We are proud to announce that LFH illuminating brands has won a DBA Design Effectiveness Award (2012) for our work with Unilever.
Says Colour and Reprographics Director, Andrew Davis: “The initial vision – coupled with the technical skills and people required to implement a project of this scope, sophistication and complexity – was only the beginning. What made this challenge so special was our “why not?” attitude. We are delighted that the DBA has recognised the huge benefits derived by this intelligent and collaborative approach which continues to deliver substantial results.”
Here’s our story:
Unilever’s Spreads & Cooking Category (SCC) produces soft spread brands such as Flora and Becel. This market is highly competitive with new products and own-label constantly challenging the brand’s ‘premium’ price. To help Unilever to effectively compete, designers naturally erred towards the selection of different spot inks when re-designing and extending the brands. This meant that the number of inks used to print the entire SCC range had increased to over 100 – a technical complexity that resulted in huge production costs. In 2005, having worked with SCC for some time, LFH identified an opportunity to reduce print costs without detriment to the ‘look and feel’ of their brands. We found a way to ‘faithfully’ reproduce 150 different SCC brands using a fixed and constant set of just six inks.
This meant that, whilst printing is underway there is dramatically less down time and greater actual print time, which equates to greater print capacity and total output. The result was lower print fixed cost allocations leading to lower print costs. LFH’s ‘colour harmonisation solution’ – Chapter 1 – involved fully engaging with the SCC Management team to ensure that our approach was championed, embraced and implemented to very tight deadlines.
Our solution remains the most comprehensive example of brand-focused colour harmonisation in the market. ‘Project Rainbow’ was a commercial success with brand value actually enhanced. Its success was entirely due to the fact that LFH are experts in both design and production.
“The team was, quite frankly, blown away with the results – no-one could quite believe that such quality could be realised when using six colours, considering our printers had, in many cases, been using well over 100! Revolutionary is a strong word to use, but that’s exactly what we’re talking of here – cost savings as a result are set to be significant to say the least.”
Mathew Daniels, Global Capability Leader – Printing and Decoration, Unilever
