Challenge:​​ Many of ezCater’s prospects are happy (enough) ordering food for meetings and work events directly from restaurants. It’s a habit, and it’s good enough. They are also skeptical of third parties, having experienced late food, incomplete orders, and/or high fees via consumer platforms. We need to convince them that ezCater is the better way to order food for work.

Solution: Created performance video spots that drive action and increase brand recognition by incorporating ownable business cues – sticky notes and calendar notifications. The spots are from the perspective of the order-er, presenting use cases they’re familiar with and that the platform was created for – ordering food for a group, with specific dietary needs and taste preferences, all within a tight per person budget – reinforcing that ezCater understands the challenges of ordering food for work and was developed to meet them.

Agency: Sandwich
Director: Cooper Farrel
Producer: Elena Woodhead

Challenge: Create a brand identity that better reflects the company and its place in the industry. As the company evolves, so should the brand, to accurately represent the maturity and endurance of the company and its position as the industry leader - a visual system for food for work vs business catering.

Solution: Bright, fresh, and vibrant, the new brand identity reflects a consistent visual style that cuts through and shines across media channels and creative executions. Powered by the prominent use of bold colors, engaging lifestyle photography, and a more pronounced treatment of the logo, the new look and feel is at once louder, stronger, and more elegant.

Visual cues ground it in the workplace and food for work, connecting the brand to its core audiences, while distinguishing ezCater from everyday consumer delivery platforms.

Agency: Little & Co.
Photography: Rick Holbrook
Food Styling: Kaitlin Wayne

Challenge: Design a cookbook that feels like you’re visiting the baking school. From the smell of freshly baked bread and pastries wafting from the bakery and the din of conversation and laughter in the café, to the excitement and anticipation of entering the classroom for the first time, the book must capture the magic of a visit to the baking school.

Solution: As you open the book you travel through the campus. First the courtyard, then the café and bakery, then the classroom is revealed with each bench perfectly arrange for the baking class that’s about to begin. In additional to the beautiful food photography accompanying each recipe, there are instructional process shots, class notes, and tips from baking instructors. Tips annotate the recipes, appearing in the margins and other open spaces, just like the notes students make on their recipes during a class. Full-spread images introduce the master class recipes at that conclude each chapter, and challenges bakers to untilize the skills they’ve learned in subsequent recipes. The design is friendly and accessible, an extension of the brand’s promise that there’s room for everyone in our kitchen.

Starred Publisher’s Weekly review

Design: Michelle Chen
Photography: Mark Weinberg
Food Styling: Liz Neily

Challenge: Create a logo and visual identity system that speaks to the company’s future as much as it does to its history. A design to usher a heritage brand into the consciousness of a younger demographic while remaining near-and-dear to current audiences.

Solution: The wheat crown. A single symbol that stands for 3 core ideas. The quality of our products. Our amazing history and heritage. And our connection to agriculture. The mark is equal parts premium, authentic, and joyful to reflect the essence of the brand and strengthen the emotional connection bakers have with the company. The brand identity reinforces the idea that we are all bakers, and we revel in the joy of baking.

AIGA Expert Series | Rebranding King Arthur

The Follow-Up Podcast | Episode 007

Agency: Little & Co.

Challenge: Due to the global pandemic and supply chain disruptions, shift logo launch strategy (our big moment!) from the streets of NYC to the home kitchens of influencers and bakers everywhere.

Solution: Leaned into the comfort and respite people found in baking and created the “bake joy” campaign. We created media kits for top press contacts and influencers, “surprise & delight” gifts for top customers and highly engaged social media followers, and logo’d merch for bakeries that use our flour. The launch tactics and corresponding creative generated an overwhelming positive response from brand champions and fans, including 250+ posts from Instagram influencers, 500 million earned media impressions and up to 9x more engagement than typical on launch-related social posts.

For more details on the brand launch, check out Forbes, Adweek, Brand New and the AIGA case study.

Agency: Little & Co.

Challenge: Cookies win during the holidays. Create a campaign that grabs attention in social feeds crowded with cookies for The New Classics: Holiday Cookies, a collection of 14 modern twists on traditional holiday cookies.

Solution: Created a distinctive visual identity using harsh light/strong shadows and bright color backgrounds in a modern holiday palette to bring joy and whimsy to predominantly brown baked goods. Minimal propping with metallic and glass added touches of sparkle and shine.

Photography: Rick Holbrook
Food Styling: Kaitlin Wayne

Challenge: Introduce the new, modernized King Arthur Baking Company in a way that reinforces our heritage and expertise, while captivating the next generation of bakers. Increase our overall awareness and consideration with new, millennial consumers and convince them to switch to King Arthur.

Solution: TV spot that captures the ability of baking to make the world more civil and compassionate. It celebrates amateur bakers across America, coming together in spirit, unified by their love of the craft of baking. OOH and social assets support the spot with punchy headlines that speak to baking being a respite from stresses of the pandemic.

Agency: DCX Growth Accelerator
Director: Tomi Dieguez
Producer: Brian Bell
Photographer: Sara Remington

Challenge: The pandemic introduced a new audience to the wonders of bread baking, but as life has gotten busy again, passion for bread baking has waned. To keep the attention of these new bread bakers we need to show them how they can fit bread baking into their schedules, so they can have home-baked bread on a weeknight.

Solution: Campaign photography was propped with items of a busy life – phone, keys, newspaper, day planner, etc. – as if you’d walked in the door, tossed down your keys and phone, and with minimal effort the bread was ready for dinner. Created photo/illustration collages for social posts that illustrate how you can fit bread baking into your schedule - mix the dough before bed for an overnight ferment, shape it in the morning and then let rest in the fridge during the day. Before dinner remove from the fridge and let rise while you preheat the oven, and then it bakes while you make a salad and enjoy a glass of wine.

Photography: Rick Holbrook
Food Styling: Kaitlin Wayne
Art Direction: Alana Park
Illustration: Michelle Chen

Challenge: Develop a content experience to expand brand awareness, inspire and attract a younger audience of bakers to the brand, and provide ROI rationale to revitalize existing recipes and baking content.

Solution: Sift, a special interest publication, was the culmination of creative exploration to curate an immersive experience that invites bakers to indulge in their love of the craft. It’s subtle, beautiful, and substantive, and the result of an exceptionally close client-agency partnership. The publication goes beyond recipes (though there are 50+ in each issue), to the reasons people are drawn to the craft and lifestyle. Its thick, glossy pages, editorial features, recipes, and mouthwatering photography all work toward a simple message and a single truth: baking brings people together.

Agency: HZDG
Photography: Erica Allen, John Davidson, Kristin Teig, Mark Weinberg
Food Styling: Liz Neily, Erin Jeanne McDowell
Illustration: Conrad Garner

Challenge: Communicate King Arthur’s sustainability goals, progress against those goals, and mission-focused stories, so all stakeholders understand the company’s commitment and can follow along on the journey. Establish King Arthur as a mission-led company with a holistic approach to sustainability, focused on social, environmental, and economic stewardship.

Solution: Let Good Rise - an identity for King Arthur’s sustainability efforts targeted at frequent bakers who are willing to pay a premium for quality ingredients and care about the authenticity of brands. Established a voice/tone so sustainability messages evoke a sense of urgency coupled with sincerity and passion. We don’t have all the answers, but we are committed to being part of the solution. Created assets – web pages, video, iconography – to simplify communication of even the biggest goals, and make them easy to understand, even though the work itself isn’t necessarily easy.

Agency: Little & Co.
Video: Tucker Adams
Editor: Trevor Hawkins

Challenge: Create a cohesive line of pancake mixes to establish presence in this growing segment, leveraging already successful products and anchoring with new offerings.

Solution: Established a master packaging architecture and mix packaging design, which increases purchase intent by building awareness, increasing taste appeal, and is ownable among the crowded mix category. The packaging is clean and modern, prominently features the brand and allows gorgeous food photography to take center stage. It gives the brand a unified presence on shelf.

Agency: Little & Co.
Photography: Rick Holbrook, Megan Madden, Liz Neily, Kristin Teig
Food Styling: Liz Neily

Challenge: Create a destination that embodies the brand and is the ultimate baking resource, with offerings for baking enthusiast and non-bakers alike. A location that can be enjoyed equally by the once-in-a-lifetime visitor and locals stopping by daily for coffee and fresh bread.

Solution: Known as a baker’s paradise, the King Arthur flagship campus includes a bakery, café, baking school, and retail store. Working closely with the architecture and construction teams, the brand ethos was designed into all areas of the building and landscape. Reclaimed wood lines the walls as a nod to our passion for innovation while maintaining tradition. Communal tables were included in the café to encourage connection and community, and large windows look into the bakery and baking school to fill the space with the energy and passion of baking.

Photography: Mark Weinberg

Challenge: Create an artisan flour line within the broader flour portfolio. Specialty flours may not have high sales volume, but strengthen the brand’s position as the premium, high quality baking company, drives differentiation from competitors, and creates opportunity to gain new distribution channels.

Solution: Working within the master packaging architecture, created a distinctive design that reinforces the premium, artisan, and hand-crafted nature of the products with custom watercolor illustrations and serif type. Visual cues are easily scannable and highlight the unique product attributes. Specialty flours sit cohesively with other product lines and allow for movement between direct and wholesale channels.

Design: Alana Park
Illustration: Natalia Hubbert
Photography: Erica Allen, Rick Holbrook, Liz Neily, Kristin Teig
Food Styling: Catrine Kelty, Liz Neily

Challenge: Educate bakers to the process and challenges of organic wheat farming. Focused on how organic wheat farming practices are different and better for the environment. Highlight the care that King Arthur takes to ensure their flour is milled to specific specifications.

Solution: Long form editorial style videos and photography that capture the beauty of the American breadbasket and pay homage to the dedication and stewardship organic farmers have for their land. By profiling a King Arthur organic wheat farmer, we learn of the creativity and ingenuity required to succeed, and the passion he has for preserving his farm for future generations. A narrative that balances the positive environmental impact of organic farming and demonstrates the care that goes into crafting consistent flour.

Director: Scott Slusher
Director of Photography: Randy Quartieri

Challenge: Re-position cake as not just a celebratory dessert, but as an everyday snacking occasion.

Solution: The ubiquitous challenge with baked goods is presenting them in a joyful and colorful way when they are most often varying shades of brown. To position these cakes as fun and casual with a nod towards springtime, they were shot on color backgrounds with monochromatic props and everyday messiness - crumbs, melted ice cream, crumpled cupcake papers - to make them approachable and snackable. These are the treats you leave out on the counter and keep sneaking bites of throughout the day.

Photography: Rick Holbrook
Food Styling: Kaitlin Wayne