Focus on… 10 years of Happy Jackson by Pigment Productions

Happy’s birthday

The Happy Jackson team: (l-r) Martin Powderly, Heather Flynn, Steve Baker and Giles Andreae

Pigment’s creative director Martin Powderly talks about its Happy Jackson range, as it celebrates its 10th birthday

In 2012 we launched the Happy Jackson brand, hoping that we would add a shock of colour and immediacy to our established humour collections. Its meteoric success quickly opened many doors, brought a new breadth to our product offer and, in short, doubled the size of our business. All of a sudden we had a hit line with a super-bright palette and a simple, distinctive aesthetic that really shouted from the shelves. We discovered the huge hits of colour were not only energising and fun for customers and sales staff, they were also great retail theatre. A lot of shops put big displays of Happy Jackson merchandise in their windows simply because it made them look so alive, vibrant and exciting. The range advertised itself.

The creators Giles Andreae and Heather Flynn had employed the kind of language for the brand that you might use with your best friend... casual, easy-going, conversational, playful. Rather than being clever and ‘out there’, they really focused on trying to nail exactly what you might want to say for any specific occasion. In that way, the cards were very much conceived as greeting cards from the ground up.

As the Pigment creative and sales directors, Steve Baker and I won some kudos but, in truth, we just published the full range of captions without much interference. Aware that we were working with an experienced duo with a strong track record, we left Giles and Heather to their own devices.

I suppose our best contribution was in the decision to go big quickly and not to skimp on the quality of the publishing. The best materials and specialist finishing we brought to the products really elevated them into something very attractive and tasteful looking. Little details such as introducing a new matt board that held colour well and could take a deep emboss were relatively expensive, and remain so, but were well worth the indulgence.

All of this resulted in a kind of alchemy that gave the card range both enormous shelf appeal and a charm in its tone and voice that people really warmed to. Happy Jackson is a very easy purchase and send – both for male and female customers, and across a hugely wide age range and variety of captions. This is rare.

The originality and quality of a parallel gifting programme, much of it unashamedly self-referential, really added to the ubiquity of the brand. After five years of growth, we reworked the entire collection with new updated editorial and super fluoro 6 colour print, which immediately boosted sales.

Sometimes hits like this can be like shooting stars – a meteoric rise with an equally quick fall - but that hasn’t happened. Ten years on, the performance of Happy Jackson cards remains really high. It’s an evergreen line for many shoppers.

Giles says: “The range’s longevity is perhaps due not least to the fact that we think so rigorously about this one question with every design... ‘what would you really really want to say here?’ and then, ‘what is the most playful, interesting and conversational way of saying that?’ If you can marry that with an individual and eye-catching aesthetic, you’ve got a really strong greetings proposition.

“Creatively, the very rough division of work is that I do the editorial and Heather does the design work. Due to recent circumstances, we’ve had to do a lot of creative brainstorming over Zoom. After one session, my youngest son looked at me completely gobsmacked. ‘I had no idea how much work can go into saying happy birthday,’ he announced. ‘You two are weird!’’’

“We discovered the huge hits of colour were not only energising and fun for customers and sales staff, they were also great retail theatre’’

PIGMENT PRODUCTIONS 01423 520098 admin@pigmentproductions.com www.pigmentproductions.com