Mar 15
Building an e-commerce brand
“SOespresso, the subsidiary brand of Soul Origin”
Introduction
SOespresso e-commerce platform provides coffee beans, tea and equipment all delivered to your door using Sherpa delivery service and Shopify. SOespresso was born from the demand of everyday loyal customers at Soul Origin. The simple question was, how do we get our great tasting coffee into people’s homes at a relatively low price?
Building the brand
Building a brand from an already established brand with a considerable reputation for selling some of Australia’s best coffee was a huge challenge. Logistics, back-end functionality, brand image and communications all had to be carefully laid out, analysed, tested and rolled out.
I used to think building a brand was a task only left for graphic designers. But the truth is branding is for marketers. Branding occurs at every touchpoint and every time a customer interacts or even thinks about your brand. I’ve found that working closely with a marketer in my experience as a designer will bring a much better result. As the old saying goes, you never get a second chance at a first impression. So having a marketer close by can help avoid the embarrassing roll-out of a poorly chosen image or message.
November 2021
“create a new concept “ is that sweet sound in my ear as a designer. So November 2021 was the start of creating the new concept for SOespresso. I went straight to work to see what I could pull from the Soul Origin brand. I wanted to find out how close the two could work together, how does SOespresso become its own brand while still connected to the mother ship?
Although Soul Origin customers can potentially turn into SOespresso customers, communicating the brand in-store was a considerable challenge. Taking away potential sales from the stores and driving people to purchase coffee beans online. We would need effective communication to store owners, as Soul Origin consists of 160+ multi-partner stores.
Soul Origin has a vast brand presence within the QSR world of Australia with countless monthly and bi-monthly campaigns. I didn’t want to dilute the Soul Origin brand with just another campaign feel roll-out; I wanted it to feel special with its very own brand colour, a sprinkle of hipster and an engaging b2c connection.
So first things first, asking myself questions:
- Who is SOespresso?
- Brand voice
- Target market & audience
- End goal
- Visual Brand Identity
- Brand Values
- Brand Personality
Who is your who?
The question above will always be valid and constantly evolve within the SOespresso brand. First, you must know who your ideal customer or client is in any business. It is often a transitional moment when business owners first discover their perfect client. Coming on board at Soul Origin with the Marketing Manager in 2020, we asked the same question who are Soul Origin customers? the marketing manager built customer profiles based on data from stores all over Australia, and we narrowed it down to just three “ill mention them at the end.”
Rather than take a wild guess, we took some data from Soul Origin. We took the time to determine who could be our target market and turn those people into SOespresso online buyers.
Building the Logo
Although we had decided on a logo, it was now time to flesh out the brand. Introducing a new brand colour to the Soul Origin branding had been on the radar for some time. So naturally, this was the perfect timing to find a colour to not only represent SOespresso but tie into a fresher, cleaner Soul Origin
The colour green made its way into the core brand colours for Soul Origin and SOespresso. SOespresso will be using predominately greens over the orange to bring a natural, earthy coffee farm feeling to the overall brand image.
Products and packaging
Inventory played a massive role in the SOespresso launch. What will be featured products, bundles for special events and free delivery? We had a core range of coffee products featured on the website; Coffee Pods and whole beans were some. It was essential to redesign the Pods packaging and single-origin coffee bean bags and bring them into the SOespresso brand. The coffee pods and single-origin coffee beans will be placed into a Soul Origin & SOespresso category to be sold in-store and online.
Building the hype!
EDM and communications were sent out to Soul Origin Loyalty customers using the loyalty database. Communications started a few weeks before launch, and the response was great, with a fantastic click rate.
