a bold, iconic new brand identity, that helped rekindle a visual equity from the brand’s proud history – the black label. Taking a behavioural approach to keep consumers in System 1 when first encountering the new design showed the potential we had to be bold, while retaining recognition for users. However, this boldness often tipped into a minimalist aesthetic which started to feel a little stark and lacking in excitement or anticipation. The deployment of subtle yet important detailing, like the Burton-on-Trent watermark, ensured the design stayed on the ‘minimalist tightrope’, leading to sales growth of £30 million (+8.7%) where competitors have declined

Oui by Yoplait: Innovating to break norms and deliver delight

A shout out to our US team for this one! Using our Ignition innovation methodology, they built the brand from the ground up, exploring category dynamics, concepts and naming to inform early stage design, before taking these designs into exploratory innovation workshops, using a multi stage, multi method approach. The result? The single biggest launch in the yoghurt category in the last five years with over $100 million in sales in year one, surpassing its target by 30%

Blue Dragon: Identifying strategic potential for design  

Strategic input and looking beyond what consumers say they like is key when delivering insight, and that’s exactly what Cecilia did. While not the most popular design amongst our consumers, she identified it as a clear winner in terms of its ability to deliver against the design brief, taking the brand into a more vibrant, modern Asian direction. After some serious fine tuning, the redesign delivered a 12% increase in stand-out and a 9% increase in differentiation and modernity

Allinson’s: Building confidence to move to a bold new visual brand language

Our team helped Allinson’s take a brave move, by starting again and building the brand up from scratch, in a world where retaining distinctive brand assets is often seen as the only way forward. By exploring the daring designs on shelf through a series of short shopping tasks, they discovered clear permission to change, and real potential to premiumise the often-overlooked brand lacking in visual equities.  After complementing the winning design with evocative typography, and the recommended paper tray, Allinson’s was able to deliver a passionate and ‘freshly baked’ feel, which helped them achieve a year-on-year uplift in value sales of 73%