HALO Coffee
Following the adjournment of their rebranding agency contract, I was engaged by Halo Coffee to supersede as creative resource. For 7 years I've provided extensive creative design for the brand, including digital and offline marketing, packaging development and social media content.
HALO COFFEE PACKAGING DESIGN
Halo Coffee champion not only the eco-credentials of their sustainable coffee pod products but also the packaging they're sold in. Cartons are printed with vegetable-based inks on paper, card and bio-polymer plant-based materials that break down when recycled or home-composted.
Working with Halo Coffee over several years I've designed packaging for many permutations of the product – bags, tins, and cartons at various scales.
As Halo Coffee explore new markets the need to evolve their packaging persists. The introduction of Whole Beans alongside the brand's flagship home-compostable Coffee Pods coaxed new box designs, as did supplies for B2B customers - hotels and offices - where I designed a dual pod "taster" carton for guests.
RETAIL BEYOND THE WEBSITE
Halo Coffee is currently breaking into high-street retail and so I undertook yet more packaging designs, as well as a concept for a high-tolerance, free-standing card unit, measured and scaled to support 72 sleeves of Halo product.
I mark each blend for distinction using a unique icon graphic in the house style inspired by flavour notes and geography of origin, as well as their respective box inserts, seals, and information wraps.
Andi is incredibly savvy when it comes to the science of design; his focus is on the psychology of design and what it evokes, as much as it is about creating a beautiful end result.
Ayo IsinkayeDigital Marketing
Halo Coffee
HALO COFFEE EMAIL MARKETING
Halo Coffee make very effective use of email marketing, sending multiple communications a month, combining administrative, stewardship and transactional messaging.
Reinforcing the sustainability credentials of Halo's products forms a significant part of the comms strategy; educating subscribers on the versatility for disposing of their spent capsules is a recurring theme.
First-time customers are enrolled into the automated welcome programme of communications designed to properly introduce the brand and its coffee blends
Top-up and prompt emails also make up parts of the automated funnel to boost retention and broaden brand loyalty.
Halo celebrates its sterling eco credentials and commitment to sustainability through blog content on environmentally friendly industry practices. This is routinely translated into email comms.
Halo Coffee has a hard line on the use of plastics. Designing emails that reiterate this element of the brand requires drama in the storytelling.
I'm pleased that the bespoke email designs and marketing templates I've designed and coded for the client over the years have amassed in volume.
Upselling customers to other products in the Halo stable is a common theme in the messaging.
Rigorous campaigning across all digital marketing touchpoints occurs when a new blend of coffee joins the Halo portfolio, showcasing the origin and flavour profile.
Customers who subscribe are communicated to regularly with prompts and guides to ensure they're getting the most of their coffee deliveries.
Featured news and events are common focuses where Halo will hold influence, as are talks by the founders and showcases at festivals.
Designing, coding and testing emails for Halo Coffee has resulted in hundreds of hours of work, bringing the best of the brand and its mission to the coffee community. A true labour of love.
HALO COFFEE SOCIAL MEDIA
The social media output of Halo Coffee is essential in defining the brand's identity and aims. A primary remit as creative lead at the brand is to produce photographic content that entices customers, supports the brand ethos and reflects the house style.
Each month the focus shifts.
Recently a huge drive has been on product and how it has adapted. New pod designs, new vessel designs, new packaging designs and so on. Adequately demonstrating the development of product is instrumental in conveying the benefits of subscribing.
Composition is crucial - the imagery I shoot needs to adapt to fit a variety of display contexts, from the website, to email, to social media.
Photography briefs vary from open-ended “lifestyle” shoots, to specific criteria for product unboxing and showcase, campaigns and sales, and seasonal content.
Food and table settings obviously feature heavily. Planning and staging my shoots, as well as procuring props and back-drops, ensure quality results each month.
I scale and format my imagery for optimal use on social media, particularly appeasing Instagram's new portrait grid convention, story-sized assets and also square tiles for Facebook.
Incentivising gifting - either by direct product purchases or through gift certificates - is a major focus for Halo Coffee's typical seasonal sales activity. Alluring imagery is obviously a major factor in securing these sales on social media.
Photography has become a true staple in the brand's marketing strategy and it's afforded me significant opportunity to explore creative solutions in way few other projects require.
THE HALO COFFEE EXPERIMENT
The Halo Experiment was an ambitious campaign depicting the decomposition rates of various market-leading coffee pods of different material constructs through timelapse video.
I was tasked with designing the container within which the experiment would take place for fabrication.
I designed a glass-walled composting environment with lighting and condensation mitigation in mind. An organic top layer would emphasise the passage of time through movements exaggerated by the timelapse capture.
I also produced the promotional artwork for the experiment, as well as consulted on the final video edit.
Watch the final video.
HALO COFFEE BRAND ILLUSTRATION
Extending my development of iconography within the brand kit, I introduced a suite of illustrated assets. Simple, clean, confident linework in a limited colour palette, predominantly used on the website for blog posts, instructional guides and wayfinding.
HALO COFFEE AFFILIATE AND PPC MARKETING DESIGN
Halo Coffee employed a rigorous digital advertising strategy that during its currency would bring a 23% uplift in traffic arriving at the website. I developed the artwork for all the assets used in this campaigning.
The assets were A/B tested, targeting different swathes of audiences, and made their way across ad distribution networks and social media.
HALO COFFEE WEBSITE DESIGN
A significant undertaking that I thoroughly enjoyed was redesigning the Halo Coffee website.
The navigation menu was rebuilt to support a more practical hierarchy of site sections, which also adequately showcased the products in a easy-to-scan format.
I redesigned the product pages to declutter the purchasing controls whilst keeping them comprehensive and intuitive to use, ensuring they remain above the fold.
I also refined the website's subscription funnel to eliminate ambiguity. Illustrated iconography, the introduction of a Summary module and improved layout demonstrate the procedural steps to build a subscription package more intuitively.
