Taima Honey • Case Study | Jennifer Hibdige's Portfolio

Overview

The client ran a successful tourist company in the beautiful Queenstown region, but when COVID unexpectedly arrived and caused borders to close around the world they found themselves in a new and never-before-seen situation.

With a sudden drop in customers, and new regulations around traveling and safety they wondered how they could continue to bring the Queenstown experience to the world.

Their solution came in the form of honey. Pairing up with a local beekeeper, they bottled up all that made Queenstown unique and beautiful in a delicious jar of thyme honey that could be sold globally–bringing New Zealand to their customer’s doors.

The Problem

Taima Honey was a brand new company–they didn’t have an established brand identity, website or marketing strategy for their product.

They required our help in creating:

Eye-catching branding that emulated the local Queenstown region

A website that told their story and sold their products

A marketing strategy that would capture the attention of their existing customers from their tourist business

What We did

01.

Understanding our dream customer

Conducted competitor research

To understand the landscape at that time, competitor research was conducted to see how others positioned themselves, and to identify Taima Honey’s points of difference in the market.

Competitor 01

Pros

Has stories of their beekeepers and their company story
Has details and explanations of their different honey types
Has nature influenced photography

Cons

Confusing and hard to use modal to go through their products
No social proof or testimonials
Has a double bottom navigation which appears busy and a bit confusing as to where to click

Competitor 02

Pros

Has an about page highlighting their origin and story
Easy to navigate between all their different products
Has an interactive slider on the homepage to see all the different higlighted aspects of their products

Cons

Homepage is heavily product based than story based
Visuals across website aren't very modern and some are pixelated
No social proof or testimonials

What can't be easily copied from Taima Honey

📖
Their unique brand story
🍯
Quality and use of thyme honey
🍎
Their products health benefits

Identified their dream customer

With the knowledge about Taima Honey’s points of difference, identifying the dream customer was the next important step in designing a product that would work for its intended audience and solve their needs and pain points.

At the start of this project, an internal workshop was conducted where the client and our team identified who their customers were and their common needs and pain points.

Added a face to their dream customer traits

Based on the research and information we had learned about Taima Honey’s dream customer, we created a persona to help identify who we were designing for when making decisions.

02.

Creating a visually striking brand

Moodboard and research

Based on competitor research and from identifying our dream customer, we were able to create a mood board that helped encapsulate key feelings we wanted the customers to experience.

Logo

The client already had a logo created and only required it to be turned into a vector based file which I did in Adobe Illustrator.

Colour

Two colour palettes were created to represent the Taima Honey brand–one for primary use such as website, marketing, and social media, and one to be used across their packaging.

Primary colours

To relate back to the natural and organic mood, colours related to what is naturally seen in honey were chosen.

Packaging colours

Different colours in muted tones were used on the packaging alongside the main colours to visually show the different honey grades.

Colour palette for Taima Honey packaging

Additional Packaging colours

These colours were chosen for the Drs. Point No.8 honey product which was marketed specifically to an Asian market.

Packaging

A key distinct aspect of the branding was to highlight the natural landscapes of the Queenstown region–reminding customers of the beauty of New Zealand.

The packaging was based on the natural and organic lines and shapes found within the New Zealand mountain ranges and coastlines.

The following patterns were made blending identified colours and the organic shapes within nature.

Combining all the visual aspects researched and identified, the following packaging was created:

03.

Creating a website to introduce customers to Taima Honey

Website design

An eCommerce website was created to introduce customers to Taima Honey. Highlighting their origin story, available products, and social media accounts, and including a section to sign up for their newsletter.

Story

A unique selling point of Taima Honey was its story and origin. This was highlighted throughout the design of the website, with sections appearing across the homepage.

Products

Adding onto the brand story, each product page contained individual stories of where the honey came from, the year it was created, and information on the unique tasting notes and health benefits. This showed that Taima Honey was an expert in this area, and also provided a unique shopping experience for customers to find out which honey best suited them.

04.

Producing an engaging customer flow

Customer journey

The main call-to-action on the website was for a customer to order honey. To help reach this goal, we created a plan that identified a customer journey to show how a customer would interact with Taima Honey and to identify pain points and areas for opportunities.

Email marketing

The client had a pre-existing database of customers from their time as a tourist business, and from that wanted to focus their initial marketing efforts towards introducing those customers to their new venture and highlighting its benefits and points of difference.

A series of emails were created to introduce Taima Honey, build excitement, and remind them of the beautiful New Zealand landscapes they were missing.

Outcomes

With a visual identity tying back to their New Zealand origins that could be used across various platforms, an eCommerce website that highlighted their story and sold their products, and a plan for the first round of email marketing, we helped Taima Honey bring life to their new venture and provide confidence in their next steps as a business.

Bringing Queenstown to the world with honey

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