Freddie’s Flowers

Helping sustainable superflowers bloom

Client

Freddie's Flowers

Project

Freddie's Flowers Brand Codes & Strategy

Services

Brand Strategy, Code Refinement, Verbal Identity

Sector

Consumer Goods

Helping sustainable superflowers bloom

The Brief

Because Freddie’s Flowers had grown so organically, the brand needed a little pruning. A new round of investment felt like the ideal time to properly codify Freddie’s brand strategy and identity, readying it for new territories and innovations like gifting. It also served as an opportunity to set Freddie’s apart in a category that had grown somewhat predictable and disposable.

Background

Back in 2015, Freddie Garland started delivering weekly flowers in “a knackered old milk float” to his mum and dad’s neighbours. Since then, the business has grown to over 130,000 happy customers nationwide. Following a $60m investment from The Craftory, Freddie’s enlisted our help to define, clarify and broaden their brand strategy and brand codes.

The Solution

A full brand code audit allowed us to see where the existing brand was failing to live up to its price point and audience, while a strategic overhaul established a clearer point of difference. A new Big Idea and verbal identity along with visual identity refinements and art direction, all established Freddie’s as a premium expert and champion for the restorative power of flowers.

Helping sustainable superflowers bloom

The Brief

Because Freddie’s Flowers had grown so organically, the brand needed a little pruning. A new round of investment felt like the ideal time to properly codify Freddie’s brand strategy and identity, readying it for new territories and innovations like gifting. It also served as an opportunity to set Freddie’s apart in a category that had grown somewhat predictable and disposable.

Background

Back in 2015, Freddie Garland started delivering weekly flowers in “a knackered old milk float” to his mum and dad’s neighbours. Since then, the business has grown to over 130,000 happy customers nationwide. Following a $60m investment from The Craftory, Freddie’s enlisted our help to define, clarify and broaden their brand strategy and brand codes.

The Brief

Because Freddie’s Flowers had grown so organically, the brand needed a little pruning. A new round of investment felt like the ideal time to properly codify Freddie’s brand strategy and identity, readying it for new territories and innovations like gifting. It also served as an opportunity to set Freddie’s apart in a category that had grown somewhat predictable and disposable.

The Solution

A full brand code audit allowed us to see where the existing brand was failing to live up to its price point and audience, while a strategic overhaul established a clearer point of difference. A new Big Idea and verbal identity along with visual identity refinements and art direction, all established Freddie’s as a premium expert and champion for the restorative power of flowers.

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Superflowers

In a category that's become increasingly lazy, formulaic and inherently disposable we redefined Freddie’s Flowers as MORE. Fuelled by expert florist Freddie Garland, Freddie’s creative arrangements surprise, delight and reveal the forgotten meaning of flowers. It’s a cumulative cocktail of tactile nature, laced with learning, meaning and creativity – all delivered as a regular restorative wellbeing ritual rather than a once a year apology.

As a guiding principle, it positions Freddie’s not just as a conscious, expert floral creator but as a teacher; an organisation that wants to see flowers reach their maximum potential. This deeper well-being focus for flowers gives Freddie’s a clear point of difference that makes their cut flowers less ephemeral and more enriching. Flowers that leave an impression even after they’re gone? That’s true flower power.
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A restorative and rebellious creator

The Freddie’s archetype blend is a source of knowledge and stimulation, breathing inspiration into others, affecting multi-sensory transformations, brightening rooms, lifting moods and empowering self-expression through the universal language of flowers. In challenge to the category’s passive, shallow, short-term nature, Freddie’s deliver a deep connection to the life-enriching power of flowers by wrapping their beauty in meaning.

Lively, fun and poetic

Voice pillars create the bridge between archetype and voice. For Freddie’s we lead with natural, lively energy, backed up by inventive fun and just a splash of meditative poetry. The voice needs to capture a blend of Freddie Garland’s natural lifelong enthusiasm for flowers and the restorative feeling that the flowers themselves can give you.

Bursting with colour, steeped in knowledge

An energising sensual voice that stays natural and friendly. Always full of vibrance, life and quintessentially English expertise. Never elitist or superior but not afraid to throw around the correct latin names for stems or the odd historical reference either.

The Freddie’s voice is full of verve and positivity. It wants you to feel Freddie’s enthusiasm for flowers. It lives in the moment, it's encouraging, celebratory, always amazed by the beauty of nature and it'll often use words that stir the senses.

We never just call a daffodil a daffodil, no, they are the yellow trumpets of spring! And we’re dancing with delphiniums against a backdrop of roaring red snapdragons.
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Back to the fuchsias

The brand code audit revealed that Freddie’s existing ‘doodle’ illustration style was failing to convey their master florist led brand. The flowers were too loose, too throwaway to be drawn by an expert and with everything rendered in blunt black and white, a sense of nature and colour was missing from the brand.

First we recommended far more detailed botanical style illustrations, deliberately cropped close-up in to show the detail of the flowers. The hand of the illustrator here becomes far more expert, it directly references Victorian botanical illustrations which again nods to forgotten meaning and detail about flowers that Freddie’s can reveal.
Colour palette – Freddie's Flowers
Colour palette – Freddie's Flowers

Evergreen

To bring nature and colour back into the brand, we started by creating a master palette that replaced the stark black and white with the greens found in gardening and nature, with a little nod to Englishness. A dark green referenced from a watering can, but with a touch of British racing green, became the core colour of the primary palette. This is supported by the kraft card texture of Freddie’s boxes which all flowers arrive in. Finally, to offer contrast and bridge the dark green and coppery brown of the kraft card we added a fresh, minty, oxidised green.
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A touch of seasoning

To complement this primary palette we delved into Freddie’s full seasonal catalogue of flowers across the year, to understand which stems are in season when and what the collective colour palette of those seasons could be. The result was four seasonal secondary palettes, to be used across communications and special events or unique products. These secondary palettes complement the primary green palette, where green is a universal colour of nature present in every stem, the secondary palettes are drawn from the blooms themselves; ever changing and alive.
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Every rose has its thorns

Finally, the logo received a careful clean up, in the shape of a redraw and rebalance of some of the more eccentric characters and some more precision on the loosest characters. It was important to retain the logo’s brand equity and history, as the brand all started with Freddie hand stamping his name on the boxes delivered to his neighbours. This logo tweak was really about smartening-up some of the more unruly characters and cleaning up the rough edges. Lastly, we added a locator to emphasise Freddie’s English roots as they move into new regions.
“Better fully coded the brand, defined the masterbrand story bringing forward Freddie’s master florist expertise and the quintessential Englishness of his artisanship.”

JP Thurlow

Craft Partner, The Craftory