Connecting the Dots / An Agency Blog

During the creative phase of any project we spend hours doing interviews with our clients, collecting reference and doing creative explorations that usually result in what I like to refer to as a total mess. Through the ungentle process of elimination, arguing, late-night epiphany and revision what we distil is still a dog’s breakfast of ideas. In the days following we start becoming more attracted to certain elements and as we continue to remove what isn’t working we start to find out what does. It’s an ugly process but by the process of elimination we’ve end up with a cohesive message that will eventually end up on a screen or device somewhere and hopefully in front of the audience for who it was intended.

As it turns out The Swiss Water Decaffeinated Coffee Company(SWDCC) have a pretty intensive process of their own. They’ve developed the cleanest and most health beneficial way to decaffeinate the finest coffee beans in the world and it tastes pretty good too. As a caffeine-powered advertising professional I was initially at a loss when this project landed on my desk but it didn’t take long to see that drinking the occasional cup of SWISS WATER® Process decaf had a host of benefits for consumers. Our idea was to speak to those benefits of drinking decaf in a series of ads leading up to the relaunch of their website. The ads were designed to inform while the website was designed to help grow the category by putting a friendly consumer face on the science. Our creative from typography, photography and choice of colour palette was designed to speak to SWDCC’s key demographic – health conscious women.

On set of the SWDCC photo shoot

The direction for the website and the associated campaigns was a reflection of a tremendous amount of trust from our client who believed us when we said that they needed to put a face on a trade-based technical service. When we launched the website we wanted to express the health benefits of decaf but we also wanted to talk about the simple joys of drinking coffee without completely abandoning science. Since it’s launch, the response has been overwhelmingly positive from the public and has helped position Swiss Water® Process as a leader in the science of decaffeination.

A little while ago we sat down to plan another year of advertising for SWDCC and as we began to make another untidy mess. While we were doing research and doing some casual surfing we noticed that Smashing Magazine had published a Showcase of Delicious Coffee Websites and SwissWater.com was among them. Being big fans of Smashing we were pretty excited and thankful that someone had noticed some of the care and attention we put into making the Swiss Water website and even picked up on some of the subtleties. Here’s what smashing said:

These scenes highlight coffee’s status as both a vehicle for social interaction and an occasion for brief solitude, and they form the largest part of the website, above the fold and in your face. The soft blues and whites minimize the distraction of the top links, search box and the like. Even the logo takes a back seat to the driving concept: coffee’s friendliness and warmth.

The lovely ladies of SWDCC

Thanks guys. We glad you liked it and if you’re ever in Vancouver the coffee is on us.

Dave Smith
Sr AD – ED

Similar Posts:

• Decaf To Go
• SWISS WATER® Process Campaign Named Favourite of 2009 by Direct Marketing
• Last Week’s Meme
• We’re Listed! Applied Arts Hands Out ’09/10 Interactive Awards
• The Brand Experience & Online Financial Reports