Caribou Coffee: Brand Evolution Case Study

Caribou Coffee Rebranding

Solution

Our insights indicated that consumers are willing to pay a little more for a premium cup of coffee, in part because they’re also buying an experience. To better communicate the soul of the brand and differentiate the Caribou experience from its more-corporate competitors, we relaunched the brand by evolving the founders’ original tagline, “Life is short. Stay awake for it.” This seize-the-day mentality permeated through every brand touchpoint. No longer was a Caribou cup simply a cup, but rather, it is a reminder that life’s worth staying awake for. Since the relaunch, shareholder value has increased, traffic has improved and comp sales increased for the first time in three years, while outperforming the QSR industry. A 500 percent jump in Facebook fans increased online engagement and the campaign has been spotlighted in everything from PerezHilton.com to Fast Company.

Challenge

Caribou Coffee is the world’s second-largest premium coffeehouse, but consecutive years of sales declines, driven by a recession that vilified the $4 mocha, left Caribou Coffee in the position of redefining its value and brand experience. Caribou needed to distinguish itself from competitors as disparate as Starbucks and McDonald’s.

Cannondale: The Perfect Ride Case Study

Cannondale Case Study

Solution:

Communicate that Cannondale is The Perfect Ride. Knowing that the work needs to tell both a product and a brand story, we developed a brand system that could easily translate across mediums and continents. Our primary imagery and headlines are equal parts innovation and inspiration, capturing the best athletes in the world putting Cannondale bikes to the ultimate test. While the secondary images and language tout technological prowess in a way that reflects the attitudes of our audience. The system allows the same look and feel to extend beyond print ads to catalogs and interactive, giving Cannondale a unified, cohesive brand.

Challenge:

Since its earliest days, Cannondale has engineered premium products, redefining and reinventing the way bicycles are made. By creating industry-changing innovations through state-of-the-art design, Cannondale is globally recognized as a leader in product innovation. The challenge was to position the brand in a way that not only showcased its technological prowess, but also its rider-centric culture that crosses all cycling categories, around the globe.

Caribou Coffee: Make The Cup Case Study

Caribou Coffee Make The Cup

Solution

Colle+McVoy realized that Caribou’s broadest reaching media vehicle was its cups. Millions of cups each year serve as walking billboards or “owned” media. With the brand relaunch, we created a series of cups featuring handwritten “Bouisms” highlighting things worth staying awake for. Building on that momentum, we created MakeTheCup.com, which allowed consumers to tell us what they stay awake for, and possibly land on the next generation of Caribou cups. The consumer promotion spiked site traffic by 26 percent, and 150 of the best submissions made it to millions of new Caribou cups.

Challenge

Despite being the second-largest premium coffeehouse in the world, Caribou Coffee is dwarfed by Starbucks when it comes to ad spending. With such a large spending gap, we needed to find a unique promotion to engage customers in our “Life is short. Stay awake for it.” campaign.

Old Navy: Case Study

Old Navy case study

The visibility of our work for Caribou Coffee earned us an invitation from Old Navy to submit a proposal to transform and define their entire brand design philosophy. After being selected from among some of the best design firms in the country, we developed a proprietary typeface, secondary fonts, color palettes, patterns, brand language, a comprehensive brand standards manual, examples of in-store applications and direct mail.

Land O’Lakes: Website Redesign Case Study

Land O'Lakes Site Redesign

Visit the site: www.landolakes.com »

Solution

A completely redesigned landolakes.com helps consumers interact with the established brand in new ways. Built to appeal to both less-experienced, tech-savvy moms and more-seasoned cooks and bakers, the site features a modernized color palette, engaging photography and better social connectivity. The Test Kitchen section highlights the brand’s expertise with tips, photos and how-to advice. Intuitive searching gets you to great recipes quickly. And recipe pages are designed with the user in mind, featuring enhanced functionality, while themed collections trigger more ideas. With more than 3,000 recipes and 5,000 pages, sharing the simple goodness of everyday food has never been more user friendly.

Challenge

Land O’Lakes has been a key ingredient in America’s kitchens for generations. But there was an opportunity for its interactive experience to connect with a new generation of consumers — and continue to make sure longtime visitors felt right at home.

Nestlé Purina: This Could be the Year Case Study

Solution

The This Could Be The Year campaign demonstrates that Pro Plan is the brand that understands the competitive nature of breeders and delivers the pride of achievement they crave. The campaign celebrates and encourages the competitive spirit of breeders through sports-like journalistic photography and bold headlines. Now in its third year, This Could Be the Year has received extremely positive feedback. Much of the buzz centers on how the campaign’s breakthrough creative beautifully captures the essence of what makes the sport of showing dogs so popular with breeders and consumers alike.

Challenge

Purina® Pro Plan® is a super-premium dog food brand that has quietly dominated the highly influential breeder audience for years. But recently, other pet food manufacturers, recognizing an opportunity, have started to challenge Pro Plan’s dominance. They cast Pro Plan as a big brand made with sub-par ingredients and fillers. Pro Plan needed to fight back, but the brand wouldn’t win by playing the war of ingredients waged by the competition. We needed to create emotional affinity for Pro Plan among breeders to overcome rational attacks from niche brand offerings.

Cost Cutters: Case Study

Cost Cutters Real TV

Solution

First, we uncovered a dilemma that was plaguing Cost Cutters. While consumers want to save wherever they can, the idea of incredibly affordable salon services didn’t always instill a lot of confidence. Enter the Cost Cutter Compliment Cam™. Based on a simple human truth that a good haircut begets good compliments, we set out to capture those authentic moments as they happened in real life. Customers who’d recently received a new cut and style were outfitted with hidden cameras and sent out to capture actual, unvarnished reactions of family, friends and coworkers. The takeway? You can, indeed, look and feel good without spending a bundle. And we had the enthusiastic compliments (and TV spots) to prove it. What started out as a TV campaign extended into rich online content and entertaining radio. Never underestimate a compliment again.

Challenge

Cost Cutters, a value-based hair salon owned by Regis Corporation, has more than 700 locations across the United States and Canada. The company asked Colle+McVoy to create a national TV campaign aimed at getting recession-weary consumers back into salon chairs.

Mammoth Mountain: Top of California Case Study

Mammoth Mountain Campaign

Solution

Mammoth’s unique personality coupled with its physical attributes inspired us to create a brand position, look and voice that captured the attitude that is uniquely Mammoth: The top of California. Mammoth and C+M liked it so much, it became the tagline. We developed a 2010-2011 winter campaign that infused a more youthful, action-sports look with a free-spirited, adrenaline-fueled attitude. Every consumer point of contact was revamped, including MammothMountain.com, billboards in Northern and Southern California, print and online ads, emails, and direct mail.

Challenge

Mammoth Mountain is California’s premier ski and summer resort. We were enlisted to help differentiate and reposition the resort so it could expand its core customer base in Southern California, while introducing the resort through its new flight service to Northern California.

People For Bikes: Case Study

Bikes Belong Branding

Solution

To achieve this goal, we created People for Bikes, a national movement to improve the future of biking. We started by developing a brand icon and design system that is joyous yet authoritative, nationalistic, personal and credible. The primary focus of our Web experience is to get cyclists, both casual and enthusiast, to raise their hands in support of a better future for bikes. The same look and feel that inspired our icon came to life on peopleforbikes.org. In addition to learning about bike-friendly initiatives taking place across the country, visitors are encouraged to sign our pledge and get others to do the same. Names collected will be used to lobby representatives in Washington, D.C., to create better and safer bike paths, lanes and trails. More than 225,000 riders have signed the People for Bikes pledge, making Bikes Belong the largest bicycle advocacy group in the United States.

Our work for People For Bikes was selected in AIGA's "365 | Design Effectiveness" exhibition at the AIGA National Design Center in NYC and featured in the September 17th, 2011 weekend edition of The Wall Street Journal.  See the article>>

Challenge

Bikes Belong is a nonprofit organization with one mission: Put more people on bikes, more often. Our charge was to help Bikes Belong create a safer, more bike-friendly world. In order to appeal to all different types of riders, we needed to create a brand with universal appeal. A brand that spoke to the hard core bike messenger crowd as well as the suburban family that enjoy bike rides for recreation and a little family bonding.

Explore Minnesota Tourism: More To Explore Case Study

Video: More to Explore TV Video

Solution

We set our sights on the travelers who are more optimistic (cautiously optimistic, but optimistic nonetheless) and ready to experience life. They are curious to discover what makes a destination exceptional. Thus, the More to Explore campaign was born. Just as Minnesota is a state worth exploring, we set out to create a commercial worth exploring. Throughout the spot, visual surprises are sprinkled in to delight and, most of all, support the idea that there really is More To Explore in Minnesota. The biggest surprise of all was saved for the end of the spot when Joe Mauer, Minnesota’s favorite son (and MVP), made his singing debut. The result is a seamless, exuberant tribute to all that Minnesota has to offer. The television spot has become Explore Minnesota’s most buzzworthy initiative ever.

Challenge

When it comes to promoting state tourism, Minnesota is routinely outspent by its neighbors at a ratio of up to 3 to 1. With the travel economy still in recovery and the state in a major budget-cutting mode, it was imperative for us to do more with less, while breaking through the mass of tourism advertising.

Colle+McVoy: Super Chatter XLV Case Study

Colle+McVoy Super Chatter

Solution

By creating search queries in Collective Intellect and Radian6, we analyzed how people shared their Super Bowl experiences across the social Web via tweets, Facebook updates, blog posts and more. Once our analysis was complete, we designed an infographic to visually display the top ten themes and served it up using the Google Maps API. To bring awareness to Super Chatter™, we relied entirely on the media that covered the Super Bowl to spread itself. One tweet and Facebook post sent thousands of visitors to collemcvoy.com/superchatter, where they spent an average of 23 minutes browsing through the infographics. While the idea of Super Chatter was spreading through social media, our brand sentiment was the most favorable it has ever been, and visits to the Work section at collemcvoy.com increased 40 percent.

Challenge

We set out to monitor the social Web and uncover how the Super Bowl influences people’s behavior throughout the nation. While numerous agencies focused on assessing the impact of TV commercials, we broadened our analysis to identify the top behavioral themes by dissecting the social media footprint of Super Bowl XLV.

Mammoth Mountain: Top of California Outdoor

Mammoth Outdoor

Our first campaign for Mammoth Mountain was, in some ways, like a grand opening. For decades, Mammoth’s jaw-dropping topography and famous terrain were only accessible by car - preferably the 4x4 variety. But with new air service from Los Angeles, the Bay Area and beyond, Mammoth’s 11,000-foot summit is now accessible to all. Higher than any West Coast resort, we introduced the tagline, "The top of California".

Side note: This year, more than ever, Mammoth is living up to its name. It was officially recorded as having the most snow in the world after a storm dumped more than 13 feet of the white stuff.

View Case Study »

Mammoth Mountain: Website Redesign

Building off the same striking look and feel seen in print and outdoor, our modular approach to the Web site allowed us to showcase the latest news, events and promotions while serving up that unmistakable California attitude.

View Case Study »

Visit the site: www.mammothmountain.com »

Taubman Shopping Centers: Yearbook Yourself iPhone Application

Yearbook Yourself App Screenshots

The Yearbook Yourself iPhone app launched for Taubman malls around the back-to-schools season. The app was named a Staff Favorite by Apple and appeared on the iTunes® top paid app list for weeks.

View Case Study »

Caribou Coffee: Wild It Up! Case Study

Caribou Coffee Wild It Up

Solution

At the time of the promotion, Caribou Coffee did not have an official page on Facebook. For a brand that’s about fun and customer engagement, this project served as the perfect foray into the space. After developing an official page, we created the Facebook application Wild It Up!, which allowed consumers to “wild up” a photo of themselves by selecting from a diverse library of images, such as gold teeth, wild animals, tattoos and, of course, Wild beverages. Users could then use a printout of their new Wild It Up! picture at any Caribou Coffee to redeem it for a free Wild Cooler. The pictures were displayed in stores, reinforcing Caribou’s customer-centric spirit. And an untold number of coupons were distributed that created millions of impressions. Product sampling took a new form of ROI as Caribou’s Facebook audience grew from 0 to 150,000 in just one month’s time.

Challenge

Shortly after winning the Caribou Coffee business, we were given the task of helping solve a perennial problem. The summer months have a way of slowing down coffeehouse sales. So we turned to Caribou’s lineup of Wild Coolers to offset the usual dip when the mercury rises. Since the beverages are popular with a younger audience, there was an opportunity to broaden Caribou’s customer base in a space that was still uncharted for the premium coffeehouse: social media.

Taubman Shopping Centers: Yearbook Yourself Case Study

Yearbook Yourself Case Study

Solution

Ever wondered what you might have looked like in a past life? YearbookYourself.com let users upload their photos and see themselves in classic 'dos and vintage outfits from previous decades. With each look, users also learned about today’s hottest fashions and deals from each mall. From Pee-wee Herman and Lance Armstrong to the Jimmy Fallon show and thousands of blogs, the site was quickly embraced by pop culture. More than 15 million images were shared on Facebook, and the site generated a 49 percent click-through rate to mall sites. The Yearbook Yourself iPhone® app took the experience mobile and was featured on the iTunes® Staff Favorites and the Top-Paid Apps list.

Challenge

Taubman, owner of 20 upscale malls across the United States such as Beverly Center in Los Angeles, wanted to create a fun and engaging experience to break through the morass of traditional back-to-school promotional messaging (“Look cool for school! For less!”). And it needed to convince teens and their parents that Taubman malls not only have the hottest stores and fashions, but great deals, too.

Take Me Fishing: Master Casters

TMF Master Casters

We wanted to attract younger people to fishing in a whole new way. Capitalizing on the success of the XGames and shows such as Jackass, we created a series of videos featuring fishing in a whole new light. One of which features an expert angler hitting clay pigeons out of the air at a gun range with his rod, reel and lure.

View Case Study »

Take Me Fishing: Case Study

TakeMeFishing.org Case Study

Visit the site: www.takemefishing.org »

Solution

Fishing and boating have always been ways to escape from everyday stress while connecting with friends, family and nature. Research indicated that we needed to make the sport of fishing relevant to today’s consumer who was not motivated by nostalgia or serenity, but rather by active experiences and socialization. That led us to our core insight: Where land ends, life begins. That insight has helped us make TakeMeFishing.org the nation’s primary vehicle for increasing interest and participation in boating and fishing. Along the way, site traffic has quadrupled in under four years. The fully integrated, award-winning Take Me Fishing™ campaign contributed to an increase in overall license sales in 2009, marking the highest increase in fishing license sales since the 1970s. An increase in participation has also helped generate millions of additional dollars for conservation efforts.

Challenge

The Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation (RBFF), the nonprofit organization behind TakeMeFishing.org, is dedicated to aquatic conservation and increasing participation in fishing and boating. When we began working with RBFF in 2008, fishing license sales and participation had been on a steady decline. Since license proceeds go back to protecting the nation’s aquatic resources, Colle+McVoy was given the assignment of increasing participation and preserving a classic American pastime for future generations.

Take Me Fishing: Website

Selling a million new fishing licenses in the highly competitive leisure market was the challenge issued to us by the Recreational Boating & Fishing Foundation. A 2,500-page online fishing compendium was the core of our solution. TakeMeFishing.org is the definitive destination for all things fishing. Want to learn to cast? Check out Fishopedia, the A-to-Z guide to catching, cleaning and cooking fish. Want to tell people about your favorite fishing spot? Upload it to Hot Spots, a Google Maps-enabled, first-of-its-kind web application.

View Case Study »

Visit the site: www.takemefishing.org »

Welcome to the New ColleMcVoy.com

Craig Pladson

We’ve been working hard to bring you an experience that tells you who we are, why you should work with us and - ultimately - inspires you to make a difference and join us in our vision to stand out.

We pushed ourselves to treat this project as we would any other client assignment. The clients in this case were the leadership team, and I had the pleasure of leading our internal team all the way from strategy to execution. This approach encouraged accountability and challenged us to practice what we preach. We learned a ton along the way, and we’re proud of the work we produced.

The Opportunity

As we assessed our previous .com and social media presence, we realized there was opportunity for improvement. Our previous interactive experience didn't accurately demonstrate who we are and what we're great at. It also didn't allow for the flexibility required by the dynamic nature of social media and agileness of mobile. If we could improve in these specific areas, we knew creating a stand out interactive experience was achievable.

Insight + Strategic Direction

Our findings from the qualitative and quantitative research we conducted uncovered what makes C+M more than an advertising agency. We invent analytics tools from scratch. We write job descriptions for clients. We offer strategic counsel on business-level strategies. We offer fulfillment capabilities in house. We build 3-D dioramas. The engine that makes all of this possible is the people who work here. And here is a special place. Employees and clients described the feeling they get when they walk off the elevator at C+M, and that feeling is what we wanted our online experience to emulate. We worked off the key insight that C+M is more than just a workplace; it’s the incubator for and manifestation of the vibrant, warm and open spirit of its people.

Audience + Architecture

With this insight in mind, we initiated a complete run-through of potential conceptual architecture solutions before creating visual design concepts. We explored organizational schemes based on four distinct audience profiles that we brought to life through personas and use case scenarios. We mapped out an agile experience that made itself smarter over time. An experience based heavily on search and a sophisticated tagging system, allowing site visitors to surface content they find relevant and useful.

Design

Our user experience strategies led to design concepting. We generated multiple concepts and put them up on the wall for review. One prevailed. The one you’re experiencing now. As we brought people through a prototyped version of the Web site, they reacted positively to the design and photography style. We hope your reaction is the same, but we also want to make sure the experience delivers on getting you to the information you’re seeking easily and efficiently.

Usability

During our usability sessions, we also observed people hesitantly browsing through our progressively created navigation system. A system built on the search-based tagging previously described. We offer five ways for people to navigate: 1) entering a search query, 2) clicking on a trending topic, 3) vertically scrolling through image tiles, 4) horizontally browsing via contextual links and 5) using the keyboard. Usability findings led to design and functionality tweaks that resulted in an experience surpassing the standards our team set. Time to go live.

An Experience Built From Behavior

Going live is only the initiation of what the experience will eventually come to be. The Web site as it exists today serves as the foundational platform we will constantly monitor and change to adapt to visitor behavior. Meaning, the next time you come back, your experience will be better. Furthermore, we continue to add content to the site (e.g., case studies, blog posts). Another reason to come back. In the meantime, I encourage you to leave a comment below or offer feedback through the survey we’ve created.


Our Clients

We’re proud to partner with some of the best brands on the planet.

Relationships with our clients are built on a shared vision of success, trusted partnerships, collaboration, and a passion for making every idea, and every dollar, count. We measure our success by our clients’ success. It’s a simple formula. And considering we’ve experienced year-over-year growth for the past five years, our simple formula has proven to be a successful one as well.

View case studies of our clients’ success »

See our client roster »