Strongbow has been on a journey to grow to be “the world’s most inclusive cider model” by reorienting its strategy to driving accessibility “from the top to the start” of the method, says the model’s advertising and marketing director.
Whereas it could beforehand have been seen as a “darkish, masculine model”, Rachel Holms, advertising and marketing director at mum or dad firm Heineken, tells Advertising Week this can be a notion it’s trying to change.
Strongbow has been on a journey to grow to be “the world’s most inclusive cider model” by reorienting its strategy to driving accessibility “from the top to the start” of the method, says the model’s advertising and marketing director.
Whereas it could beforehand have been seen as a “darkish, masculine model”, Rachel Holms, advertising and marketing director at mum or dad firm Heineken, tells Advertising Week this can be a notion it’s trying to change.
The model has been round for 60-plus years, and was initially conceived as a “lager substitute”, so it “adopted lager cues quite than cider cues”, she says.
However Strongbow has additionally been a “popularist” model, one that’s not “fussy” and goals to attraction to everybody. Due to this fact, it is smart for the model “to be accessible to all people”.
“We’re actually proud to signify British tradition in all its guises,” Holms says.
The model has partnered with inclusive company Purple Goat with that purpose, and the concept of taking inclusivity from a “bolt-on” to integral via all of the model’s processes.
Initially of its journey to drive inclusivity and accessibility, the Strongbow crew was not essentially well-versed in how the model would possibly obtain this, says Holms.
“We simply stated, ‘We’re full novices at this. We don’t know the appropriate phrases to say. We don’t know the appropriate issues to do’,” she remembers.
Manufacturers usually wrestle to know how one can signify their disabled prospects and “to actually know what they need, what they want, and the way they need it to be communicated to them”, says Dom Hyams, world shopper director at Purple Goat.
Whereas it is vital for manufacturers to signify disabled folks with authenticity and “not make assumptions on behalf of the group”, the worry of getting began can typically maintain manufacturers again from doing something in any respect, he says.
“Nobody’s excellent, and all manufacturers are on a journey, and it’s far more about the way you iterate and develop over time,” he says.
Not all in regards to the shiny advert
Driving inclusivity and accessibility via a model is about extra than simply producing an advert with some illustration, it’s about reinforcing that ethos at each stage. For Hyams, the place to begin must be chatting with the communities you’re aiming to signify.
“When you converse to communities and actually perceive their needs and wishes, then you can begin to drive actually significant work throughout each contact level, and never simply what we see in a giant, shiny, shiny advert,” Hyams says.
A method Strongbow has performed that is by that includes NaviLens QR codes on its cans, that are high-contrast, smartphone-readable markers designed to assist blind and partially-sighted folks discover merchandise and talk key info equivalent to components and alcohol content material.
It’s additionally serving to take away limitations to disabled shoppers accessing pubs; for instance, by introducing ramps into venues. Hyams factors out that, for a number one cider model like Strongbow, guaranteeing pubs will be accessed by everybody isn’t only a step in the direction of driving inclusivity; it is smart from a model perspective as it’ll carry extra potential shoppers of the model into venues.
Being inclusive on a shiny advert is admittedly essential, as a result of that’s the place you hit your mass viewers, in order that’s what folks see.
Sophie Helfferich, Strongbow
Whereas Strongbow is in search of to take its accessible and inclusive ethos past visuals, assistant advertising and marketing supervisor on the model, Sophie Helfferich, notes that the significance of illustration shouldn’t be underestimated.
“Being inclusive on a shiny advert is admittedly essential, as a result of that’s the place you hit your mass viewers, in order that’s what folks see,” she says. “Having disabled folks in our adverts, we wish that to be intrinsically linked with Strongbow.”
Oftentimes, inclusivity and accessibility will be an afterthought for manufacturers. Having initially been on this place, whether or not it’s pack designs or campaigns, Strongbow now considers inclusivity from the very first step of the method.
“We flipped it,” Holms says. “We thought accessibility first, design second. So, we have been by no means attempting to retrofit accessibility into our advertising and marketing plans; it was on the forefront of every part that we did, and that was a sport changer.”
As a lot because it’s been a journey for the model crew, it’s additionally been a journey that Strongbow has been on with its different businesses, she says, with Purple Goat consulting with the model’s artistic company from the outset, for instance.
“It’s shifted from the bolt-on on the finish to proper firstly,” Holms provides.
