Birthday Mugs and Hugs Hamper

Create a collection of different and remarkable Birthday Hampers, which stand out yet with no specific gender bias to avoiding stereotyping, but instead a light suggestive hint, completely over-ridable on the basis of individual human preferences. Whilst the dominant focus was on Imagination, Quality and Value, these Birthday Hampers needed to be differentiated, modern and brand distinguishable from the mass hamper market. At the same time they needed to stand out in the highly competitive general Birthday Gift market with their reassuringly familiar contents synonymous with Birthday Hampers.

We’re not really a hamper company, so we have a massive advantage when it comes to designing Birthday Hampers. Maybe people see us as being a Hamper company, but our mission was to create the greatest gifts in the world for your friends and family back home. Since our focus is on this design & development, the issue of the complexity of delivering our Birthday Hampers becomes a critical consideration. How could we design Birthday Hampers, which were what shoppers considered to be a hamper, but still stand out as being different. How could we appeal to the desire for something innovative, but essentially timeless, Different, but not too different, like when you go to a new restaurant and want to try a familiar and favourite dish. You don’t want it to diverge too far from what you expect it to taste like, but at the same time, you want your preconceptions to be gently challenged. This is the key characteristics people associated with their ideal Birthday Hampers.

The pursuit of something different meant that this had to be a competitive marketing challenge, Our location and our infrastructure dictated that we could not just have the best products nor could we simply be the most efficient. Even ostentatious differentiation in the Birthday Hamper Market would not be sufficient. We wanted to produce a range of unique Birthday Hampers across multiple markets, in a variety of fields of interest and in multiple dimensions of consumer appeal. Our “differentiated Birthday Hampers” needed to have several highlighted zones, which distinguished them from rival offerings. It was only then that our Birthday Hampers could be easily distinguished and where the features, benefits and distinctive elements could be highlighted intelligently to assist the customer. The proposition we wanted to make to our customers would not be to buy a Birthday Hamper from Basketsgalore, simply because it is a little bit different, but because it is different across so many important dimensions most importantly being value for money, product selection and creative conception.

We wanted to be Different without being stereotypical or undesirable, so product selection by our customers was analysed across a number of 6 year control periods from our start-up days to the modern day. This meant that we were not distorting what people wanted according to what was popular in more recent times. It also meant that we were not constricted or limiting ourselves to conventional and established views. There was room for improvement, but not the demand to force it. We wanted our Birthday Hampers to have a professional & distinctive feel to them. Being Different didn’t stop at different products. Any sign of appearing cheap or any sense of home-made amateurishness needed to be banished comprehensively. We would be different because we stood out as professional. Co-ordination of Birthday colours, namely brighter fuchsia, limes, sky blue, turquoise would be targeted and a clear definition of the associative Birthday message through the symbolism associated with the Happy Birthday Mug would be distinctly different to the conventional old Birthday Hamper.

Out went the wicker hamper. The traditional wicker container is not sustainable for Europe going forward. Rattan doesn’t grow here in commercial quantities. Feedback from shoppers clearly depicted demonstrated that there was no longer an association of premiumness with wicker that they were prepared to pay for, so long as what was on offer was tastefully appropriate for display. We thought outside, inside and around the box. We craved something visual, something useful and we wanted our recipients to have the option of extending the life of the container because of its utility value. We commissioned our own in-house task force drawing upon our experience as designers. We designed a box perfect for a Hamper designation, ideally applicable to being a Birthday Hamper and customisable to a range of other gift occasions when you may consider a hamper.

Creating something as sophisticated as this is intended to appeal to an international clientelle focused on delivering a Better Hamper for Birthdays. This level of product development and investment in terms of our time and resources could not be justified on a local, regional or even a national bias. In the same way that the British & Irish Diaspora would entrust us with their Birthday Hamper requirements, so too did we hope that our “Little bit Different” Birthday Hampers would appeal to a wider market and cosmopolitan shoppers of a European Heritage.