Display & Design Ideas - June 2009 - (Page 20)

20 | Design Snapshot Photos: Jim Westphalen Peace, love and ice cream Ben & Jerry’s unveils a global store uniﬁcation project By Becky Ebenkamp hether a person’s palate leans more toward Cherry Garcia or Stephen Colbert’s Americone Dream, Ben & Jerry’s gets the majority of its sales from prepacked pints of its ice cream picked up in grocery stores and other retail outlets. Not that its parlors are a drip in the bucket. With 500 franchised stores—250 in the United States—the Unilever brand (with the Yasgur’s-farm-raised, feel-good, do-good hippie vibe) needed to revisit its roots so its cones wouldn’t get short shrift. “The overarching mission is to create one brand voice,” says Tre Musco, CEO and chief creative ofﬁcer of Tesser, a San Francisco-based brand design ﬁrm that specializes in restaurant revamps. “The brand voice for the packaged goods was very tight, but the stores’ wasn’t as well managed [because] managers around the world were looking after their version of the brand.” Essentially, the redesign boiled down to simplifying, since stores were visually loud and all over the style spectrum. The brand’s hues were narrowed down to sky blue, white and grass green—the wall swatches of new wave neon were swapped out for earthier tones. Cow cutouts and fun ﬁxtures help create a “Summer of Love meets dairy farm” feel. The ampersand in the logo was given a touch of tie-dye. Musco says the concept was designed with young adults in mind, as they spend more time in stores and relate to the brand’s message more than families with kids do. Low lounge seating and sofa settees allow laptop access, and larger stores have a community table. The new, streamlined Ben & Jerry’s style incorporates natural materials to create the uniﬁed funky farm vibe at its Burlington, Vt., ﬂagship, which has already been rolled out to a handful of other new stores. To stay true to Ben & Jerry’s brand positioning, Tesser sought out repurposed materials for quirky ﬁxtures, such as the milk crate and bottle light ﬁxture/chandelier, the VW bus plasma screen and the “beaded curtain” made of ice cream pint lids. By seeking out and using such things as postrecycled plastic, environmentally safe glue and replenishable wood species, the project jives with the company’s social mission. The brand’s next challenge will be scaling costs back in order to remodel all 500 stores with its new design. —Becky Ebenkamp is a senior editor for Brandweek. W | June 2009 www.ddimagazine.com http://www.ddimagazine.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Display & Design Ideas - June 2009

Display & Design Ideas - June 2009
Contents
From the Editor
Newsworthy
Consumer Insights
Quick Tips
Greentailing
Editor’s Choice
Design Snapshot
Marketing & Branding Super Section
Channel Focus: Cosmetics/Beauty
Liz Claiborne
Shopper Insights
Logos: Then & Now
Starbucks
POP Products
T&T
Right Light
Product Spotlight
Calendar
Advertisers
Classifieds
Think Tank

Display & Design Ideas - June 2009