The Dropps Brand Refresh

Services

Art Direction, Brand Identity, Design, Imagery, Packaging Design

Sector

Consumer Goods

Powering up the leading US plastic-free detergent

The Brief

Following a new round of investment, Dropps approached Better to help optimise the brand assets that are working for them. By no means a blank sheet of paper rebrand, it was crucial that we retained existing brand equities and recognition. This started with refreshing and refining their visual identity, rethinking their signature packaging and finally applying the results by art directing their eCommerce imagery.

Background

Dropps are the leading US-based challenger brand in household cleaning and care. This is a category dominated by huge plastic jugs of highly effective but often highly chemical formulations. Although eco-friendly detergents are nothing new, they tend to fall short on efficacy in their bid to be kinder to the planet. Enter Dropps — a powerful nature based cleaning pod, shipped direct to consumers in minimum waste packaging.

The Solution

Rather than being a fundamental rethink, or even an additive process, the key to the creative direction lay in the Dropps philosophy: “Eliminate the stupid, amplify the core.” This meant that at every opportunity we attempted to smarten-up, simplify or reduce; resulting in an intelligent, minimal and elegantly functional brand that still retains plenty of character.

Powering up the leading US plastic-free detergent

The Brief

Background

The Brief

The Solution

Name dropping

A restructured and rebalanced logo communicates simplicity and frugality while still hinting at the blend of nature and cleaning. Typographically we retained the charm and spirit of the brand’s origins while slimming, simplifying and personalising the geometric letterforms. The result is a cleaner, more mature character set.

The balance of power

The Dropps name and logo do a good job of communicating, simplicity, modernity and frugality but they don’t really convey power. Because efficacy is such an important element to communicate in cleaning and care, Better developed the powerscope. An illustrative element that serves a dual purpose, allowing us to flexibly sub-categorise products while creating explosive brand iconicity with our own interpretation of familiar category codes. It allows Dropps to have an ownable interpretation of more familiar ‘useage codes’ and also communicate a unique expression of powerful efficacy. Surrounding an iconographic representation of our pod, bursting with natural cleaning power, the powerscope quadrants form a flexible template to express brand essence and product variants.

Double dropp

Through a smart folding design, the Dropps pods are kept in the same box they are shipped in, eliminating any excess packaging and waste. Continuing this theme, rather than creating a separate print plate for every possible variant, we used an unconventional two-part print system using water-based inks. Four baseplates were developed to distinguish the category type, which are also printed by the box manufacturer. The individual variant information is custom printed, to our design, at the warehouse. This technique enables print-to-order, creating a simple but extendible framework for dual-purpose packaging that is fully biodegradable.

Status symbols

Alongside the various icons required for on-pack messaging, we created a suite of 80+ icons for the Dropps eCommerce site. Covering everything from stinky odours and static cling to pizza stains and premium wool, these icons were all custom drawn and informed by the minimal illustration styles used across the brand.

Dropp it like it's shot

With less than two weeks left before the new site went live, Dropps enlisted Better to help art direct and create their onsite product photography, Amazon product photography, pod hero images and category based images. In total, a shot-list of 34 set-ups including some challenging ‘scent explosions’, and contextual kitchen and washroom set-builds were required, as well as sourcing multiple scent and category cues, while making everything ‘float’. To realise this wishlist in the time available, we created every element and every shot in-house, in CGI. No oranges were harmed during the making of these shots.

Dropps laundry stain and odor detergent pods unscented.

Dropps dishwater detergent pods unscented.

“Dropps was first launched back in the mid-2000's before shopping for household consumables online was commonplace. After 13+ years, it was time to transform Dropps into the digital-first company it is today. The team at Better has been the ideal partner: they're thoughtful and intentional in their approach, and landed our brand blade 'Eliminate the Stupid, Elevate the Core' perfectly. The day after the new brand and website launched, we saw our best sales ever. Our loyal customers expressed joy over the new look and feel, but still recognised it as the same Dropps they know and love."

Sydney Waldron

Director of Marketing, Dropps