Share the family fun with a convenient shareable snack and an iconic card game.
Team
Me - Designer
Karl Chen - Designer
Marianne Louw - ACD
Eric Ramirez - Strategy
Gabriella Pacione - Copywriter
Rushi Mehta - Designer
Jaren Joritsma - Designer
Timeline
6 months
Responsibilities
Conceptual Design, UI Design, Design Direction
Tools
XD, Illustrator, Photoshop
Project Overview
After the hustle and bustle of the holiday season, it’s a great time for families to slow down and find time to connect and share moments together. For 2024, Bear Paws partnered with beloved family brand Mattel to provide families with an opportunity to bond over shared moments – a chance to disconnect and spend time together over great snacks and activities.
We were tasked with creating a multi-channel sweepstakes campaign to meet the following objectives:
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Drive excitement and engagement with a $10,000 contest
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Drive messaging and awareness to new audiences outside of the cookie section through partnership with a board game brand
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Promote the new Bear Paws Crunchy SKUs packaged in a sharable tray format – perfect for family game night snacks
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Reinforce family moments and offline shared activities
Concept Development
For the initial concept stage, I was paired with another designer to create 3 different spec concepts to pitch to potential partner brands. They needed to have generic branding but at the same time communicate specific categories of games through the visuals.
Below you will see the evolution of the creative from my initial pitch concept to final contest messaging. Pawley, the adorable bear mascot of Bear Paws, was present throughout (great for stopping power and a way to showcase the new Crunchy SKU), but the items he was holding changed several times. Once the partner brand Mattel was locked in, I incorporated UNO cards into the creative. Then, the contest prize changed to a $10,000 game room makeover and the "Share Family Fun" headline was dropped for simplicity, so I played around with adding renovation-type objects around Pawley to convey the makeover theme. While the result was cute, it was looking too busy so the client moved away from that idea and requested to see an option with Pawley just holding UNO and Pictionary, as well as a different background treatment. I still needed to bring in the makeover element in a subtle way so I put the word "Makeover" into a stroke of paint from a paint roller, following the arc of the typography.
In the end, we went back to the original blue and purple colour scheme because of its fresh take on the typical Bear Paws purple background and it allowed the red and yellow of the Mattel/UNO branding to pop. Pawley ended up holding 3 UNO SKUs (quite a handful!) for maximum brand recognition and wayfinding.
With the concept approved, the team then rolled out the creative to in-store POS in English and French. I oversaw the design of these elements while concurrently working on the microsite component.
Microsite Planning & Wireframes
Before starting to design the microsite, I did an audit of the previous year's sweepstakes campaign and pinpointed a few areas of opportunity to both educate the consumer and enhance excitement for the contest. Since over 57% of users visited the mobile site last year, I opted to design it mobile-first.
Homepage
The hero section features the contest creative and leads into a supporting section containing romance copy about the partnership with Mattel and Bear Paws. Then there is a section showcasing the new Crunchy SKUs with links to various retailers. Below that is a section to tie in the full Dare portfolio of snacks, encouraging the consumer to learn more.
Contest Registration Flow
Last year's registration + referral form was laid out on one long page with a LOT of mandatory legal copy, so I wanted to find a way to make it look less overwhelming to fill out. My hypothesis was that a shorter registration form would lead to more contest entries. In my wireframe I broke up the form onto 2 separate pages with a progress bar. Unfortunately, due to budget constraints, we were unable to conduct user testing to see if it reduced friction for entering the contest, so in the next round we reverted back to the 1-page registration form to stay consistent with last year's campaign.
Revised Wireframes
After revisiting the communication heirarchy and collaborating with our copywriter, I adjusted the wireframes to tell a more complete story of the brands and the contest. After the contest-focused hero section, we added another section with a catchy heading, "What would you do with $10,000 for your family game room?" to bring excitement and an emotional connection to the contest. the "Enter Now" CTA follows immediately after. Next comes a section that speaks to the partnership with Mattel, building equity around "Sharing Family Fun". Last come the educational sections about the products.
Project Outcomes
Through a robust campaign with in-store POS, microsite, social and eblast elements, we executed a compelling sweepstakes program that drove excitement among the target consumers leading to over 362,000 total contest entries – a 25% increase from last year's sweepstakes. The microsite achieved a 90% engagement rate, well above the average 71% for B2C sites. Repeat entries increased from 44% to 63%, indicating excitement for the prize as well as more impressions per user. The number of unique entries declined from 55% to 37%, so there is an opportunity to explore additional pre-shop amplifications in the next campaign.