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THE INDEPENDENT STUDIO PRESENTS:
THE MANGO BOX. WHO ARE WE? A LITTLE INTRO.
THE INDEPENDENT STUDIO BEGAN WITH A SINGLE THOUGHT OF CHANGING THE DINING LANDSCAPE AND TRANSFORMING THE WAY PEOPLE EXPERIENCE FOOD,LEADING UP TO THE CREATION OF 5 BRANDS EACH WITH A UNIQUE STORY.
THE INDEPENDENT STUDIO HAS RAPIDLY GROWN INTO A FULLY FLEDGED CREATIVE STUDIO OFFERING ITS SERVICES TO DEVELOP CREATIVE STRATEGIES FOR COMMERCIAL BRANDS AND GOVERNMENTAL ENTITIES TO DELIVER EMOTIONALLY COMPELLING EXPERIENCES AROUND FOOD.
OUR SERVICES GRAPHIC DESIGN AND BRANDING We offer graphic design solutions through creative branding and digital graphics.
CREATIVE STRATEGIES
We establish your marketing messages and transform them into creative campaigns and business models.
EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN
We create environments with a focus placed on the quality of the user experience and culturally relevant solutions.
CONTENT CREATION
Did it really happen if it wasn’t documented? Our team of photographers, videographers, graphic designers and stylists have got you covered.
LETS GET INTO THE GOOD STUFF.
THE CREATIVE STRATEGY THE CHALLENGE As kids, every summer we would receive mango boxes from our friends and family - a prominent tradition in the UAE to enjoy the mango season. We worry that it will fade away with time.
THE BRAINWAVE To bring back that tradition. It’s not just about mangoes, it’s about the middle-eastern hospitality that was the essence of the tradition. You know it’s summer when you receive a mango box!
THE REVOLUTION We built a giant mango box. We sent out mango boxes with personalized messages as invites. We created a decadent mango based dessert menu.
MAKING IT EXTRAORDINARY Let me take you on that journey. Follow me.
GRAPHIC DESIGN & BRANDING In order to develop a campaign, we first establish the idendity of the campaign and the general look and feel of our message. This serves as a starting point and as the foundation of the campaign.
We then brainstormed ideas on what could be the signature element of the campaign that is not a food product. We decided on a tie dye shirt, along with an invite that was an actual mango box with this shirt, mangoes and tie dye material. We branded the shirts, the shirt tags and even the tie dye bottle.
EXPERIENTIAL DESIGN OUR FAVORITE PART.
We combine our love of design with our marketing knowledge to create experiences that people will fall in love with. We take every step of the experience into consideration, beginning from the campaign teasers, to the invites and ending with the visit. In this phase, we covered four major steps. We started with subliminal advertising, moved on to creating a story line and then creating a personalized experience, as well as an art-like experience.
STEP 1: SUBLIMINAL ADVERTISING Were all about going big. But to get there, you gotta start small. Building excitement and anticipation is a process. We are constantly bombared with all kinds of billboards and social media posts trying to sell us something. Were used to that and a standard advertisement does not bypass our differential threshold anymore. The chances of our brain registering it conciously and taking direct action are very low. But what if thats not a bad thing? What if we can subconcsiouly create a craving without giving the viewer direct orders on what to do? We wanted to create a subconcious craving towards mangoes. Just get people to start thinking about mangoes. Here is what we did.
We put these stickers on pavements all around Dubai. Its as innocent as «This would be a cool spot for a mango tree.» A sticker that just makes you think of mango trees. No direct order, no marketing message behind it. This engaged by-passers subconcsiouly and created a thought and a craving for mangoes. This sticker generated a subconcious craving, which primes the viewers minds for our next announcements. The next time they see anything mango related, their brain is more likely to pick it up and register it.
STEP 2: CREATING A STORY LINE. We love stories. I dont remember what I ate as a child. Do you? Food is good, but not that good. What I do remember though is, my mothers bed time stories, the plot of Cinderella and how Pokemon episodes always ended the same way. We remember stories. Thats what sticks with us. We divided our story into three phases.
PHASE 1: SALT IS ON THE HUNT TO FIND YOU THE PERFECT MANGOES. GONE HUNTING. We went on a hunt to find the perfect mangoes. The purpose of this -operations wise- is research & developement for the product. Creative wise, this is the perfect time to start teasing your audience and building that craving. Teasing your audience is a critical element in building buzz and anticipation around your campaign that lasts long. When we use teasers in our campaigns, we are relying on the The Zeigarnik Effect. The essence of The Zeigarnik Effect is “incompleteness”. When things are left incomplete, we feel uncomfortable and our attention remains drawn to it until we can find some kind of resolution. This excess attention that our minds exert, results in the brain strengthening that memory. The first part of our story started with sending our team to mango farms and markets in the UAE, KSA and India. We asked our followers for suggestions on where to go and where they believe the best mangoes are located are. We did not tell them why we were asking or release any statements about us working on a mango softie. Just spoke about mangoes and mango farms. We showed footage of us traveling and exploring these cities and farms. We took shots of fresh and mouth-watering mangoes being cut in the coolest ways in mango markets.
THE SUMMER MISSION
Teasing is all about taking a step back from the main product. So if we take a step back from our Mango Softie, we would land on mangoes themselves. But we thought, even that needs a teaser. Another step back. We land on the adventure and the trips that we took to even reach those mangoes. The first teasers consisted of us traveling, and teasing our followers with what they think we were up to and what were looking for. We reffered to it as The Summer Mission, and we asked our followers to guess what what this mission was and what was in the boxes. We then revealed that we were on a mango hunt and asked for suggestions. This increased user interaction and even appealed to users patriotic sides, in which people felt very strongly about reccomending their countrys mangoes. By doing so, an emotional connection was built with the campaign already.
An important part of our story was highlighting the human element of the mango industry. We interviewed mango farmers, owners and sellers, got to know their stories and shared these stories with our followers.
PHASE 2: YOU KNOW ITS SUMMER WHEN YOU RECEIVE A MANGO BOX. WE GOT THE MANGOES. NOW WHAT? An important element of our campaign revolved around middle-eastern hospitality. The mango box is the symbol of this hospitality, in which every summer, friends and family would send each other mango boxes to celebrate the summer and mango season. To kickstart this symbolism, our invites were mango boxes. We wanted our invites to reflect the act of sending mango boxes to loved ones. Basically,SALT celebrating summer and sending their family and friends mango boxes. The invites included mangoes, a handwritten postcard from India, a SALT Mango shirt, along with Tie Dye power and Tie Dye instructions. The invite still did not clarify what exactly we were inviting them to, or what product we were offering- just an invite to «find the perfect mango box» In this phase, our stories were reposts of these invites and it added to the effect of teasing our followers and raised the following questions in their mind: How can I get an invite? What is the invite for?
PHASE 3: YOU CALL IT SUMMER. WE CALL IT MANGO SEASON. WERE ALL ABOUT ENJOYING THE LITTLE THINGS. BUT NOT ALWAYS. In this phase, we finally launched our Mango Softie. The question is where.
In a giant mango box, obviously. We built a pop up to imitate entering a mango box, where we served fresh mangoes along with our ice cream to our guests. This was the last phase in our story and the language that we used was crucial to satisfy the momentum and curiousity we generated with our teasers and overall campaign. We centered it around being the ultimate summer spot. In our earlier phases, we hinted at the vibe of summer as a form of priming. Here, we wanted to fully build an immediate connection between summer & our mango softie in our customers minds. In order to do this, we used classical conditioning and constantly paired the idea of «summer» with our pop up. When going up the stairs that lead you to the mango box, our wayfinding language consisted of «This way to summer». When ordering at the bar, there was a sign that asked «Have you tasted summer yet?» and finally at the exit we had a sign on top of our trash cans that asked «How was your summer?» and based on your experience you throw your trash in the labeled cans. Our staff were also wearing shirts that had «Have you tasted summer yet?» on the back. We also had a huge signage that bluntly stated «SUMMER». But its also about the small things too. The buzzers that customers were given while waiting also had «Have you tasted summer yet?»Although small, customers minds will pick up this message subconciously as they are waiting. This constant pairing between summer and our pop up has a long term benefit, in which customers are going to associate summer with our cold Mango Softie in the future.
STEP 3: CREATING PERSONALIZED EXPERIENCES I know your magic word. Whats the one word that gurantees you turning around and looking at me, regardless of what youre busy with? Your name. Thats the power of personalization. We wanted every step of the experience to be personalized, from the moment you received your invite, to walking out of the store with a Mango Softie. We started with personalized invites- every invite was specifically tailored to each person. Each package included the invitees name three times. The shirt we placed had to be their respective size and included a Mango shaped name tag «This mango tee belongs to ____» . We also included children shirts if they had any children and added their names to the t-shirt tag.
An important element we wanted to higlight was that our mangoes were fresh Alphonso mangoes straight from India, so we added a personalized postcard from India. This postcard had the general message of our campaign and the details of the event- but we also added a personal message to each invitee that was relevant to them. For instance, we made it relevant to their families, or what they were interested in or what their job was. In the pictures above, Rafi works at a start-up accelerator, Matt is a sneaker-head and Rania is a working mom with two children. After placing everything in the box, we closed it up, tied it and wrote their names on the box, as well as adding «From: Mumbai» to give a feel that this package was from India. We also wanted guests also enjoy a personalized experience when they visit us. We came up with a deck of truth cards and a deck of dare cards. We then asked them to pick either truth or dare. TRUTH. They then picked one DARE. from the deck and had to answer the truth card or act out the dare. This ensured that everyone left with a different story and experience. Best part about all this? Strangers got compliments.
STEP 4: CREATING ARTISTIC EXPERIENCES
We did not want this to be a food pop-up. Although the core product was a Mango Softie, we wanted to build an artistic experience around it and for that to be remembered. In a world that revolves around social media, we had to design the picture perfect place- through that you get thousands of free advertising through guests. Every angle and step of The Mango Box was calculated and made sure it would be a picture-worthy moment. Picking the location was also crucial to the overall image of the campaign being artistic: which is why we picked DIFC and then Manarat Al Saadiyat Art Gallery in Abu Dhabi for an elevated experience.
It started with our way-finding. The stairs that lead to the area were made yellow with signage that said «This way to summer». We also added mini mangoes to the trees that lead to The Mango Box.
As for the design of the box, we designed the box to be completely monotonous from the outside and inside. We even had someone to serve the mangoes in the same shade of yellow. On the outside of the box we added «100% artificial» as a play on words for the giant fiber glass mangoes in our Mango Box. These mangoes were great photo props as well and had a lot of guests getting creative with the way they captured their moments. We also designed a tie dye station on the other side of the box and had neon signage of «enjoy the little things» on the facade.
We also used screens and mirrors to create a gallery experience. The screen played clips from our trips to Mango farms and the mirrors were an obvious place where people would take pictures of their reflection- so we added some text to make it an iconic mirror that people can recognize and know this was at the Mango Box.We added «Hey good lookin» to one of the mirrors, as well as the SALT and GRIND menu to the other mirror.
CONTENT CREATION To document this campaign and highlight how big were going, it was crucial for us to maintain its online presence on our social media. Our photographers and filmographers spent their days in the event capturing the space, the people and the product. We broke our Instagram feed and turned it into completely yellow and used all the language that we were pushing through in the event itself so that it resonates online as well. Through out this campaign we hit 200k followers and increased by around 10k followers.
THE END.
(Not really, stay tuned for the finale.)