Tayburn chews over design brief
Edinburgh and Manchester design agency Tayburn has been selected to rebrand iconic children’s favourite, Chewits.
Tayburn’s creatives fought off competition from three other agencies to win the work which involves overhauling the Chewits brand and its mascot, Chewie the Chewasaurus, develop new packaging, update the website and produce a suite of point of sale material.
The brief provided by Chewits manufacturer, Leaf was to look at the positioning, refresh the brand and reactivate sales through creative design aimed at re-engaging with its target audience. Chewie, who has adorned its packs since the sweets hit the shelves in 1965, will be redrawn and brought to life to appeal to both children and parents.
“Chewits has always been popular, but was starting to drop off the radar for a lot of consumers so the client wanted to bring back the lost excitement and appeal through the new packaging”, said Joy McCallum, account director at Tayburn.
“Part of the brief was to redraw Chewie who had become dated and looked too young for today’s target audience, so we’re looking at making him a little older, and bringing him back with a positive atti-chewed! He really needed to be integral to the brand and packaging and not just an ‘add on’. The use of mascots in the children’s market, however, can in be very difficult. They have to be relevant and compelling enough to form a relationship with their target audience whilst respecting the role of parents, so it’s a fine balance between communicating responsibly and ensuring he looks great.”
When Chewits first launched it was the number one sweet for its target age group, but new brands and extensions to existing product ranges, coupled with distribution advantages over the years have gained greater market share. Tayburn’s remit will now be to create a campaign that aims recaptures the attention and sees parents buying Chewits over rival brands.
The first of the packs, which will be rolled out from April next year, is ice cream flavour which has been brought back by popular demand. Bloggers on Bebo.com mounted a petition to resurrect the flavour following a raft of comments on various social websites.
Tim Boote, UK marketing manager of Leaf, explained: “We were looking for an agency who understands the retail market and what makes consumers and customers tick. Tayburn has an impressive track record in the packaging sector and it was this experience, along with tangible evidence that its packaging design works right through to the bottom line, which proved the deciding factor in selecting Tayburn as our preferred creative agency.”