Overview
problem
Consumers are busy and most don’t have the mental bandwidth to research product standards. On top of that, manipulative marketing and overwhelming grocery store shelves make finding the healthier & more sustainable products that much harder to find, even when you’re actively looking for them.
solution
Design an easy-to-use rewards app with a transparent set of product standards and a reliable set of brands that meet them, so that shoppers can find better products in any category. And make it work anywhere, so that people can feel good about their grocery run even if they only have access to a Walmart.
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Featured in:
The better-for-you rewards app.
The better-for-you rewards app.
Role &
Responsibilities
In 2019, I was recruited to be the Creative Director of Merryfield. This position afforded me the ability to sit down with the executive branch and discuss how certain UX improvements could create marketing opportunities and drive revenue. It was an honor to be entrusted to brand and launch a new app with an ambitious challenge ahead – helping Americans live healthier through education and rewards.
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I was tasked with creating the company’s logos and brand identity. Ensuring consistency in font, color, imagery, animation and even brand voice across all of our platforms.
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Working closely with my CMO and Content Director, I was tasked with creating content for our company’s marketing. I oversaw a small design team that created social media posts and templates, blast and targeted email campaigns and even some in-store print campaigns when we partnered with brands and retailers. I also oversaw content shoots both internally and externally all while managing tight budgets, timelines and expectations for ROI.
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I worked closely with our Head of Product and UX team to launch our app and refine it over time. This meant streamlining the user experience, creating new features and offer types for brands to engage consumers with and new marketing touch points to drive revenue and brand visibility – all while ensuring a consistent visual identity.
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I also worked closely with our CEO to create pitch decks for brands, retailers and investors. This was essential work for our emerging brand as we worked to nail down a business model and lock in the funding needed to build these ideas. These decks showed our brand’s grand vision, the newest features we hoped to build, metrics for the impact we have in-store and our place in the market – all tailored for specific audiences.
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In addition to all the flashy stuff, my design team and I are also in charge of weekly app maintenance and onboarding. This means sizing a brand’s product catalogue and brand page assets when they join the platform and refreshing our in-app imagery to ensure we are always highlighting the latest packaging, offers and standards content for users to engage with.
Shop clean. Get rewarded.
Branding & launching 🚀
My initial responsibilities were to create the brand identity and marketing for the launch of the Merryfield app. This meant designing a logo and identity that emitted the confidence to be an authority in CPG standards space while also translating well into an easy-to-use consumer app, with a focus on education.
The san-serif logo was chosen in all caps to stand out from the colloquial look of the sentence-capped messaging campaign. The underline under the “M” was put there to define the logo mark within the text but was also used in the visual identity to highlight copy points.
I worked extensively with our Co-Founder Joe Dickson, to turn his new set of product standards into 80+ attribute icons that help Merryfield break down complex topics for consumers at a glance.
The brand book I created was used by our developers, UX team and outside agencies to ensure a consistent visual identity across all channels.
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NAVY
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BLOOD ORANGE
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BEIGE
“Roland possesses a rare talent for truly understanding the needs of his business partners. His ability to listen deeply, combined with his visionary creativity, allows him to transform complex concepts into reality.
During our collaboration at Merryfield, Roland played a crucial role in bringing our product standards and attributes to life across our app, website, and social channels. His creativity, patience, and unwavering integrity were instrumental in crafting an educational and uplifting user experience that profoundly aligned with and advanced our mission.”
Joe Dickson
Co-Founder and Head of Quality Standards & Policy
Merryfield
It’s not a field.
It’s an app.
COVID presented a number of problems for companies and for us it meant launching a grocery app at a time when nobody wanted to be in a grocery store. Working with our friends at Humanaut, we managed all of the health & safety protocols that the global pandemic mandated and managed to developed a launch video that poked fun at our name and got our mission out into the world.
Member brands
“The design and overall user experience of Merryfield were crucial not only for our users but also for attracting brands to partner with us. Roland was an early and vital hire, instrumental in bringing our vision and ideas to life. His exceptional artistic skills, combined with a deep understanding of our business needs, made him an invaluable partner.”
Sandrine Mangia-Park
Chief Marketing Officer
Merryfield
Zooey Deschanel
Zooey is an actress best known for her role in Elf and New Girl – but she’s also a serious entrepreneur focused on food equity. She joined our team as Chief Creative Officer and her addition gave us access to her large social following. By going on talk shows and posting on social, she helped draw attention at a national level to our company and the problem we’re trying to solve. During my time working with Zooey, I was able to do a number of content shoots – overseeing location, wardrobe, brand features, and necessary crew under tight budgets and timelines.
Building a sticky experience.
Building a sticky experience.
Connecting brands & consumers
As a two-sided platform, our primary business goal was to attract new brands and new users. One is irrelevant without the other. This meant designing an app that would allow our member brands to look great and maximize their promotional budgets, while being easy to use and worth-while for consumers.
This all starts with a well designed user experience and it was my role to guide our UX team – at Whitespectre – towards that vision. I was involved in everything from the welcome experience, primary navigation, and page design to more business-related topics like points vs dollars, gamification, and marketing opportunities.
Everyday Rewards
To promote app usage everywhere, we came up with Everyday Rewards – a constant 5% back on any product from any of our member brands, anywhere you shop. As a consumer this is the most consistent cash back you can expect because
Brand Boosts
Increase visibility in the app and boost sales across your entire product library for a limited time with low risk of a runaway sales budget. This is a multiplier to Everyday Rewards that allows consumers to earn 10-15-20-25% back, instantly and everywhere.
Special Offers
Extra savings on a specific product for a set promotional window. This lets brands move specific products at certain times of the year and can be tailored promote sales at a specific retailer. These high value offers are the most reliable sources of bulk points for our users.
Brand Bundles
Bundles allowed our company to introduce two of our member brands and create an offer with their combined budgets. Pairings like hot dogs & ketchup for the 4th of July or tortillas & guac for Cinco de Mayo gave us themes to play off of in our marketing and the halo effect of the two brands allowed each to share in the other’s audience. Because this was often the first time these brands had collaborated, I took studio photos of every bundle for our app and everyone’s marketing channels.
Lifestyle photography
Timelines and budgets didn’t always allow, but lifestyle shoots allowed me to capture custom content to promote any of our marketing efforts. When dealing with small brands there are often limited resources to start with so sourcing products and art directing shoots under my own company’s direction, offered a lot of freedom.
These shoots were especially helpful for promoting bundles as there were often no creative assets shared between the brands. They also helped Merryfield stay topical on content themes like Halloween or Valentine’s Day, because sometimes stock assets just don’t cut it.
Marketing menu
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To streamline our creative output and generate revenue from brands, I created a series of email templates that allowed brands to engage consumers at various price points. Our Launch template was mandatory for new brands and announced their arrival on the platform. The Standard template was created to be text heavy and only require a single visual asset – an important feature for brands who don’t yet have a library of creative assets. And finally, we offer a Custom template that allows brands much more flexibility to add whatever lifestyle imagery, attributes and product shots they want – but for a price.
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We also created our own emails based on standards or topics of interest. This was an opportunity for brands to pay to be featured as a good representation of that topic. For instance a deep dive on why Organic matters when it comes to dairy or more trendy topics like the Paleo Diet.
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I oversaw the creation of social templates that allow brands to showcase their products on our channels. These templates are designed to let any brand’s identity shine through, while still being distinctly Merryfield. Brands can pick from Brand posts, recipe posts and standards post in either a wall post or stories format, allowing lots of flexibility to contextualize your brand for consumers.
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These pop-ups are a great way to keep the app and our offers top of mind. We used these to announce important offers and reinforce campaigns.
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The first spot in our spotlight carousel can be purchased on a week-to-week basis, ensuring everyone who opens the app sees your brand’s offer or announcement first. These spotlight tiles could activate offers, drive users to your brand page, or open an editorial page. Editorial pages allow brands to give a bit more context, with the ability to add additional lifestyle imagery, text and even links out to their own promotional pages.
“My life as a founder and entrepreneur changed for the better the day we hired Roland. Visual brand identity, brand story telling, communications with investors and clients. Roland thinks in terms of design systems. He’s strategic in his thinking. He makes all the right pieces fit in the best way.
The compliments and aww expressed to me over the years by the caliber of every aspect of our company visually are too many to count. He’s an exceptional talent. ”
David Mayer
Founder & CEO
Merryfield
By the numbers
To date, we signed over 90 better-for-you brands, raised over $20M in angel investment and have maintained a 4.9 star app rating. We are a small team catering to a national audience and I am very proud of what we’ve been able to achieve.
Look interesting?
Are you a brand who might meet the Merryfield standards? Interested in creating consumer loyalty? Or looking to improve your own creative output? Shoot me a note – I’d be happy to make introductions.