Be your own barista
One of the most interesting courses I took at Ithaca College was way out of my major: Branding and Marketing. Designed as a senior capstone class for marketing majors, the course was a semester-long study of one brand that needed improvement or a reinvention. My team chose General Foods International, an instant coffee company established in the ‘70s that has been historically been marketed at middle-aged women.
With the growing coffee culture dominating the market, we repositioned the brand to aim at a unisex market of coffee drinkers aged 18-35. From college students staying up late craming to emerging professionals who are too busy to wait in line at the coffee shop, our new idea for General Foods International, along with a new branding plan, was summed up by the tag line: Be your own barista.
We didn’t want to lose any of the rich history of café-style coffee flavors or the distinctive shape of the tin the coffee comes in, the brand desperately needs a complete overhaul to make the leap from Aunt Margi's dusty cupboard to the “mass class” appeal of a trendy-but-thrifty, highly mobile target audience.
The project included a new logo, new packaging, various internal and external collateral, print ads and TV spots, and an environment based on a coffee-making station for installation in nontraditional locations. Being college students ourselves, we also knew the power of free samples of individual-size packs.
Team: Carolyn Larson, Meagan Maxwell, Matt Quintanilla
Be your own barista
One of the most interesting courses I took at Ithaca College was way out of my major: Branding and Marketing. Designed as a senior capstone class for marketing majors, the course was a semester-long study of one brand that needed improvement or a reinvention. My team chose General Foods International, an instant coffee company established in the ‘70s that has been historically been marketed at middle-aged women.
With the growing coffee culture dominating the market, we repositioned the brand to aim at a unisex market of coffee drinkers aged 18-35. From college students staying up late craming to emerging professionals who are too busy to wait in line at the coffee shop, our new idea for General Foods International, along with a new branding plan, was summed up by the tag line: Be your own barista.
We didn’t want to lose any of the rich history of café-style coffee flavors or the distinctive shape of the tin the coffee comes in, the brand desperately needs a complete overhaul to make the leap from Aunt Margi's dusty cupboard to the “mass class” appeal of a trendy-but-thrifty, highly mobile target audience.
The project included a new logo, new packaging, various internal and external collateral, print ads and TV spots, and an environment based on a coffee-making station for installation in nontraditional locations. Being college students ourselves, we also knew the power of free samples of individual-size packs.
Team: Carolyn Larson, Meagan Maxwell, Matt Quintanilla
