Sugar And Spun
Turning a Seasonal Treat Into an Everyday Luxury
BACKGROUND
Cotton candy inherently reminds of us childhood. It's a global treat traditionally enjoyed at carnivals, sporting events and fairs. Sugar And Spun is looking to change all of that.
Sugar And Spun creates artisanal cotton candy made with all natural ingredients with bolder, more adult flavors.
Sugar And Spun came to Plinth to evolve their brand and build a website that represented the shift in cotton candy they were creating.
OBJECTIVES
- Grow business through branding
- Communicate flavors
- Cater to their core audience
- Create an E-commerce website
STRATEGY
- Cater to their feminine clientle with new a design language
- Use paper craft to convey the various flavors
- Utilize props to tell stories
- Develop a shopping cart
FLAVORS THAT STOOD OUT WITH BRANDING THAT MADE THEM BLEND IN
Original Sugar and Spun Logo
Sugar And Spun's current branding contained many elements common in cotton candy brands. It featured shades of pink and blue with up close photography of the product. Their logo was a cone with the "&" placed inside the cotton candy graphic.
At a quick glance, people thought the company name was "Sugar Spun" and the graphic was sometimes mistaken for an ice cream cone. When it wasn't mistaken for ice cream, the logo was easily lost amongst the myriad of cotton candy brands featuring the classic symbol.
Sugar And Spun was taking cotton candy into adventurous new directions with flavors like Pumpkin Cheesecake and Matcha Green Latté.
The new direction needed to be as bold as the company was, stand out on the shelves, and most of all, appeal to their core customer...women.
THE NEW BLACK
Most cotton candy branding uses bright pastels off a white background but we wanted to go a different route.
A NEW LOGOTYPE
We decided to do away with the cone logo and went with a logotype treatment instead. The iconic cone symbol would be used as more of an accessory rather than part of the company logo. The "&" symbol was dropped to help ease the confusion some customers may have when searching for the website or recognizing the brand on social media. The new logotype features a typeface that is a modern minimalist take off of some classic carnival fonts. Finally, we put the "AND" on a bias to imply movement.
Building an E-commerce Website that Communicates Fun, Bold Flavors that Look Like...uMM...Cotton?
To put it simply, all natural organic cotton candy isn't much to look at. Without artificial colors, the cotton candy loses the brightness of classic cotton candy. The gourmet flavored toppings don't help to make the product look more appealing or communicate the artisanal flavors that lie behind each bite.
Our challenge was to create an e-commerce enabled website that can visually communicated Sugar And Spun's unique flavors while catering to their mostly female clientele. What was our solution?
We wanted to showcase the flavors visually rather than just listing off the ingredients. Since many of the Sugar And Spun's female clientele were into DIY / ETSY culture, we decide to go with a paper craft look and add a Wes Anderson-ish spin to give the website some quirkiness and fun. We used a mix of props and real ingredients to create a visual language with patterns to describe their unique flavors.
USING PROPS TO TELL A STORY
We continued the paper craft theme throughout each section by creating whimsical scenes using props and cotton candy. The new black color base allows the colors and scenes to really pop.
After its launch, the new website is performing above the industry standard for e-commerce. Typical conversion rates hover around 1-2% where the new SugarAndSpun.com is currently at a 5% conversion rate.
good concepts have the ability to become great brands when strategy and design unlock it's potential.
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