BT, a family-owned, medium-sized toy company from Murcia (Spain), was looking to re-develop its growth strategy in the Halloween and carnival costume
sector. BT had strong penetration in the Chinese bazaar channel, where price and commercial terms were the key business drivers. Lantern was hired to design a
new brand, marketing and innovation strategy capable of propelling the company’s growth objectives towards higher margins. Our work began by understanding consumers’ uses and behaviours, as well as brand performance, through a quantitative survey with over 2,000 households. We also attended Halloween parties, dressed up as zombies and vampires, naturally, in order to interact with and learn from costume users. Our ethnography provided us with first-hand stories and insights from observation and conversations with ‘other zombies’.
Based on our research, we defined new product innovation and brand experience guidelines that would enable BT to expand within a younger customer base of ‘experience seekers’. Lantern also designed a market entry strategy for the premium costume channel (specialized stores, department stores, large toy retailers). In several workshops with BT’s sales force, we re-designed the company's way of catering to premium clients and identified opportunities for innovation at the point of sale. The company’s brand architecture was re-defined in order to isolate the traditional Chinese bazaar business from these new channels and prevent future brand equity dilution (also facilitating internationalization). Yuppiyei!, the fresh, fun and attention-grabbing brand we created to reflect the full experience of a costume party, has taken over as the corporate brand identity. With our project, Yuppiyei! positioned itself rapidly as a reference point in the costume sector. National and international distributors alike received the trendy and provocative new brand eagerly. Internally, our project has sparked a cultural upheaval within BT. For the first time in its history, the company organized a costume party for all of its employees in order to celebrate the launch of the new Yuppiyei! brand, where even the company founder dressed up as a ship captain to take part in the fun. Some would say this is real impact.