Based in the Outer Hebrides, the Isle of Harris Distillery’s business model strongly focuses on online postal orders.

The challenges for their postal gifting packaging are:

• To provide an engaging, premium opening experience which enhances the beautiful, multi-award-winning Gin and complementary glassware range.
• To enable the team at Harris to efficiently and cost-effectively assemble the packaging.
• To be 100% recyclable and as materially efficient as possible.
• And most importantly, to safely transport fragile glassware through the post.

Our approach:

• We redesigned from the footprint up making dramatic improvements in material efficiency without compromising structural integrity.
• Quality and tactility were improved whilst maintaining sustainable credentials.
• The introduction of embossing, full-colour print and metallic print all add to the enhanced customer experience.
• Unique glass fitments are created to enhance the unboxing experience and ensure fragile glasses arrive in one piece, whilst allowing for the pack to be used in a retail environment.
• The range was rationalised to minimise component parts, with multi-use elements being created wherever possible to lower the carbon footprint.
• Customers can include a handwritten personalised note to enhance their experience.

A range of beautiful postal packaging for three different glass types, delivered in a blank postal outer to avoid any ‘surprise spoiling’. A balance of aesthetic appeal and structural stability has been reached to create a strong, post-safe pack with strong premium cues which can work equally as well in a retail environment.

We reduced the amount of material used on the packs, all of which was fully recyclable, for efficiency and cost and the design has been enhanced to improve the recipient’s unboxing experience, whilst lowering the carbon footprint.

The results:

• Excellent ongoing customer feedback despite a price increase from the previous year.
• Glass set sales increased dramatically and new customer acquisition increased.
• Winner of several awards including the Scottish Design Awards and a Golden Envelope at the SMP Mail Performance Awards.

Albert Heijn is the largest supermarket chain in the Netherlands with over 1,000 stores. To help bring Albert Heijn’s customer-first vision to life across multiple channels, APS were a natural choice as an experienced in-house agency partner. The award-winning global agency won the pitch process against a number of key competitors.

Overview

As a global communications company working in-house with a number of retailers, APS understands the demands of multi-channel campaigns throughout the year. Their teams work closely with a number of lead agencies, with creatives able to quickly immerse themselves in a campaign – expanding key visuals and concepts and delivering fully-fledged communications, on tight timelines and budgets.

Think

APS provides a unique, one-client touchpoint, taking any brief from concept through to completion and delivery – whether this is POS and packaging in store, creative concepts, video, photography, design, digital or social media content creation.

Create

Being onsite allows for shorter lines of communication. Creative teams work as one with the client to ensure each campaign’s true potential is realised and value-added at every point of the journey.

Deliver

The APS creative network globally supports Albert Heijn’s onsite team in Zaandam – however support will predominantly come from APS’ Halfweg creative hub and APS’ Eindhoven technical hub who have been working closely together with the onsite team since day one, to ensure brand and cultural immersion.

“Our partnership with APS Group has allowed us to deliver on a vision we have had for some time now: to increase control of our marketing communications.”

Albert Heijn Studio Director

As part of our Crown Commercial Services agreement (Lot 1 RM3785 Managed Print and Digital), we took on the printing and dispatch of the Companies House highly secure mailing activity.

Think

In collaboration with Companies House to kick start project transition, we developed a comprehensive work stream plan –this included a parallel run of work during the final week of transfer to account for its highly critical and no-fail nature. As with all project implementations, our risk and compliance team developed and managed a risk register. This also included developing and testing a disaster recovery solution. We set up a secure communications channel to receive daily automated print requests.

Create

Our facility holds full PCI DSS certification -all data is fully encrypted and rigid data retention standards ensure that all customer data is deleted within 30 days. The items are then printed through our automated production line, mail sorted and despatched. Print quality has been guaranteed through a combination of Six Sigma sample size calculators and internal quality management tools.

Deliver

By working collaboratively with Companies House to understand their mail profiles and volumes, we were able to recommend the most appropriate mail tariff. This was fully tested through our in-house high speed mail sortation machines to validate address quality and qualification. The fully automated file receipt, validation and production readiness routines are much more efficient, with Companies House now only needing to become involved if any discrepancies arise. The main SLA of zero spoils and 100% correct despatches each day is fulfilled.

“Thank you to APS for delivering a seamless and pain free transition. The whole project was on a short timeline, but APS demonstrated agility and flexibility in adapting to what was required. The Companies House team quickly developed confidence in APS’s delivery capabilities, and we did indeed achieve the target that we both wanted.”

Aegon UK is a pension, insurance and investment company, and we’ve been working with them since 2006, delivering a range of marketing, digital and technology services.

Think

Aegon UK wanted a solution that would incorporate a digital and an agile way of working into the heart of its marketing strategy and operations. The overall objective was to develop a multichannel marketing management system which would deliver time and cost savings. To have a clearer understanding of Aegon’s objectives, we led 5 weeks of discovery activity, including multiple workshops.

Create

The solution was centred on our Marketing Operations Suite (MOS) – an integrated set of tools to manage multichannel communications. Using four of our MOS modules: Workflow Manager, Asset Manager, Marcom Store and Operations Manager, Aegon can now manage all of its marketing operations in a more efficient and collaborative way.

Deliver

All marketing activity and assets are available in a centralised location, giving Aegon the additional ability to measure and analyse data, across all projects. A single sign on function was added, allowing third party agencies to engage and upload assets to relevant projects.

• Job speeds increased by 89%
• ¼ of a million historic assets stored
• Accessed by 100s of end users
• 1000s of active projects centralised

“Aegon UK as a business has transformed over the last few years and digital is now very much the focus of all we do. APS has supported us at every stage on this journey and we now have an in-house design studio powered by APS with Account Managers, Digital Designers and Web Developers. APS listen, get what we want very quickly and always deliver what they promise. They are really easy to work with and great to have in my team.”

Head of Brand and Digital, Aegon UK