CASE STUDY: PARKHI EASY-BREW COFFEE
The easiest way to become a coffee snob.
Team FRISK consumed entirely too much caffeine. For research purposes.
Find out what happened next!
SERVICES
branding
packaging
INDUSTRY
FMCG
There are some people who like coffee. We are not those people. We worship coffee. So, when Asis came to us with an interesting proposition, our dilated pupils widened further.
Instant coffee is super convenient but tastes like mud. Ground coffee is the food of the gods but takes forever to brew. Just forget about Aeropress and drip coffee, especially when you have stuff to do.
As an agency that is powered by caffeine and pressed for time, we were excited to try out the prototype Asis brought us of his product “DIP Coffee”. The ‘DIP’ part of Asis’s working title was indicative of the fact that his product was like a teabag, except filled with freshly ground gourmet coffee. Dip into hot water, and you have instant coffee that tastes like french press. So cool!
The first thing we all agreed on was that the working title had to go. Asis came by one day, brewed us all some of his coffee, and sat down for our questions. At the end of an hour of brainstorming, we were left with caffeine jitters, and a new name: Parkhi. From the Urdu for ‘keen-eyed’ or ‘connoisseur’, the name fits both the discerning characteristic of the speciality coffee-drinker, and the refreshing nature of coffee.
Changing the name from ‘DIP’ to Parkhi threw the doors open for interesting creative opportunities. Since this is a unique way to consume coffee, the ‘uniqueness’ factor needed to translate onto the packaging as well. The hot beverage section in most supermarkets is dominated by packaging in shades of green, gold, black, and other dark hues. We also wanted to ‘lighten’ the perception around coffee, which is usually associated with adjectives such as “rich” and “earthy”. Another reason we chose a rainbow of colours was the fact that this packaging needed to jump out at the aisle-browser.
Hand-lettering the logo was a choice we made to make the brand more approachable. The target audience is free-spirited and organic, not to mention that this coffee is locally and organically grown. We thought that a casual, scrawled logo tipped its hat to both. Oh, there’s an eye in there because of what the word Parkhi represents. A vernacular version of the logo graces the back of the packaging as a tribute to the origin.
This product is still a prototype, and our project remains on hold.
CREDITS
Sanjana Bhatt
design
Anand Vijayasimha
project management