On the walk back to his hotel Dave marvels not so much about how today's exercises will translate into concepts and strategic designs but rather how much all this is costing Deskey.
III. Two Weeks Later at Deskey: King Dave, Renaissance Dave, and Other Concepts
Same conference room. Same cast of characters. No group hug.
"Let's get rolling," says Ben Stallard, as Dave is handed a thick sheaf of pages titled "Build A Brand in a Day: Dave's Gourmet/June 28, 2006." The pages will momentarily appear on a wall screen as PowerPoint slides.
Deskey had finished this work just the night before, late. The makeover of Dave's branded house got squeezed into three weeks jammed with projects: a redesign of a diaper package, a branding video for a bank, print ads for an oral care brand. Nonetheless, everyone managed to gather during this period for a lunchtime research sampling of Dave's products--and yes, somebody sneaked a couple of drops of Dave's Insanity Sauce onto the plate of one taster who chose a poor time to visit the restroom. Senior production artist Brent Naughton was one of several people on the project who roamed the aisles of Cincinnati-area gourmet food stores checking out Dave's competition and looking for what Deskey refers to as "white space," untapped market opportunities.
Though an art school graduate whose illustration credits include a children's book and a western novel, Naughton rarely sits in with clients or participates in brainstorming and design sessions, save to counsel what can and cannot be realized from a production standpoint. He normally doesn't join a project until much later, perhaps adapting a design concept to a bigger box or maybe a can. In his three years at Deskey, he'd never seen a client presented with a choice of design concepts. But today, because of the passion project, he would. And three of the surviving concepts--Renaissance Dave, one dubbed The Eisenhower Years, and a third called Biological Classifications of Good Taste--have his fingerprints all over them.
"To us, your Insanity Sauce is your brand's soul," begins Matusak as a close-up of Dave's pride and joy appears on the wall screen. "It's your alpha. Your heritage. It's where you started…While the hot sauce touches a core consumer base that is probably male and has younger male insights, they're not always the prime shopper, so we want to take a step back and see how we can take that essence and grow it to reach more consumers. We're looking to identify opportunities for products with a higher turn rate than every three years. So we created The Branded House of Dave."
She explains that the strategy Deskey will lay out will serve as a road map to this branded house. Then she presents Dave with a compass--Dave's Gourmet Onion. The final version looks like this: In the center, limning Overall Equity, appear the words Insatiable Curiosity. Representing Strategic Equity and Positioning: What If? The Brand Character ring holds these adjectives: True, Intriguing, Courageous, Alive.
"That looks like a straightforward onion," says Neary, who has taken the floor to present the creative concepts. "But you will see that we haven't lost the personality of what you're all about."
Neary reads the concept for a brand approach titled Not Your Ordinary Dave. "Don't let the face fool you. This is no ordinary man. Beneath this calm veneer of receding normalcy lies a raging cauldron of delectable glee. For too long the world of gourmet food has been the stuff that stuffy is made of. Well, no more! There is a courageous new face in the world of gourmet."
The next slide displays a logo, with Dave's face at its center--but with a twist. "The main icon is you," Neary explains, "but as you can see in some of the SKUs, it's all about a mouthful of flavor." Various package mockups depict Dave's mouth as a chili pepper, a ripe red tomato, and a gingerbread man. To push this new brand, Deskey suggests a take-it-to-the-streets campaign in "an ice cream truck with attitude." On the top, rotating to music, would be Dave's iconic head. On the doors, flavor icons for the various products consumers would get to sample. On the side: "Kicking the $#@* Out of Bland."
Next comes a Superhero concept: Dave attacks bland and boring food. The flesh and blood Dave snickers at the images of his alter ego in a chef's hat punching out an heirloom tomato and ripping apart a honey mustard pretzel as if it were a phone book.
The Eisenhower Years presents a retro look. Again, Dave is the face of gourmet--this time there's a photographic version of Dave's face, his forehead billboarding a slogan: Certified insanely flavorful.
Then King Dave. This one's all about "in-your-face flavor, want a piece of me?" attitude, says Neary. The premise: "What if gourmet had bravado?" Dave's Cold Cock Ketchup could hit the market. So could Dave's Flavor Shots, with the tag line: "I'm a pimp, and flavor better have my money."
Renaissance Dave, which Naughton sired by drawing a gingerbread man on the knee of a seated, Shakespeare-like character, offers a simultaneously sophisticated and silly look. "It's just so twisted and weird," says Neary. "The idea is these vegetables and ingredients sitting on your lap--maybe doing funny things. A chili pepper on fire. Maybe a marionette plays with a tomato. The tag line on it is: "Eat every meal like it could be your last." With this concept, Dave could become an official sponsor of various Renaissance festivals.
Last comes Biological Classifications of Good Taste. This concept, which originated with Naughton's illustrations and is referred to in shorthand as "the white label," is similar at first glance to Dave's current pasta sauce labels. The look communicates gourmet. Central to each label is an illustration of its key ingredient--a huge tomato or chili pepper or Granny Smith apple--its gigantic size evoked by drawings of little people interacting with them. The message: giant flavor.
