Sport Beans.
This website for energised consumers offers oodles of interactive community-building functions, such as maps, events lists, photo and video galleries...
Background.
Popcorn has built several websites for Best Imports Ltd, UK importer of world-famous Jelly Belly jelly beans. Popcorn has already carried out one major revamp of the UK Jelly Belly site, with another being planned for 2008. Following a successful launch in the USA, Best Imports was looking to test-market a new range of jelly beans – Sport Beans – in the UK. Sport Beans contain a nutritional mix aimed at providing easily-digested rapid energy, electrolyte and vitamin replacement during exercise. The aim of the UK site was to promote awareness of and interest in Sport Beans, to encourage retailers to stock them and create an online community for sports people. For an importer more used to distributing confectionery, it was to be an interesting challenge.
"We’ve found Popcorn to be just brilliant and I wouldn’t go anywhere else.”
Annie Metlikovec - Best Imports
Implementation.
Annie Metlikovec, Senior Administrator at Best Imports, takes up the story: “Jelly Belly’s US owners are very protective of the brand’s identity, but even so they allow us more latitude with the UK website than any of their other distributors, even though we have nothing like Jelly Belly’s budget. Our Popcorn-created site works so well we even get emailed by people in the US, asking us who is their local retailer of Jelly Belly jelly beans! It was Popcorn’s MD, Fintan Lambe, who persuaded us that we should include an online shop on the site and I’m glad we did, as turnover is mushrooming.
“Having built several sites for us now, Popcorn know us so well it feels like we’re all working as a team. That’s important when you need an edge and something fresh, like the Sport Beans website. Sport Beans is still evolving as we speak – it’s actually been quite a learning curve for us, because it’s a slight deviation from what we normally do. Sport Beans are not confectionery but a sport nutritional product, so we have to target a different audience. That means ensuring the product and the website have a completely different look and feel from the Jelly Belly site. These days I find I can give Popcorn a fairly loose brief on this kind of thing, as they tend to think outside the box, which is what we need.”
Popcorn delivers.
The UK Sport Beans website successfully meets the design objectives, with strong visuals that create a real sense of explosive energy, while conveying the nutritional benefits of the beans. For the Sport Beans community, the site enables athletes to present themselves online, together with event news, dates, results, photo galleries and more. Content submission by athletes can be moderated through the content management system. There is also a press room for the latest news and announcements, such as profiles of the professional athletes being sponsored by the Sport Beans brand.
The success of the Sport Beans website has already given rise to plans for a spin-off micro-site - also to be created by Popcorn - that will be dedicated to a cycling team co-sponsored by Sport Beans. It will have the same kind of feel to it as Sport Beans, but incorporate a co-sponsor, so the challenge for Best Imports – and Popcorn - will be to balance key elements of both sponsors’ branding on the site.
Client comment.
Annie on Popcorn: “If you really didn’t know anything and just went to Popcorn and told them what you do and asked them to create something for you, they would do so from scratch without a problem – it’s as much or as little as you want. You get a good rapport going with these guys and once you have that, it’s almost disaster to go anywhere else, really. Popcorn talks the same language as us and is incredibly efficient, professional and fast. I’m in contact with one or other of the guys almost on a daily basis and if I ask them to do something and it’s urgent enough, they will do it there and then, yet they are very good at working within a budget.” She concludes: “I tend to be a bit sceptical when I read endorsements of companies, but genuinely I would have no problem if Popcorn wanted to refer someone to me to ask what I think of them. We’ve found them to be just brilliant and I wouldn’t go anywhere else.”