DS Smith — Innovation
Since its inception in 1940 as a box-making business located in East London, DS Smith has grown to become an international leader in sustainable packaging solutions. True innovators in the industry; DS Smith are working with customers across the globe to optimise their supply chains, reduce the use of plastics in packaging and embrace circularity.
With a unique approach to innovation, including dedicated specialist teams and the opening of a new research and development facility, DS Smith had a compelling and truly differentiating story that wasn’t being told. In order to support their strategy of organic growth, they needed a way to use that story to engage potential and existing customers.
Inquisitive people. Innovative perspectives.
SampsonMay were commissioned to develop and implement a digital-first brand campaign that would help to position DS Smith as an innovation partner to customers new and old, express their unique innovation philosophy, and communicate it more broadly than they’d ever done before.
Our discovery phase unearthed the insight that DS Smith is home to some of the industry’s most curious people, with a true passion for tackling today’s complexities and making packaging better. This insight led us to a core thought of ‘Inquisitive people. Innovative perspectives.’ This idea informed the campaign narrative and creative approach, with the need to champion their in-house innovators from across the world and hero the industry-shaping work that they do.
Thought-provoking perspectives
We defined a direct, challenging and vibrant campaign tone in order to convey the thought provoking perspectives of DS Smith’s innovation heroes. We captured those perspectives in-person, by filming and photographing key members of the DS Smith innovation team.
The primary colour palette was used in bold and unapologetic ways, along with a new gradient to add further recognition and dynamism to the campaign look and feel.
A digital-led approach
As a digital-first campaign, it was critical to consider motion alongside the standard visual approach as part of the campaign platform – creating stronger engagement in a busy, online environment. We developed motion principles to bring the concept to life, showcasing DS Smith’s dynamic, layered and curious world of innovation.
Together with the campaign platform, we delivered of a series of static and dynamic digital ads, a launch video from which a series of shorts were also created, direct e-marketing content, animated case study shorts and content for their corporate website.
A dynamic, adaptive campaign with a global message
Flexibility and adaptability were key to the brief – ensuring the campaign had longevity. Not only did the campaign platform need to be powerful and impactful, but it also needed the ability to work across high-level brand awareness through to individual product-specific stories.
Key stakeholders from across DS Smith’s key market regions and divisions were engaged, to ensure the platform would resonate on a global scale. Core assets were delivered in multiple languages, and a full toolkit of elements was supplied to ensure the regions could localise messages and content as needed.
So far the reception has been fantastic — it’s received four times the engagement of anything we’ve done before!