I wasn’t burned out from the work itself. I was burned out from never having time to do it.

That’s when it hit me—we weren’t protecting the thing that actually matters. The thinking. The making. The focused, uninterrupted time where good work becomes great work.

So we ran an experiment. We blocked off a chunk of every week where nobody could schedule a meeting, send a Slack message, or pick up the phone. The rules were non-negotiable.

Here’s what happened.

The Hidden Cost of Context Switching

Meetings don’t just consume the time they occupy on a calendar. They drain cognitive energy.

Research shows that it takes the human brain roughly 15–25 minutes to fully context switch and regain deep focus after moving from one task or project to another. When a day is packed with meetings, the workday becomes fragmented into short, ineffective bursts of attention. Teams end the day feeling busy but unproductive.

In reality, a one-hour meeting often costs closer to an hour and twenty minutes of cognitive capacity. That “context-switch tax” adds up quickly.

The typical meeting delivers 10–15 minutes of truly productive conversation. The rest is lost to social catch-ups, waiting for late arrivals, or aligning on what the meeting is actually meant to accomplish. We default to scheduling 30- or 60-minute blocks simply because that’s how calendars are conditioned to work. If time exists on the calendar, teams will find a way to fill it.

Testing a No-Meeting Model

We’d heard stories of companies experimenting with no-meeting rules during the workweek. At first, it felt unrealistic—almost impossible. But if others could make it work, why couldn’t we?

We decided to test a dedicated weekly work block designed to give everyone uninterrupted time to focus on their highest-priority work. For it to succeed, the rules needed to be clear and non-negotiable.

The Ground Rules

No meetings. No internal or external meetings could be scheduled during the work block.

No Slack. Communication was limited to email or our project management tools.

Email optional. Could be turned off entirely until after the work block.

No calls or texts. Unless there was a true client emergency, in which case the lead project manager would step in.

These boundaries were essential. Without them, the work block would quickly become just another meeting-adjacent time slot.

Measuring the Impact

We ran a four-week pilot and collected feedback at the end of each week through short surveys. We wanted honest insight into how the time was actually being used and whether it was delivering real value.

We asked simple questions: How did you spend your time? Did it feel productive? Was it helpful to your overall workweek? Would you want to continue?

The responses were telling.

Some team members were immediate advocates. Others were understandably skeptical. But week over week, the results trended decisively in favor of the work block. Comments like “I find myself looking forward to the work block each week” became common.

Even those who were initially hesitant found the model valuable once it proved that focused time didn’t disrupt the flow of business. It improved it.

What We Didn’t Expect

We made work blocks permanent in July 2024. What started as a four-week test became how we operate.

But here’s what I didn’t expect: the biggest impact wasn’t efficiency. It was quality.

When you give people room to think, really think, the work changes. The ideas get sharper. The details get tighter. The things that used to slip through the cracks because everyone was sprinting between meetings? They stop slipping.

We’re not anti-meeting. Meetings serve a purpose. But we’ve stopped treating calendar space as free real estate. Time is the most expensive thing we spend, and we had been spending it without a budget.

Creating a culture of productivity isn’t a one-time initiative—it’s an ongoing practice. We continue to explore ways to reduce unnecessary context switching and protect focused work time. That includes training our team to rethink when a meeting is truly necessary, how much time it actually requires, and how we can expand the work-block model beyond a few hours each week.

If you’re thinking about trying this, here’s my advice: start with two hours. One block. Protect it like a client presentation—no exceptions, no “just this once.” Track how your team feels after four weeks.

You won’t go back.

Let’s Work Together

We had just implemented a new approval process: three checkpoint reviews before any concept could move to client review. On paper, it made sense. We’d had some quality issues, some scope creep, some late stage revisions that burned hours we didn’t have. The fix seemed obvious: more eyes, earlier, more often.

Within six weeks, I noticed something troubling. The work getting through those checkpoints was cleaner, yes. But it was also smaller. Safer. The bold ideas that made Gigasavvy’s reputation were dying in review meetings, replaced by work that was easier to approve but harder to remember.

That’s when I learned something I now consider essential: process doesn’t kill creativity. But bad process does, quietly, and often with the best intentions.

The Tension Is the Job

As VP of Operations at a creative agency, I live in this tension every day. On one side: scalability, efficiency, predictability, accountability. On the other: curiosity, experimentation, risk-taking, and the messy magic that produces work clients actually remember.

My job requires me to care about both, and to know when leaning too hard in either direction quietly breaks the other.

I’ve seen what happens without enough process. Teams burn out. Projects spin indefinitely. Good ideas die under unclear expectations and endless revisions. But I’ve also seen the opposite: well-intentioned process improvements that slowly drain the energy from the room. More checkpoints. More forms. More rules designed to “protect” the work, until the work feels smaller, safer, and less inspired.

The question isn’t whether creative teams need process. They absolutely do. The question is how to design systems that support creativity without suffocating it.

What We Got Wrong (And How We Fixed It)

That three checkpoint system? We didn’t scrap it. We redesigned it.

The problem wasn’t the checkpoints themselves. It was what we were checking. We had been reviewing concepts for “viability” and “risk” at every stage. Translation: we were asking “will this make anyone uncomfortable?” three separate times before the work could breathe.

Now, our first checkpoint is about clarity: Does the brief make sense? Do we understand what we’re solving? Our second checkpoint is about feasibility: Can we actually execute this within budget and timeline? The third, and only the third, is about refinement and risk.

Same structure. Completely different outcomes. The work got bolder because we stopped evaluating boldness until it was ready to be evaluated.

Five Principles That Actually Work

After a decade of getting this wrong and occasionally getting it right, here’s what I’ve learned about operational improvement in creative environments:

1. Reframe process as a creative enabler, not a control mechanism. When process is introduced to manage people rather than remove friction, creativity suffers. A well designed process eliminates distractions: unclear briefs, excessive revisions, missed handoffs, last minute changes. When those pain points disappear, creative teams gain what they need most: time, clarity, and focus.

2. Improve systems, not people. If new workflows exist to “tighten things up” or reduce perceived risk, creatives will instinctively retreat to safer ideas. Focus instead on how work enters the pipeline, how decisions get made, and how feedback is delivered. When the system works better, people naturally perform better, without being told how to think.

3. Standardize the before and after, not the middle. This is the principle that changed everything for us. Standardize briefs and inputs. Standardize approval stages and delivery requirements. Leave flexibility in ideation, exploration, and execution paths. Structure the runway, not the flight.

4. Pilot before you mandate. Nothing kills buy-in faster than rolling out a “better process” overnight. Our best operational improvements started with a single team, gathered real feedback, and refined before scaling. This approach signals respect for creative expertise and leads to dramatically better adoption.

5. Measure what actually matters. If success is defined solely by speed, utilization, or output volume, teams will default to safe work. We balance operational metrics with indicators of effectiveness and quality: fewer revisions, stronger initial concepts, on-time delivery alongside creative impact.

The Guardrails Metaphor

I think about process the way I think about guardrails on a mountain road. Without them, you drive slowly and timidly, terrified of the cliff edge. With them, you drive confidently, maybe even a little faster, because you know where the boundaries are.

Clear budgets and timelines encourage smarter risk-taking. Defined approval paths prevent over editing. Fewer, more meaningful check-ins protect deep work.

Guardrails enable speed. Handcuffs prevent it. Know the difference.

The Real Test

If your best ideas are struggling to survive your own internal processes, the solution probably isn’t fewer processes. It might be better ones.

Here’s the test I use: look at the last ten concepts that died before reaching the client. How many died because they were genuinely bad ideas? And how many died because they were too hard to approve?

If you don’t like the answer, your process might need rethinking.

We’ve spent years building operational systems at Gigasavvy that help creative teams do their best work. If you’re wrestling with this same tension, I’d love to hear how you’re approaching it, or share more about what’s worked for us.

Talk Shop With Us

But like all innovation, getting there takes experimentation. A recent example that highlights both the potential and the process is a brand campaign we developed for Coast Southwest.

The Challenge: Visualizing a Complex Industry

Marketing for a chemical ingredient distributor presents a unique creative challenge—how do you visually represent a business that’s largely invisible to the end user?

Traditionally, this category relies on stock photography and lifestyle imagery to suggest the impact of ingredients in everyday products, but it overlooks the crucial, behind-the-scenes role of distributors in the value chain. Coast Southwest’s past brand campaigns followed that norm, and over time, it started to blend into the sea of sameness. 

Photo shoots in this category, while effective, are expensive and often offer limited value beyond the immediate need. So, for an industry built on science and innovation, we knew it was time for a creative evolution—one that mirrored the same spirit of experimentation and progress.

The Approach: Elevating Creativity with AI

For Coast Southwest’s 2025 brand campaign, we set out to do something different. We turned to Midjourney, an AI image-generation tool, to create a custom visual language that felt ownable and bold—something that would break through the expected.

Our process was iterative and time-intensive. We began with highly detailed prompts and reference images. Then we refined, and re-refined—prompting again and again until the composition felt right.

Once we had solid AI-generated foundations, we brought them into our design environment for customization. That included:

• Recoloring to align with brand palettes
• Incorporating Coast Southwest’s brand elements
• Adding custom illustrations and textures to complete the story
• Completing the story with a bold campaign headline and key copy points

Every detail was scrutinized to ensure the final visuals were not just striking, but strategically aligned with the brand’s identity, and accurately depicted their services.

Importantly, our goal was never to disguise the AI origins of these visuals. Quite the opposite—we leaned into it. Making it obvious was part of the message: this is a brand that embraces innovation at every level.

The Launch: A Bold Statement in a Traditional Industry

We rolled out the new brand ad series in early February 2025. The response was overwhelmingly positive. Coast Southwest was recognized for being one of the first in its industry to leverage AI creatively—not just as a production tool, but as a strategic brand amplifier.

The campaign stood out not only because it looked different—but because it felt different. It communicated Coast Southwest’s forward-thinking mindset in a way no stock image ever could.

“Someone at a trade event once asked me what I believe is the greatest challenge facing our industry,” said Joseph C. Cimo, President of Coast Southwest. “My answer was simple: AI. That’s why I’m excited to see Gigasavvy exploring AI in such a creative way. I’m intrigued by their approach and look forward to seeing how they continue to apply it across different areas of their business.”

What We Learned: Tips for Using AI in Creative Work

This campaign marked our first full end-to-end execution using AI-generated visuals as a core part of the final product. Here are a few of our takeaways for anyone exploring AI in creative development:

• Know your goal: Beginning with a sound strategy and clear objective is key. Take the time to discuss, review, and align as a team before you dig into the tools.
• Start with strong references. Gather visual inspiration before you prompt—this will help guide composition and style.
• Understand limitations of AI: While AI image generation has come a long way, it still struggles with producing photorealistic people and nuanced expressions. Use AI where it shines—conceptual storytelling, scene building, and visual experimentation—and rely on traditional design tools to refine and complete the final product.
• Prompting takes time. It’s not a one-and-done process—be prepared to refine over hours (sometimes days) to get the desired result.
• Use hybrid workflows. The best results often come from blending AI output with traditional design tools for finishing and polish.
• Own your process. Being transparent about your creative approach can strengthen your message—especially when innovation is part of the brand story.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning content creation, brand and creative agency that position clients for long-term success. Connect with us to chat about how we can produce impactful content for your business. 

Creating a brand is one of the most important things an organization will do. A brand is more than a name and a visual system; it’s the foundation for every touchpoint with every audience — from customers to employees and investors. To get it right, smart business leaders bring in the expertise of branding agencies to conduct a thorough audit of the offering, the competitive landscape, and key areas of differentiation.

The product of a brand-building project should be an impactful brand book with stunning visuals and inspirational descriptions of what the brand stands for, what it hopes to achieve, and who it will serve. 

But then what? 

Once a brand is created, how do you measure and manage brand health? Without a concerted, structured effort, it’s easy for brands to go astray, unwittingly falling short of the brand promise or failing to reach their full potential. That’s where brand measurement and brand management come in.

Measuring Brand Health

Understanding how to measure brand health starts by defining it. Your brand health is an assessment of how well you meet your business objectives by delivering on your brand promise. It’s important to take this balanced approach vs looking at cost, growth and revenue targets alone, since those KPIs can not capture the long-term costs of short-term measures.

For example, if your brand sells upscale products, you could simultaneously grow your revenue and customer base while reducing cost per acquisition by marking down all of your products by 50%. But in the long run, this approach would diminish your brand value because you would no longer be able to afford the same level of investment in quality, service and design. You would no longer be delivering on your brand promise.

To evaluate your brand health, you must also track every aspect of your brand presence — your brand awareness, reputation, engagement, consideration and loyalty. Purposefully managing these elements of your brand will help you build brand equity over time, generating big value for your business. In fact, 84% of the value of S&P 500 companies comes from brand equity.

The below reference outlines some ways that each of these elements of your brand can be measured.

Managing Brand Health

To effectively manage your brand health, it is important to track these aspects of your brand presence periodically to see how well your brand is performing compared to your own baseline, as well as your competitors. Looking at these metrics within the framework of these five areas also helps to provide guidance on how to move forward if your brand health is struggling.

For example, if you see that your brand awareness is low, start by evaluating your audience personas and media channels to ensure that you are meeting your target audiences appropriately, and then work to create an impactful brand awareness campaign. To make the most impact, focus on bringing big ideas to life to grab audiences’ attention and make your brand promise shine.

If your brand is meeting all of your goals for impressions and share of voice, but you find that audiences are not engaging with your content, drill in further on your brand campaign with updated messaging that connects on a more emotional level. Your mid-level campaign should provide more information without getting technical, and convey how your brand recognizes and addresses a core human truth.

If all of your paid media is working to bring audiences to your website, and you find that your brand health is suffering at that point, there is work to be done to help increase purchase intent and sales velocity. Start by digging into cart abandonment data to see where consumers are losing interest. Consider engaging with an outside agency to evaluate your user journey, then identify areas of confusion or breakage, and work to enhance your experience and messaging accordingly. 

Your brand reputation and brand loyalty are very closely tied together, so one of these areas rarely suffers without impacting the other. If you find this to be the case, consider introducing elements of surprise and delight into your brand experience — not only for customers, but also for employees. These team members are important ambassadors who bring your brand to life in the market with every customer touchpoint, so it’s important that they live and breathe your core values.

Gigasavvy helps brands improve their brand health by bringing big ideas to life with emotionally impactful creative. Contact us to find out how we can help you connect with your audiences on a deeper level at every stage of the purchase journey.

Get to know us! Add your email address to the Stay Connected box below to get more Gigasavvy insights delivered directly to your inbox. 

Have you ever noticed that so many car commercials look and sound the same? Regardless of the brand, you’re likely to see gleaming paint on winding roads and hear the rush of a vehicle driving by, often with a happy car-owner getting out at their destination to punctuate the experience. Or, have you ever looked at make-up ads side-by-side and noticed how similar they are — featuring fresh-faced beauties with every skin type looking directly into the camera as their hair flies in the breeze? We could go on and on with other category examples.

So, why, when so many marketers recognize the importance of standing out, do so many brands in any given category look the same? And how can your brand avoid falling into the same trap?

The Importance of a Strong, Multi-Faceted Brand Story

Often, the tendency to gravitate to a sea of sameness within a category starts with chasing a trend. In the beauty industry, for example, there is a (welcome) movement toward inclusivity. As brands embrace this moment, they take care to include women of various sizes, skin tones and hair types within their ads to showcase the range of their products and to speak to their brand value of empowering ALL women to embrace their beauty.

Notice that we mention highlighting their brand value without distinction — that common brand value of embracing the beauty of all women. In any given industry it is likely that certain values will be common across many brands. But an important element in building an impactful brand is finding the whitespace, the place where your brand distinctly stands, so you can differentiate and help customers understand what ELSE you’re about — and why they should care — otherwise your brand will begin to look like all the others.

In brand building this is done with a competitive analysis, which results in a brand positioning map. Competitor brands are plotted based on their market positioning to see how closely they are aligned with each other and with audiences. Visualizing brand positioning in this way helps to identify where there is room to be distinctive. When the whitespace aligns to your brand’s mission, vision and values, you can build a brand promise and brand story around it.

But building a strong brand story is only part of the equation. You cannot simply create a brand book and file it away. You must strategically manage your brand to purposefully ladder back to it and consistently tell the entire brand story with each campaign. Without a doubt, each beauty product on the store shelf has a brand story that is about more than the single principle of inclusivity. But in the quest to speak to what is going on in the world at the moment, the rest of the brand story can easily go untold.

The Importance of Knowing Your Audiences

In the beauty industry example above, we highlight beauty ads which try to honor the importance of inclusivity by highlighting the beauty of every type of woman in their ads. Surely, if these brands make products for all women, they should be speaking to all of them and making them all feel equally important. But a woman with sensitive skin, another with oily skin, and others with easily-sunburned or acne-riddled skin will not be buying products for the same reason. They should not be treated the same way in ads which try to speak to all of them at once.

To avoid homogeneous ad campaigns, brands should develop detailed audience personas to understand the real people they are selling to. This should include their pain points and purchase motivations, what they like and dislike, where and how they shop and consume media, and how they prioritize their time and money.

Knowing your audiences in this way allows brands to take a storytelling approach to create meaningful campaigns which resonate more deeply with consumers. When brands create ads which make consumers feel something, they are more likely to stand out and be remembered.

The Advantage of Thinking Outside Your Space

One of the reasons we see so many brands failing to follow these principles is a tendency to gravitate to proven players in their industry when hiring internal team members and creative agencies. It feels logical — if your brand wants to sell more cars or beauty products, you look for a candidate or partner who has a proven track record of doing so. But this approach, especially over time, often leads to siloed thinking and iterative creative that fails to stand out.

Individuals and groups who have been dedicated to a single type of effort for an extended period of time are less likely to challenge the status quo and more likely to fall back on tried-and-true solutions. If what they’ve always done has always generated predictable results, these individuals and teams are likely to believe that these approaches are the best, and will continue to stick to them. Unfortunately, they are not always right.

As an industry-agnostic agency, we’ve been able to clearly see that many of the best practices and norms of one industry can translate very effectively into another, often with the result of shaking things up — and winning awards. From taking a consumer-first approach in B2B marketing, to leveraging a storytelling approach about making memories in a new home rather than focusing on the construction, we’ve been able to apply best practices from multiple industries for each of our clients to create ads that stand out and get results.

When you break free from looking through a single lens, you open yourself up to see more opportunities. Think of industries you admire, even if they seem to have little to do with your own, and unpack what you admire about them. When you look at those individual elements, you’re likely to find an opportunity to shake things up — and help your brand stand out in the process.

Since 2008, Gigasavvy has helped brands find whitespace and identify opportunities to connect with their audiences with meaningful campaigns. Contact us to get help with breaking your brand free from the norm.

Get Gigasavvy insights in your inbox! Add your email address in the Stay Connected box below to receive our monthly newsletter. 

Last year we started our trends article by noting the incredible pace of change that brands were facing in 2024. As AI continues to push the boundaries of what was once deemed possible, it seems that the world is surging into the year ahead even more quickly. Notably, however, 2025 shows us that some brands are now also seeing value in spending time refocusing on the principles of marketing and branding.

1. A Focus on Recovering Brand Value

Over the last few decades, brands have focused increasingly on performance marketing. The allure is obvious. With the opportunity to measure each click and impression, brands can report on performance marketing KPIs at the most granular level. However, all of this emphasis on instant gratification has caused brands to suffer over the longer term — collectively losing trillions of dollars in brand value.  

Brand strategists have been warning about this danger for years. When organizations focus on clicks and likes rather than their brand strategy, they can easily be led astray. Chasing performance can lead to many micro-concessions and discount strategies that ultimately take a brand far from its stated values over the months and years. In the long run, it’s clear that building and adhering to a solid brand strategy is the cornerstone of success.

In 2025, as Google’s CPCs have increased as much as 10% and Meta’s costs have nearly doubled for some brands, even digital marketers will begin to recognize the importance of investing in brand campaigns. Research shows that over time, those who maintain a healthy mix of brand and performance marketing can expect to experience double-digit increases in reach and decreases in cost per acquisition. 

2. Strengthening Customer Relationships

An upcoming deadline in the digital space is supercharging the need to build authentic customer relationships. By summer 2025, 85% of search engine traffic will have phased out 3rd party cookies, making it much harder to target new customers based on demographic data.

However, brands can still use their own data to speak directly to their customers. Better yet, leveraging that data to conduct first-party research can provide unique insights that allow brands to understand their customers’ motivations and pain points, and then build a marketing roadmap to respond accordingly. 77% of customers view brands more favorably when they request and act-on their feedback, leading to similar increases in customer loyalty.

Perhaps just as importantly, collecting data on existing customers allows brands to craft a complete customer data story. Understanding existing customer personas intimately can give brands important insights into their purchase triggers and their media consumption, which can help them to more accurately target similar audiences with contextual or behavioral targeting.

3. Rethinking How to Make Content that Connects

As companies focus more on brand-building in 2025, there will also be a reckoning in how to think about creating content that actually connects with customers. In 2024, although marketers had access to more data than ever, and have invested in hyper-targeted marketing, 7 out of 10 customers stated that the targeted ads they saw were irrelevant to them.

A new study suggests that this issue is created and then exacerbated by marketers and agencies who invest in creative and media-buying strategies that are driven by instinct and biases, rather than data. Marketers living in coastal cities are not likely to recognize the different perspectives of customers in middle America — a truth that became as evident in political circles as it is now proving to be in corporate America.

In 2025, savvy brands will recognize that they are unwittingly ignoring as much as 44% of their possible consumer base. As a result, they will begin to see the importance of investing in foundational market research and persona development to guide future campaigns, with a focus on speaking to audiences more authentically based on where they are geographically and in their buying cycle and testing ad concepts across each of these audiences to get the greatest return on their investment.

4. More Immersive Content Creation

In 2025, brands will be able to connect with their customers in more immersive and impactful ways. Customers are no longer bound to looking at photos and descriptions of products based on simple text-based searches. Customers are increasingly leveraging image search and conversational, voice-based search on Google and a growing stable of AI platforms. And the results they get back are shifting in response, with AI-generated summaries that explain the answers to questions being asked, rather than providing a simple list of sponsored and organic webpages.

As customers take a more dynamic approach to asking for information, they are also expecting a more dynamic approach to getting answers. Even as customers are happy to say goodbye to the cookie era, they want to interact with brands in authentically personalized ways. In fact, 76% of customers say they are frustrated by brands that do not offer personalized experiences.

To meet the conflicting demands of the moment, brands are creating immersive experiences that add value to customers’ purchase journeys. The rise in virtual showrooms, augmented reality filters, virtual try-ons, and interactive assessment tools is generating 300% brand lift, and up to 53% higher sales conversion. In 2025, brands that understand the value in building this two-way dialogue with customers and prospects will invest in the production of dynamic campaigns and high-quality, flexible photo and video assets to drive more of these immersive experiences.

5. Actionable AI

No 2025 trend article would be complete without discussing Artificial Intelligence. It’s clear that AI is more than a passing fad. The technology has exploded at breakneck speed, and there seems to be an AI-enabled tool for almost everything. In the year ahead, brands will no longer ask what AI can do, but how and why.

Brands everywhere are experimenting with AI and implementing it in various ways — especially to take on time-consuming tasks such as reporting and process optimization, which can free up resources to spend time identifying and capitalizing on insights.

The use cases are being uncovered and discovered so quickly that it would not be possible to put together an exhaustive list, but we have found a great reference to help you keep tabs on the latest developments. The savviest brands are seeing these as tools to give them the time they need to focus on building a firm foundation for their future growth.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning, strategic brand, content and creative agency that has helped many brands connect with audiences to achieve long and short-term growth. Contact us to see how we can drive results for your brand.

In a world where consumers are faced with physical and digital store shelves offering an almost endless quantity of choices, good package design is an essential element to making your product stand out. The right package design can drive consideration, influence purchase decisions, create unique experiences and generate customer loyalty. Conversely, even if all other elements are in place, a poor package design can negatively impact the path to success. 

For over 16 years, we’ve helped brands stand out and make an impact with package designs that capture the attention of buyers and directly contribute to increased product sales. Here’s an inside look at our principles of package design that have created lasting impressions.

Clearly Communicate the Brand Personality – CEFCO’s Y’ALL Package Designs

If you’ve been on a road trip anywhere ever, you’ve stepped into a convenience store that is jam-packed with brands competing for your attention. This includes private label brands, or store brands, which are small-scale Davids competing against global brand Goliaths — often with somewhat nondescript packaging that shares a brand name with the store.

CEFCO, a leading convenience store chain in the southern United States came to Gigasavvy to develop a private label brand that was decidedly NOT nondescript. After naming and designing a brand that captured the company’s light-hearted, homespun southern roots, we moved on to create package designs for a series of products from water to jerky, to salty, crunchy snacks.

Our Y’ALL brand package design leverages sassy southern nomenclature, rich colors, eye-catching imagery and bold typography that cannot be ignored to bring a little “somethin’ extra” to the C-store shelves. Our new branding and packaging immediately won customers over, with the updated labels quickly becoming number one sellers in a store full of global brands.

Clearly Communicate the Brand Promise – Beach Whiskey Package Designs

Darco Spirits makes fun, high-quality spirits with personality. When deciding to expand on their Beach Whiskey brand with a new line of canned, ready-to-drink cocktails, they came to Gigasavvy to help them develop packaging that would stand out on store shelves packed with a growing selection of both classic and emerging brands.

To drive purchase behavior, we needed to create packaging that would not only catch buyers’ eyes, but would immediately evoke a relaxed, summertime frame of mind all year-round that is hard to turn away from. To achieve this, Gigasavvy conceptualized a Summer in a Can package design, which immediately communicates the Beach Whiskey’s brand promise for a good time that always feels fresh and easy. 

The package designs leverage breezy colors with playful fonts and sunny imagery to communicate beachy summer vibes that immediately conjure up a sense of endless summer nostalgia and beachside bonfires. This instantly sets customer expectations for the flavor profiles, drawing target audiences in for a closer look— and leading to significant increases in sales, clicks and impressions.

Clearly Communicate the Product – Flame Broiler Package Designs

Flame Broiler started as a single family restaurant committed to delivering delicious food that was healthy, convenient and fairly priced. The fresh ingredients with Korean-inspired flavors were a hit and soon the small restaurant grew to a brand with more than 200 locations across California, Arizona and Florida. As the brand grew, so did opportunities to diversify revenue with a line of bottled sauces.

Gigasavvy worked with Flame Broiler to develop bottled sauce package designs and product names that would immediately communicate the flavor profile and Korean culture behind each bottled sauce, and inspire restaurant patrons to Fuel their Flame any time by keeping their favorite flavors on hand at home. Drawing from the bold color palette and iconography of the brand identity we had already created, each bottle leverages color blocking with a distinctive color and imagery to set flavor expectations.

The package design and associated launch campaign were a hit, generating a 14% lift in brand sentiment among consumers who were surveyed before and after exposure to the product spot, and driving a 62% year-over-year increase in digital media placement clicks.

Align to the Target Audience  – Brandini Toffee Package Designs

Founded in Palm Springs, Brandini Toffee started as a small-batch toffee company that leveraged a family recipe to bring joy to audiences with a sweet treat. Years later, the brand had expanded with a factory which operates year round to support a busy holiday sales season. The high-quality toffee had become a favorite among older consumers, but the brand wanted to broaden their appeal and expand sales among younger audiences. 

Gigasavvy developed new, more modern branding which leveraged their Palm Springs roots and an iconic desert vibe to pull younger consumers in. The new Brandini Toffee package designs use crisp black and white color blocking to communicate the premium nature of the product, while taking inspiration from Palm Springs-style breeze blocks to incorporate a subtle brand pattern that helps to capture attention. In addition to classic gift boxes, Gigasavvy also designed new candy bags, which helped Brandini toffee to diversify revenue streams with new shelf space at Costco.

The new package designs were a hit. In the first holiday season after the updated packaging was revealed dwelltime on the company website increased by nearly 53% as customers viewed 26% more pages per session, ultimately leading to a 25% increase in online sales.

Create a Customer Experience – Sugarfina Package Designs

One can never overestimate the importance of delighting customers with fun brand experiences. That was our guiding principle when we worked with Sugarfina to boost online sales for the holiday season.

Though the project was not initially brought to us as a package design exercise, Gigasavvy came up with a big idea that leveraged an entirely unique packaging concept to create a memorable gifting experience which would delight customers and drive incremental sales volume.

The Build Your Own Bento Box package design for Sugarfina made the online shopping and gift-giving experience entirely customizable and allowed givers to gift a variety of Sugarfina’s fun and whimsical flavors, all in one beautifully-crafted box. As consumers became more educated on the product they saw opportunities to give more flavors to more special people in their lives, resulting in a 116% increase in website traffic and 57% higher sales. 

These are just some examples of how big ideas and smart, well designed packaging can drive real business results. It is more than a physical container. The right packaging shapes customers’ perceptions. It helps your product get noticed online and in stores, communicates your brand’s value, messaging and positioning, and surprises and delights your customers.

Gigasavvy is an award-winning brand strategy, content creation and creative agency that has successfully brought many brands to market with measurable results. Contact us to talk about how we can breathe life into your brand.

Sometimes it’s easy to get so busy doing, that there is not a lot of time left for thinking. In marketing departments, this can lead to habitual, year-over-year marketing plans with very similar campaigns from one season to the next. Well executed plans can lead to incremental growth, but secretly (or perhaps not so secretly) we all wish and hope that one of our campaigns will create a monumental shift. As we head into budget season, make room to achieve big success with your 2025 planning.

Shaking up your business requires new thinking. Specifically, it requires new thinking that leads to big ideas. But that is much easier said than done. Sadly, just sitting down and saying, “I’m going to have a big idea now” does not work. As an agency that specializes in solving some of our client’s biggest problems with creativity and big ideas, we’ve put together some insights to help you get there.

Get Crystal Clear on Goals

Setting goals to grow revenue by X%, or to increase clicks by Y% is important, but it’s also tactical. To set yourself up for a big idea that can actually drive real business results, you need to pull back from these lower-level goals and think at a more macro level. What do you really want to accomplish from a big-picture perspective?

Do you hear crickets when you ask that question out loud? Your brand mission statement and brand values may be able to serve as a guide to help you get started. For example, does your brand stand for embracing the differences that make the world fun and interesting, or making it easy for people to experience joy? Though it may sound lofty, this is where you should start when creating your goals.

Then, rather than a goal to increase revenue by X%, you can layer in your brand’s mission, vision and values to create a bigger picture goal like spreading joy to a new generation of Americans. This now gives you an authentic direction to create the big ideas which can drive the X% revenue growth you are after.

Identify the Problems and Opportunities

Once you have a lofty goal, you may see an exciting, untapped opportunity. It’s also likely that you’ll quickly start to see problems with achieving it. That’s not just okay, it’s great! Giving yourself problems to solve can help lead you down a path toward a big idea.

Mind you, the path to a big idea is rarely straight and is more like a maze.. As you start to define how you will move forward, you’ll find that the idea doesn’t work for some reason or other. In a maze, you don’t quit, you back up and try a new route. As long as you trust that the goal can be achieved, you can do this as many times as is needed to get there.

Get Outsiders’ Perspectives

This is important, because working with a lack of diverse input is one of the biggest barriers to creativity. Often, especially if you’ve done the same thing in the same place for so long, finding a new route seems impossible. This is where it helps to get an outsider’s perspective. There are many ways to do this.

At Gigasavvy, we often talk directly with customers to understand what is resonating, and also talk with a wide range of internal stakeholders to uncover challenges and insights from other departments. Since we are industry agnostic, we also are fortunate to have firsthand knowledge about what is resonating with similar audiences in other industries.

With these additional insights and perspectives, we can approach problems and opportunities from different angles. And that’s when big ideas are ripe for the picking.

Identify Roadblocks

When the big idea hits, you want to get started on it right away. Here, as you begin to assess your internal resources and compare it against all that is needed to make your idea a reality, you may start to run into more roadblocks. That’s okay too! Look for ways to solve the problems, rather than compromise on a solution, and you may find that your roadblocks can make the big idea even better.

If, with all of the internal resources you have at your disposal, you cannot bring your idea to fruition, begin to think outside of your four walls. Do you need more expertise, more capacity, more collaboration? The help of an agency? All of those things can be had.

Make Sure You Have the Money

It’s easy to fall into a trap of allocating every bit of budget to routine marketing campaigns and tasks. Unfortunately, this does not leave room to bring big ideas to life. Of course you can pitch the big idea to executive team members and ask for incremental funds. And if the idea is strong enough, this may work. It may also end up with you delaying your big idea a full year until the next budget comes around.

The easier way to combat a lack of funds is to earmark money at the beginning of your budget planning session. Set aside funds that will be deployed in campaign development in support of your big idea. That may seem risky during budget season, in Q3 or Q4 of this year, in the absence of next year’s idea. But, don’t set yourself up to settle. You cannot be successful if you don’t set yourself up for success. 

Gigasavvy is a forward-looking creative agency partner that believes in the power of big ideas. We believe every brand has a compelling story to tell. Contact us to help you tell yours.

Why do brands leverage old imagery to promote new products? “When you play on nostalgia, you’re bringing people back to a simpler time, and the familiar comfort that comes with a shared experience with your peers,”says Jones Krahl, Deloitte Digital’s co-head of creative brand and advertising, along with Milton Correa.

Simply put, when people see these ads, they don’t just see the ads, they feel all of the old feelings associated with their memories of a time gone by. And these feelings are unique and different for every individual. While some may experience happiness, research shows that nostalgia also brings about a range of other emotions, such as feelings of comfort and security. And, if the imagery is relevant and authentic to your brand, consumers will naturally transfer all of those feelings to your product.

Nostalgia Marketing is not new, but has increased in popularity lately. Brands are increasingly featuring new takes on old narratives in order to hype their products. It’s now become commonplace to see things like the classic Nintendo being featured in commercials for the new Nintendo Switch.

Brands don’t have to be old to leverage nostalgia marketing. Even if your brand or your product is completely new, you can leverage imagery to bring about the positive feelings of yesteryear.

Here’s how:

1. Understand your audience. If you are targeting millennials, think about what shared experiences they’ve likely had which would make sense to include in your advertising – featuring models with frosted tips or dancing to NSYNC’s Bye-Bye-Bye, for example. 
2. Don’t be afraid to mimic. Okay, maybe licensing NSYNC’s music isn’t in the cards. But a video that does show teens and young adults dancing a choreographed scene to boy-band music will still make your point, and be a lot of fun in the process.
3. Go all in. If you’re bringing a specific era to life in your advertising, do it all the way. From fashions and hairstyles to color palettes and set designs, lean into every stereotype to make sure that nothing about your campaign is subtle enough to be mistaken or overlooked. 
4. Leverage your brand identity. Take inspiration from your company’s history, and your brand’s mission, vision, purpose and brand pillars to connect with your audience based on where you’ve been, and when you were there.
5. Have fun. Nostalgia marketing is all about evoking happier memories, so do sell your product’s features and benefits, but don’t take your brand too seriously. Keep it light-hearted and fun.

Are you curious about how nostalgia marketing could work for your brand? Chat with us to talk through some ideas.

Gigasavvy is a content creation, brand strategy and creative agency that has successfully brought many brands to life with award-winning, authentic storytelling. Contact us to see how we can help you tell your brand’s story.

The importance of a strong brand strategy is undeniable. It’s been well documented that brands that have fostered consumer trust over the years do not have to continually work as hard to communicate their reasons to believe or overcome objections. Their built-in sense of history and authenticity automatically generates increased sales and customer retention. The positive financial impact garnered from this type of loyal customer base is measurable and irrefutable. But what about the impacts of internal branding?

Whether employees work behind the scenes or work directly with customers, every single employee on your team impacts multiple customer engagements, so the ripple effects of an internal brand campaigns are even greater. This is especially true with a brand refresh or new brand launch because the stakes are higher.

When your company is investing money and time to build and launch a brand to external audiences, you need every asset to be working in concert — including your human capital. Executing a successful internal brand launch will create a foundation for greater success with your customer-facing brand campaigns.

Here’s why:

Aligns Employees to Your Brand Vision

A brand refresh rarely happens out of the clear blue sky. Generally, something has happened to spur action. Often this will be a merger or acquisition, when employees from multiple disparate brand cultures must unify behind a singular brand vision. Understandably, newly acquired employees will have little understanding of what that vision is, but even legacy employees may not be aware of how the future direction of the brand will change based on a new merger.

If a merger is not the driving force, new product lines, shifting markets, or flagging sales may be behind a decision to update a company’s branding. Whatever the reason, if your brand is going through a refresh, providing employees with the background behind the decision and the vision for the future will help them to understand and align with the mission. 

British Petroleum was keenly aware of this when choosing to undergo a brand launch. In addition to the recent purchase of Amoco in 1998, the company was also facing a dramatic shift in the market as consumers were becoming aware of the harmful environmental effects of fossil fuels. They chose to rebrand as BP to unify both teams behind a clear vision to move “beyond petroleum.” Though a future that moved away from fossil fuels could easily have been scary for employees who had built careers around drilling for oil, a survey after the internal brand launch revealed that 90% of employees felt the company was moving in the right direction.

Builds Brand Culture

An internal brand campaign creates a rally cry for employees. It serves as a reference point for team members and helps employees see how small shifts in key attitudes and behaviors can breathe fresh energy into their day-to-day lives.

That was the approach the owners of Aldi’s took when investing in the launch of their fun new brand, Trader Joe’s, in 1958. Though already known for their no-frills grocery stores with little emphasis on branding, the company saw their fledgling new brand differently. Trader Joe’s was to have a focus on happiness, rather than savings — so they committed to creating customs and rituals that could guide employee behavior in their new venture.

Aligning employees to this vision has helped Trader Joe’s build a sense of connection among team members. This sense of connection not only reduces team turnover, it encourages employees to seek internal promotions. The resulting culture also guides future employee hiring decisions and has helped the brand to be recognized as one of the best places to work in the nation.

More importantly, these happy employees deliver joyful service, which serves as the foundation for a cult following that has continued to grow over the years. Though the original Aldi brand is older and more established, Trader Joe’s has built much stronger brand equity and consumer loyalty that is hard for other grocers to beat. 

Delivers on Brand Promise

As the Trader Joe’s story shows, communicating a clear brand vision to employees has an impact that extends beyond the company’s walls. When companies invest in internal brand campaigns they create consistency between internal and external brand positioning. 

An internal brand campaign creates a platform for employees to stand on when working behind the scenes and when serving customers, guiding all internal and external communications. Whether your company stands for fun, as in the case of Trader Joe’s, or innovation, like Google, clearly communicating your brand internally reminds employees of why they do what they do, and how they should be doing it.

The strong culture that results extends beyond simply performing tasks as expected. According to Edelman, 60% of employees choose to work for a company that is aligned to their values. Work is an important part of our lives, which many people openly talk about with friends and loved ones. When employees see how their actions support and help to achieve the larger brand vision, it creates a greater sense of purpose, turning employees into brand ambassadors, even outside of business hours. 

If you are ready for a new brand launch or considering a brand refresh, talk to us to learn more about how to align employees to your vision, build a strong culture, and deliver on your brand promise — starting with an internal brand campaign.

Gigasavvy creates winning creative marketing campaigns and insightful brand strategies that position our clients for long-term success. Connect with us to chat about about how we can help you take your business forward.