From Bounty to Mounty

Hi, my name is Oli and I’ve been doing work experience with Who Why How for the last week. During my week with Who Why How, I have undertaken different marketing and communications tasks, including email campaigns, social media and press release metrics.

The biggest project I worked on was a branding workshop for pupils at Rodborough School, where we guided the class through creating a limited-edition Bounty bar to boost sales of the product.

A made-up scenario, it was created to help students understand the thought processes and considerations behind creating a new product. There’s more to think about than you might think…

We started to develop the workshop by deciding what the take-away was. We decided that we would give them a glimpse into the real world of work, where lots of time, energy and work may never see the light of day.

We wanted to show the class that lots of different things can impact your work, like Board decisions, Brexit and a product’s own history.

In our workshop, the Board vetoed two ideas which had been approved in market research focus groups. The class looked first at pineapples and imagined how the wrapper might look. There were some fabulous ideas, including changing the ‘o’ to a pineapple and a Ukraine link up which would raise funds to support families in the conflict.

With some great ideas taken to the Board, it seems that pineapples weren’t to be the way forward after all. Pineapples were too much like coconut and too reminiscent of paradise and the Board wanted a different angle for Bounty.

The second most popular option was the cherry option. The class worked through how the bar might taste, looking at adding chunks, a layer of cherry sauce or going for the ripple effect. Again, the class came up with some cool ideas, including enrobing the coconut totally in a layer of cherry sauce before adding the chocolate and creating a pure chocolate bar, studded with cherry and coconut chunks. One group scamped out a product tie-in with global singing star, Shakira.

But the board once more denied the option. It appeared that English cherries were too ‘squishy’ for the product and that the other option, importing cherries from Poland, was prohibitively expensive and tied up in red tape thanks to Brexit.

The Board then informed the class that they were going to work on another idea that had received a great deal of support from the Government. John and Jacqueline Mars, owners of the US family brand and Bounty product owners Mars, were keen on creating a new partnership with the UK Government. The Department of International Trade equally wanted to promote their post-Brexit trade deal with Canada, working with Mars, by creating a special edition of the Bounty with Canadian maple syrup.

The class workshopped the concept, looking at the ingredients and some well-known Canadian icons. Coming up with ideas for a wrapper and how the product might work, brilliant ideas included leveraging the Canadian moose into a coconut mousse and also connecting the maple syrup with the free-flowing Niagara Falls. One name became very popular and the class voted that the special edition Bounty would be renamed Mounty.

We had a moment or two to consider taglines, but we had to work on this further back in the office. We have gone for #CanadaGoesCoconuts, which will also be used as a hashtag.

Altogether, the workshop went extremely well as it successfully proved the point that we were trying to make from the very beginning and we managed to perfectly squeeze it into the 50 minutes.

Thank you to the class for being so imaginative and creative and to the Board – Mr Newel – as two rejections made sure we came up with something even stronger (and sweeter).

Oli Munro