Brand Chain Top Innovators: AR With NASCAR, Custom Kicks, Top-Notch Merch and More
Brand Chain’s Top Innovators series is back for a second year, and the hits keep coming! Catch a preview of our five winners here, and be sure to flip through the full issue online here.
WisckAR Creates a Unique Experience for NASCAR Fans
A new NASCAR racing team, Floyd Mayweather’s Money Team, wanted to stand out from the competition and try something new with their driver cards. Dean Hunt, owner of WisckAR, knew exactly how to make the printed pieces pop.
NASCAR fans received printed race cards that featured videos of the Money Team, which came to life with Hunt’s augmented reality (AR) platform — and views only increased after the race.
“We really wanted longevity after the race, for people to still interact with it,” Hunt explains. “You're building up that audience. People like to see what's next.”
Now, WisckAR and the Money Team are in their second season of working together, brainstorming new ways to create unique AR experiences for their fans.
Brand Fuel and Chameleon Set the Gold Standard in Unboxing
The teams at Brand Fuel and Chameleon Like had a unique opportunity to partner with the American Cancer Society (ACS) as the nonprofit rolled out an ecommerce store to support fundraising efforts, plus an entirely new look and feel for their brand.
Brand Fuel and Chameleon created custom kits for the ACS board of directors, volunteers and staff, showcasing merch available in the new store as well as core elements of the rebrand, making for the perfect unboxing experience.
ACS’s rebrand conveyed that cancer is a journey with hope along the way. The kit reflected this spirit through a bright, multi-color box and carefully selected products, including a JBL speaker from Hirsch, a Johnnie-O quarter-zip, a Nike t-shirt from SanMar, Sun Bum sunscreen from Hirsch, and a stainless water bottle with NFC chip from Spector & Co.
“The unboxing itself was a journey,” Pierre Martichoux, CEO and president of Chameleon Like, says of the design choice. “Packaging is a great way to send a message when you can’t put it on the products inside.”
SOLV Puts Their Best Foot Forward
“How can we get a foot in the door?” It’s the age-old question for marketing pros.
For Matt McLaughlin, creative designer at SOLV, the answer became literal after his colleagues returned from a conference with shoes from custom apparel company Sock 101.
“Anybody can reach out to a prospect and give them a flyer. Flyers have their purpose, but they’re not fun,” McLaughlin says. He mulled over the shoes — and then, the Foot in the Door campaign was born.
SOLV partnered with Sock 101 to create thoughtfully designed kicks, customized to each prospect’s brand and delivered in a shoebox with SOLV brand colors and bold typeface that read, “We would love to get our foot in the door.”
Among the list of prospects was Van Henion Brewing, a Bend, Oregon-based brewery. They received a slip on shoe — perfect for being on their feet all day — with a color scheme that matched the brewery taproom’s intricate forest green wallpaper.
“’Foot in the Door’ was super impressive, from the packaging to the shoe itself. It was an innovative design, and had a lot of interesting features,” Dana Henion, brewery co-owner, says. “I think it's a very unique marketing tool.”
Metcom Uses Thermal Printing to Help Increase Efficiency
Tom Warnez, president and CEO of Metcom, has sold labels to food service companies for years. When the largest food wholesaler in Cleveland needed help, Metcom heeded the call.
The wholesaler was using laser printing to put labels on fruits and vegetables. They would print out page after page of 160 circular labels (shown below), then peel and apply to the produce. It was time-consuming, expensive and unclear if the adhesive was food-grade.
Warnez helped the company pivot to thermal printing using existing equipment, and designed a new label set that could produce nearly 29,000 labels at a time. He also partnered with Brian Buckley at National Printing Converters to ensure the new adhesive was FDA-compliant.
“If you include toner in the end cost of time, they’ve saved probably $5,000 a month,” Warnez says. “In just the course of eight months since they started using this system, they've already reordered twice.”
BrandCo Is Thinking of You
Sometimes, receiving a simple “thinking of you” card is more powerful than one that’s expected.
This is the same line of thinking behind BrandCo’s Thinking of You (TOY) campaign.
The creative branding agency, based in California and Tennessee, strives to stay proactive. In working with suppliers, they often receive spec samples. Rather than pass them to the customer directly, the team created a campaign backed by strategy and intention.
A typical TOY kit includes three to five thoughtfully selected specs with the customer’s logo, a custom postcard, folder and presentation flyers. The print pieces double as promotion for BrandCo’s design, marketing and print capabilities.
The goal of each TOY campaign is to get orders, but sometimes it’s all about the long game.
“We'll get people who will reach out and say, ‘Hey, you sent us this phone stand last year and we have an opportunity that would be perfect for this,’” Brandon Kennedy, BrandCo CEO says. “You never know how the TOY campaign is going to be used or when something will be ordered, but it keeps us top of mind.”
By Kristin Frankiewicz