Cake Stories
Baking up a sweet new brand, packaging, website and content for a super fun team of letterbox brownie bakers in Newcastle.
Cake Stories are a coffee shop and craft cakery based in Jesmond, Newcastle.
Building on their local success, the next natural step was to widen their net by offering nationwide cake deliveries through the post, sharing their amazing flavours with the rest of the UK. In order to do this, they came to us to pitch for a rebrand, packaging, website design and build plus social media marketing.
The first task was to evolve their logo without alienating their existing customer base. I proposed a cleaner, single-weight, hand-drawn logo that felt more modern and less like a font from a Hallmark giftcard.
Once the initial branding was approved I began to plan out the user experience, mapping out a whole new website that would be part-built with Webflow to allow me to be creative and more hands on with the build and part-built with Shopify by our web developer to handle more technical requirements such as subscription and gift card plugins.
Alongside this web design and development activity, I worked with my creative director, our print provider and GF Smith on developing packaging for 5 different boxes of bakes. This included an outer Kraft mailer, colourplan boxes, Kraft paper wraps, individual cake slice trays, wrap-around bellybands, an ingredients leaflet, greetings cards and stickers. Every part had to be of a quality representative of the cost of the product, which in turn had to be reflected on the website too.
Being the conscientious person I am, I recommended creating some video stories that would tie-in to the product marketing, promoting the fact that cakes can be enjoyed as part of a healthy lifestyle.
Working with the owners at Cake Stories we identified friends and family of the business who would be perfect for us to shoot enjoying cake in their every day lives. Once I'd created a shotlist and a moodboard for the style we were hoping to achieve, Newcastle based storyteller - Dan Prince got to work shooting them for us, with fantastic results.
The rebrand has been received really well so far by old and new customers alike, generating a healthy new revenue stream for the business. Cake Stories are raking in orders for boxes from our social media advertising activity and ranking high on google thanks to the new website and optimised SEO - all with great timing too as the lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 have meant that the Jesmond cake & coffee shop has been forced to close for long periods at a time.
The success of the online business now means that Cake Stories are able to increase their workforce, taking on more bakers, shop and admin staff, plus a second retail location in Hoults Yard, Newcastle, increasing the brands' exposure.
View the live website here
Agency: Elastic Creative
Client: Cake Stories
Creative Direction: Lauren Rennet
Design & Art Direction / Storyboarding / Animation: Arron Tierney
Editing / Animation: Pamela Gray
Lifestyle Photography Videography: Dan Prince
Product Photography: Laurence Winram
Webflow Web Development: Arron Tierney
Shopify Web Development: Ian Morgan
Copywriting / Digital Marketing: Patrick Cumming
SEO / PPC: Michael Milne