OUGD603 - YCN Bear - The Brief

BEAR

To create our next set of yoyo cards, whisking kids off on a magical adventure with BEAR

The Brief

To create our next set of yoyo cards, whisking kids off on a magical adventure with BEAR.

Background

BEAR started its grrreat adventure back in 2009. As a personal trainer, Hayley was constantly confronted with people growling about difficult diets, and families finding it hard to get their kids to eat fruit. She searched the world for a healthy alternative, and named her company BEAR, after an article she read in January 2009 that sounded all too familiar…
The article studies bears that had drifted into cities to forage from behind junk food joints and bins. The city bears got 30% fatter than their wild bear friends eating salmon and berries. They were also 30% less active and sadly all dead by the age of 10. This felt like a really simple picture of what BEAR was trying to do: get people back to eating as nature intended. 

We launched with Yoyos, a tasty lunchbox snack made with just fruit and absolutely no added nonsense, with kids aged 4-9 in mind. They’ve become a playground favourite and have grown to the be no.1 kids’ fruit snacking brand in the UK. Ever since we first launched we’ve always had a free collectible card inside every pack of Yoyos- it’s actually a very functional piece of packaging that holds the rolls in place, but it gave us a lovely opportunity to talk to our consumers and driving engagement with the brand.

Every year we launch a new set of cards- we do these in-house, coming up with the idea, doing all the research, and illustrating and designing the cards ourselves. It’s a labour of love and our favourite time of the year. With our Yoyos we’re trying to sneak some fruit into children’s diets without them realising, and with our cards we’re trying to help them to learn about the world around them without ever feeling like they’re at school. Education and facts are at the heart of these cards- but it’s never allowed to be boring. BEAR is always the central character in the cards’ theme, and we create a world around him with the cards that we hope will really fuel children’s imagination and take them off on an adventure with BEAR.

The Creative Challenge

We would like you to create the next world of BEAR’s yoyo cards - it’s up to you to pick the theme! We would like to see at least three card designs, both back and front of the cards. 

To get your brains whirring, previous card sets have included: ‘Around the world in 80 days’ with BEAR, with each of the individually illustrated cards being a miniature postcard sent from one of BEAR’s stops on his travels. Each taught children about amazing places and cultures around the world that they might never have heard of.

Our ‘Super Species School’ saw Head BEAR assemble the world’s most incredible species as students in his school- each had a super power that related to what made that creature incredible in real life, children could take a test online to see what ‘super squad’ (house) they would be in, and there was a specially designed yearbook that children could collect ‘bearcodes’ (barcodes) towards and be sent for free.

This year BEAR has gone off in his Time Cave back through history, with 80 stops in the grizzly past, and 20 in the furrific future showing some of the wildest inventions that scientists believe will roll out in the coming centuries.

Creative Considerations

·There has to be story behind the theme, and BEAR needs to be at the heart of it. BEAR is a real bear in the minds of children, and we want to take them off on an adventure. Every week we receive thousands of letters from children writing to BEAR asking what he likes doing, who his friends are, and asking whether he’ll come to their birthday party. Create something that will spark the imagination of a 4 year old you and you’re on to a good starting point…

· Make sure that your cards are packed full of facts- we want to squeeze as much learning as we can in.  But this can’t be dry- think about how you felt when you were a child, and keep it as far away from a school text book as possible. To give you an example of what we mean- whilst at school we might learn about the planets and what order they’re in, but if BEAR was to talk about space he’d be telling kids that astronauts have to use liquid salt and pepper otherwise it flies up their nose with no gravity.

· Be bold, and not safe. Think wild and keep it really fun.

· Style: our cards are ‘guests’ in pack and therefore don’t always follow the style we use for everything else. That being said, keep it really wholesome, fresh and colourful, and trustworthy.

Target Audience

BEAR Yoyo’s are aimed 4-9 year olds, both boys and girls. 

Mandatory Requirements

Please include the following:

· We would like to see at least three card designs, both back and front.
· A simple paragraph or so explaining the theme and story behind your cards.
· Please include the BEAR logo somewhere on the cards- to help people to understand who they’ve come from. In the past we’ve not always used the full logo (see the ‘clock dock’ on the front of our current cards), but just something that helps people.
· Please make sure that the cards are numbered- these are collectables.

For me, I think that this will be a really fun brief to complete because it will play on the more illustrative side of my practice. I have a few initial ideas for themes but I want to keep it quite open for now. The brief itself is very open considering the only real deliverable they want are the 3 cards. It's also interesting that they seem to value the concept over the designs for this brief.