Episode 289: How to Create Covetable Brand Merch with Emma Ralphs, Butterfly Cannon

Welcome to Skucast, the podcast for entrepreneurs in the promotional products industry. Skucast shines a light on our industry's best work, features maverick personalities, and discusses what's really involved in running a modern promotional products business. Skucast is the official podcast of Common Skew.

Emma Ralfs is a strategist and copywriter at Butterfly Cannon, an independent, award-winning, sustainably focused brand design agency headquartered in London specializing in aspirational brands across the world. Emma wrote an article, From Tacky to Trendsetting: How to Create Covetable Brand Merch. Based on her research experience and work done for the exceptional Johnnie Walker merch campaign. And because of that article, I reached out to Emma and wanted to explore this topic a little further with her because it was such a well-written and well-researched article. Emma's based in London as well. She's an English lit grad from the University of Leeds. She's always had an interest in the power of words and the power of stories. Since starting at Butterfly Cannon, she's worked across a portfolio of premium, global, and startup clients in food, drink, lifestyle, health and well-being, and education. And at Butterfly Cannon, Emma is a go-to for figuring out what a brand's unique story is and then how to tell it in the most powerful and beautiful way possible. Hi friends, I'm Bobby LeHew, Chief Content Officer at Common Skew. Hey, before we chat with Emma, I want to remind you the registration is now open for our epic event experience, SkewCon, held in Las Vegas on January 14th, and featuring Wall Street Journal bestseller Joey Coleman, author of the book Never Lose a Customer Again. And he's also just released a new book, Never Lose an Employee Again: The Simple Path to Remarkable Retention. This coming SKUCON marks the 10th time the industry's most innovative thinkers will gather together to connect, learn, and reignite alongside like-minded pros. If you're a new listener, SKUCON breaks the boundaries in the promotional products industry in a sort sits at the cutting edge of merch life, featuring stories from pros in the trenches, fresh ideas from tomorrow's leaders, and a celebration of brilliant brand execution and growth. SKUCon is almost sold out, so if you're interested in attending, grab those tickets for you and your team today at SKUCon.com, and I hope to see you there. Today's episode is brought to you by Commonsku, the work-from-anywhere platform that powers your connected workflow enabling you to process more orders and dramatically grow your sales. To learn more, visit commonscue.com. Now here's my conversation with Emma, and I have to say, it's always so refreshing to talk to an agency outside of the specialization of the merch industry because they come at our channel with a fresh perspective. And Emma's insights are so helpful. I encourage you to forward this episode on to your team.

Enjoy. Emma, so glad to have you on the Skewcast.

Thanks for doing this. Thanks for having me. It's a very big pleasure.

So you wrote this article, as I said in the intro, From Tacky to Trendsetting: How to Create Covetable Brand Merch. And that's how we met.

I saw the article and I thought, I have got to talk to her.

What kind of research did you do going into that article?

So, I mean, the idea kind of was floating around in our agency, just some kind of projects that we worked on before. We kind of noticed this sort of, kind of, you know, this thing of kind of brand merch kind of picking up and kind of having more of kind of cultural currency. As an agency, we're very much like, we love sharing articles, we love like taking pictures of things we've seen. So yeah, we just— and it's one of those things where once you notice something, you start noticing it everywhere. Like, there's a coffee shop around the corner, and I noticed they were doing merch. And I was like, well, this is really interesting. Places where you, you know, go to buy your coffee and now offering their own kind of merchandise, kind of putting their name out there in a different way. So then, yeah, kind of once the idea, you know, we saw there was an idea, we saw there's kind of definitely something to it, then you do, you know, all the kind of usual thing of the research, seeing what else is out there, who else has kind of said things about it, and then kind of seeing what is your kind of take on it, what's your angle. And obviously the work we with Jonny Walker really helped to inform that in terms of kind of what the kind of content would be for it and how— what the angle would be. Yeah, that's kind of a brief overview of kind of the approach to it and everything.

Okay. I love how you use the word social currency because that's exactly what's happening. It's become a part of our social fabric. What did you discover that brands get wrong with merch?

I think getting it wrong is just kind of this like lack of intention. I think it kind of feeling very inauthentic. I think a really big thing with a lot of the work we do and a lot of the work we see with brands. It's like, it's really important that whatever you do is true to who you are and kind of true to your audience, even if it's kind of you're trying to reach a new audience, you're doing it in an authentic way, not just a money-making kind of scheme, which I know at the end of the day merch is a kind of part of that. But it's, you know, having the intention, seeing what your consumer wants. And I think when they get it wrong, it's when it's kind of low quality, you know, it's the kind of stuff where it might create hype, but then it's going to end up in a landfill because actually it doesn't have a place in consumer's life. And it kind of feels like an afterthought, you know, when you kind of see those like t-shirts or tote bags and stuff with their kind of logos just sort of like thrown on it, and it feels very standard, kind of very expected. So yeah, definitely when it's not really aligning with a brand's values or just doesn't really feel very thought through is when we kind of see it not really like, yeah, not really getting a place in a consumer's world, in that kind of life.

What did you discover that brands get right?

I mean, you've sort of covered that in your previous answer, but are there brands that also do merch incredibly well that you discovered?

Yeah, I think, well, as I was kind of saying, it's when brands do something authentic, they kind of do something in a way that speaks to them as a brand. A kind of example of that is— it's actually a collaboration, but it was between Glenn Livett and Prabal Gurung, and it was a partnership where they created this Limited Edition flask and then this flask bag. Obviously Glenlivet is a whiskey, and through this merch it kind of like put them in a different category. What was really interesting is they both, both these businesses kind of embrace each other's kind of like break from tradition. So that's kind of speaking to the brand truth of each brand. It's like we're kind of, you know, like we like to push things, we're disruptors. So then they're doing something that speaks to that. In terms of kind of like other brands that are doing it well, I'd say a lot of like It's quite interesting, but a lot of London restaurants, especially during the pandemic, making merch became another way of making money or kind of, you know, still surviving while everything was locked down. But also it's a way of kind of your, you know, showing your loyalty to something. Obviously with a restaurant, you're— the easiest way to do that is, you know, by going there. But with merch, you can kind of show your loyalty, show you're part of this kind of in-crowd because the kind of brands that were doing it were like these kind of in-crowd London restaurants. And it's just really interesting to see when brands do that and they kind of move from one kind of position to another one through using merchandise.

Yeah. It's interesting that you noticed how a brand chooses to break out of its sort of stereotypes to embrace a merch partnership or merch creation. I think that's a fun part of it. You also mentioned a few things I think that are really important for this audience. And that is we talked about social currency earlier, but Gen Z has really embraced merch as a part of an outward expression, as a part of identifying with the brands they love. Do you think that's a part of what you've seen as the growth and phenomenon behind merch?

Yeah, I definitely think so. I think because Gen Z are so much more— not, I mean, it's one of those things where you don't want to brand an entire generation as one thing, but they're kind of way more open-minded. They're way more experimental with things. They are the kind of— You know, they're the kind of generation to be like, I'm gonna wear that t-shirt from this restaurant because, you know, I like it. Not because I'm worried about what other people think, but because I'm like, that's cool, that's fun. And I think so much of merch is actually about that. I think it was really interesting, I was listening to your episode with Mark Graham that was released, I think, this week, and obviously you talk about the joy economy and the kind of— I, I think this is such an interesting trend, the joy economy, and the way that we're looking for these little bits of excitement and joy in everyday life. And you get that obviously through like dopamine dressing. So for example, wearing merchandise from your favorite brand, because that's a way of saying these are the things I love and there's things that bring me joy in like this really nice way. Yeah.

And then do you use the phrase dopamine dressing?

Yeah, I did read it in an article. I'm not claiming it, but I love it.

What a great phrase.

I know, it's amazing, isn't it? I think that's a good phrase. Yeah.

Definitely. I just got in a book yesterday by Alison Bornstein called Wear It Well. She just released it. She's the one that came up with the wrong shoe theory and the three, the three words to describe your personal style. But the fact that you mentioned dopamine dressing, that's an interesting aspect of the joy economy and merch and tying that together with Gen Z. What a great connection.

Yeah.

Yeah. It's like your research is a connect the dots to try and figure out what kind of picture we're creating. In your article, you also talk about inclusivity and exclusivity with merch creation. And you said that we have to sort of tread the line between those two. What did you mean by that?

I think in the sense that like, at the end of the day, exclusivity sells. People want a part of that thing that maybe, you know, for example, it's a limited run, you can only get it at a certain place. Maybe it's kind of priced a bit out of your usual price bracket. It's that sense of something that's slightly— it's like obtainable, but like you've got that sense you're being part of something. But at the same time, you don't want to exclude people. You know, I think merch obviously is been talking about is a way of creating community or feeling like you're part of something. So as we can say, it's like really toeing this line between making it feel special and, you know, something that people want to invest into and buy into, but also it doesn't feel like every day it's something that feels special. And, you know, obviously you're trying to create hype, you're trying to create that PR story with the merch as well.

You, um, there were two 2 things you brought up also. You suggested that brands should be willing to be playful with merch collections. And you probably saw or heard Mark and I talk about the fact that Tim Hortons and was that a brand miss or was that a brand trying to just play and have fun with it? And in the context, you also said collaborate wisely.

Can you unpack that a little bit?

Why do you think it's important for brands to have fun with this?

Well, I think at the end of the day, as we've kind of been talking about, consumers want to have fun. With things as well. And I think gone are the days where things were really like stuffy. I think especially with the way we're seeing luxury change, luxury is becoming less stuffy. There's this kind of whole changing face of luxury, the rise of like the Gen Z luxury consumer. It's like, it's no longer what you assume. I'm going to talk a lot about luxury because that's kind of what the agency I work at does. But yeah, the way that things are kind of changing, and there's this kind of willingness I think, from a lot of people to kind of break the rules and have fun, because at the end of the day, that's the only way you're going to innovate. That's the only way you're going to grow. And I think that's why merch is a really great avenue for brands to kind of grow and innovate, is because you can have fun and you can usually— it's a way of getting into a different category. Like, say for example, if you're a restaurant brand and then you release merch, you're kind of then tapping into fashion. So you're moving across into this other segment. So, you know, inevitably it's going to obviously be strategic, it's going to have to have a lot of thought behind it, but it can also be fun, it can also be playful. And I think at the end of the day, that's, that's what it should be.

Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about the Johnny Walker project because I thought it was such a cool project that you worked on. What was your project scope at Butterfly Cannon for the Johnny Walker merch in particular?

So it was kind of— the project came to us as part of this bigger scope to kind of transform Johnnie Walker from a lifestyle brand into a lifestyle brand with this kind of fashion-focused attitude. So this kind of came as like the first drop in this redefining strategy. So we kind of worked really closely with the team, with suppliers, with partner brands to kind of think about how we were going to do this. How are we thinking about brand merch, especially in kind of alcohol segment, in a different way? This is, this is going to be something that people actually wanted to wear. It wasn't going to be kind of expected merch, where it's kind of, you know, just putting a logo on something and you move on. This is like, we want to tap into something different. It was also really big because it's changing the way people think about whisky, because it's like, it's not just, you know, this drink that's kind of drank by a certain type of person. We're moving into a different space, and it may be moving into a different space where it reaches people that maybe wouldn't have— aren't necessarily whisky drinkers or connoisseurs. They maybe see the merch first and then they kind of get into it. So this is really shift, this really big kind of like reworking of where Johnnie Walker would sit as a brand, which we were a part of, which is obviously really amazing.

Yeah, that is a really fascinating aspect to think that merch is opening up avenues of a new audience for a brand, traditional brand, particularly a very traditional brand. Did you consider Johnnie Walker's competitors' merch in your creation for Johnnie Walker? What did you— if so, what did you discover about that?

I think it kind of just proved to us that we were kind of going to be the first to do merch in this sort of way. I think when you look at their kind of competitors, none of them were doing it in a way that was kind of pushing fashion or pushing any sense of joy. It's a typical— you go to the distillery and you can get a t-shirt with the brand, like, brand wordmark on it. Like, it's nothing— it wasn't anything challenging, it wasn't anything that was desirable necessarily. So that's what kind of gave us even more push to be like, we're going to do something really different, it's going to be bold, confident, this kind of like, this is me statement pieces, which is what, you know, we ended up creating.

What did you learn about the audience and market segmentation in relation to this merch project? I mean, I'm assuming Johnnie Walker's being such an established, long-established brand has a particular audience, and maybe merch appealed to a completely different demographic.

What did you learn? Yeah, we knew that we were kind of going to be reaching different people that, as we were kind of saying, maybe didn't didn't see Johnnie Walker in that way. We're kind of going for that kind of younger consumer, recruiting newer drinkers, because trying to change the perception of what Johnnie Walker and whisky can be. So it's kind of looking for those trendsetters, those people that are kind of looking for, you know, something different, something bold, something statement, the kind of gen— obviously not the young Gen Zs, but like the able-to-drink Gen Zs. And that's kind of what we did with the, with the, with the merch, we're kind of blowing up the KDAs, we're setting them off the leash. The leash, that's the word, you know, kind of blowing things up, going bold, going confident, because that's, you know, that's what's fun. And that's what, you know, people want to see, people pushing things and challenging the way of thinking.

I love that merch gives you that permission to do that. Like, it opens up that energy in that channel, because when you treat merch like a channel, then it can open up all kinds of opportunities also. When I think of the Johnnie Walker brand, I think of this sort of dark pub experience and I think of darker tones and maybe I don't— obviously you work with the brand all the time, but was there a mood change or a voice shift you want to make? You touched on it a little bit, but there's in the video, for example, that you created, there was this vibrant energy. Yeah, very colorful.

Yeah, definitely. I think, I think Johnnie Walker as a brand is very progressive, even if it maybe has those associations of kind of darker whiskey drinking. They're very kind of, you know, the whole thing is the striding man. It's going forward. It's being— it's like pushing things. And we really wanted to create this kind of boundary-pushing, very culturally aware, but also fun, bold, energetic thing, which is why you have all these really bold colors. It's your yellows, your blues, it's your reds. You've got the kind of KBAs like going across things. It's like, you know, messing things up a bit. And with the video, obviously that is, you know, kind of tapping into that kind of cultural sense of, you know, social media and like content is key and like how can we make things easy to digest and impactful. And a video is a really great way to do that, is to have that kind of really dynamic way of conveying what you're doing is like create a video.

Yeah, it was fun. We'll put a link to this in the show notes. It's a beautifully done video, of course, and your agency does beautiful work. It's fun, it's energetic, it's colorful.

And did you cut that up and use it in social?

Like, what were some of the other ways you used it? Because I thought it was like a cool video. I know it's like a commercial in a sense, but it's like a cool video catalog.

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yes, it was kind of like, how can we do a catalog without doing a literal catalog? It's like, here's everything we've done in a way that is easily digestible, especially, you know, for an audience with less of an attention span, you know, it's is how can you make things snappy? We, I mean, we kind of left it to markets to kind of how they wanted to cut it up and how they wanted to use it. And part of the project was creating a toolkit to go with everything we did to kind of allow the markets to kind of run with it, allow them to do what they needed to do, but giving them the guidelines to be able to do that.

Yeah.

Was the merch campaign a part of a bigger campaign within Johnnie Walker, or was it specifically, no, we're going to focus on just the merch campaign?

It was, I mean, for us it was mainly the merch campaign and everything. I mean, obviously it was part of a greater brand strategy, so there were things around that, but for us it was kind of all about, you know, creating this merch, thinking about the activation, thinking about, you know, making this lasting impression. Obviously this, then the merch is going to be sold at the kind of Johnnie Walker distillery in, in Edinburgh, and so it wanted to be, you know, it's the first and last thing you see when you go there, I believe. And so it's kind of about delivering that lasting impression, it being bold and bright, and you're thinking, yes, that's, you know, that's the associations you want to have with it.

Yeah, love it. Let's talk a little bit about Butterfly Cannon because it's a cool brand. What a great agency. And you call yourself designers for aspirational brands. What's your unique expertise at Butterfly Cannon?

Yes, do you mean me or the agency?

Both the agency and, and, and you as well.

Yeah, sure. So yeah, Butterfly Cannon, we are a London-based agency, so based in Holborn, which is near Covent Garden. It's very central, and we're a design studio, and we kind of— our expertise is aspirational brands. We kind of, we see those as the brands that people are willing or want to pay more for. They're the kind of brands that have usually unique and very impactful stories to tell. Our mantra is powerful stories beautifully told. And so we're all about storytelling, we're all about doing that again really beautifully, also really consciously. A big thing about the way we do things is we're really into sustainability and thinking about, you know, if we're making these beautiful, you know, beautiful, you know, designs, they also need to have, you know, they need to be conscious, they need to have a good impact wherever they may end up. So that's kind of, you know, us as an agency. And then my experience Design, a strategist and copywriter at BC. So I've been here for 4 years now, and yeah, it's a really great place to work. It's amazing. This is kind of my, my first experience of the kind of branding world and the kind of packaging world, and it— what, you know, what an interesting place to be in. It's, it's— yeah, so we kind of work across from kind of alcohol to fragrance. We work with kind of, you know, the big players to the more local heroes, and we kind of have an international spread of clients. So, you know, which is really exciting to work, you know, with people all across the world.

That's a lot of fun. It seems this industry does a lot of packaging now. This is a COVID, post-COVID phenomenon, but it seems you do a lot of merchandise packaging design. Can you share more about that or a few high-profile examples of what you do?

Yeah, sure. I mean, I think just the kind of most recently released stuff is we did some amazing work with Brook 37, which is a US US-based tea company, and they kind of really wanted to push what tea was seen as in the US, as it— this kind of being a bit of a, like, you know, not this— not really being seen in a luxury sense. And they really wanted to reposition it as this kind of— as themselves as the kind of atelier of tea. So we kind of looked at the brand identity, the storytelling of community at the heart. We created this really beautiful, consciously designed metal tea caddy, which really tells the story of, like, community from the heart with the tea leaf design. Another project we've worked on is MOJT, which is a ready-to-serve cocktail project, and it was kind of bringing Chinese megacity cocktail culture to consumers. Again, really beautiful packaging, which kind of tells the story through really intricate designs of kind of cocktails. And, and then another one I'm trying to think of Another one, yeah, another one is Godhavan, which is an Indian single malt whiskey. So we helped with, you know, bringing that, the whole brand to life, like right from the beginning of what's this brand going to be to now, you know, the activations, the toolkit. And so yeah, we do it, we do a lot of packaging design work. We also do work in terms of campaigns, um, and things beyond that. And we also do like brand refreshes as well.

Okay, well, let's talk about Emma a little bit. What brands inspire you? Like, who do you follow and where do you go? I mean, in many ways in your role, you have to be a multi-hyphenate. You have to sort of be very open to all kinds of design experiences. But what brands inspire you the most?

I'm going to be super annoying and not have a straight answer for this because I mean, as a strategy, as you kind of saying, as a strategist, I kind of have to be up to date with everything. I think most of my mornings at work are kind of spent seeing what's happening, seeing what the trends out there are. I think in— not really in terms of brands, but kind of places I go to are like WGSN, Wunderman Thompson, Stylus, LSN. Always looking for kind of what brands are doing, who's innovating, who's treading in a different space. Um, because obviously that's really good for us to be aware of. I'm really interested in like consumer insights, um, and consumer behavior because I think we're all quite fascinating and it's, it's just really interesting to see what the trends are. Like we kind of spoken about like the joy economy and stuff like that.

Yeah. Well, it's funny, you have to cross-pollinate in your work and that's really what you're talking about. Okay. So I have two final questions here. One is one the community loves for me to ask, and that's, do you have a particular book, podcast, movie, or article you had recently that made an impact on you? And it doesn't have to be about business.

Yeah, I, I've actually got two. Again, be annoying, but the first is a business-related one. It's by WGSN. They have a really good podcast called Create Tomorrow, which is really good for insights, and they released one recently, and it's Will AI Become Your New Design Superpower? We've obviously been having a lot of discussions as an agency about AI, what the kind of impact's going to be. I know there's been a lot of rumblings about will we lose our jobs which, you know, isn't the case, but kind of thinking about how we're going to incorporate that into our work. And that podcast is really insightful in terms of making sure you're using AI authentically and that it actually kind of works for you as a brand. And then, and not so business-related, I've read a really good book called Still Life, which I really recommend. I actually can't remember the author of it, but really beautiful, really lovely story about a man who inherits he gets a house in Florence in Italy and he moves there and it's just really beautifully written.

So yeah.

Okay.

I added that high to my list. Thank you for that. Last question. I know we have just 3 minutes left. I loved your article and to wrap this up and bring it back to merch for this audience, you have some, and by the way, thank you for those recommendations. All of those are phenomenal. People are going to be writing down where it is that you're sourcing your latest trends. You have some great insight for this audience and going back to the article, Is there one particular takeaway you took from researching the merch industry? And since you work with high-profile brands all the time, if you had to distill your advice down to one piece of advice, what would be the most important?

This is the gold question, isn't it? I think that merch is actually easy to get right. And I think the answer is, as I've kind of been saying, is to just know your audience. Know what is important to you as a brand and allow yourself to have fun with it. And I think those are my, those are my nuggets of wisdom.

I love it. Emma, thank you so much for taking time out of your schedule to visit with us from beautiful London. And I love the work you've done, the Johnnie Walker campaign. Everybody at your team just has done such an amazing job. We're watching with admiration, but thanks for showing up and joining us for the podcast.

Thank you so much for having me. It's been, yeah, it's been great fun. So yeah, thank you.

Thanks so much for tuning in to this episode of SKU Cast. Be sure to keep up with our latest content by subscribing to SKU Cast on iTunes, or to our blog at community.commskew.com. Until next time, friends, thanks so much for listening.