Costa Coffee

Third wave craft cof­fee was boom­ing but Cos­ta was expe­ri­enc­ing a decline in foot­fall and cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion. In the UK, the brand was ubiq­ui­tous but did­n’t feel spe­cial and strug­gled to dif­fer­en­ti­ate itself from high street com­pe­ti­tion. Glob­al­ly, it was only just estab­lish­ing its cof­fee cre­den­tials. The aim: to make it a des­ti­na­tion for cof­fee lovers the world over by giv­ing Cos­ta back its mojo. 

LON­DON BORN AND BLEND­ED
A RE-TELLING ROOT­ED IN AUTHENTICITY

We dug into the brand’s his­to­ry, retelling their sto­ry as ​‘the orig­i­nal Lon­don arti­san’ and uncov­er­ing the qual­i­ty sto­ry behind their famous blend. This truth gave the brand cred­i­bil­i­ty and a dis­tinc­tive point of view, allow­ing us to unlock a pas­sion­ate and play­ful per­son­al­i­ty for Cos­ta as ​‘the democ­ra­tis­er of craft coffee’.

BREW BAR CRE­ATES WOW MOMENTS OF COF­FEE DISCOVERY

Wow moments can be found in unex­pect­ed places, in this case, at cof­fee col­lec­tion, a noto­ri­ous point of frus­tra­tion in the cus­tomer expe­ri­ence. We’re proud to have con­ceived and cre­at­ed the first brand­ed Brew Bar expe­ri­ence on the high street. By intro­duc­ing new touch­points with clear­ly defined roles to the store, we deliv­ered an improved expe­ri­ence that rein­forced Costa’s cof­fee cre­den­tials and helped open up a world of qual­i­ty cof­fee to a broad­er audience.

ENCOUR­AG­ING CUS­TOMERS WITH A DIS­TINC­TIVE TONE AND EXPERIENCE

Brew Bar inspires and encour­ages cus­tomers to steer away from their usu­al order by try­ing a new craft cof­fee. We designed a space above the Brew Bar to tell the sto­ry of each cof­fee option in a fun, acces­si­ble way that’s dis­tinct­ly Cos­ta in tone. 

We also cre­at­ed new low-lev­el touch­points to help peo­ple on their cof­fee jour­ney, giv­ing more good rea­sons to try a cer­tain craft cof­fee and deliv­er­ing great appetite appeal. Fun, infor­ma­tive coast­ers also deliv­er cof­fee facts that edu­cate cus­tomers and posi­tion Cos­ta as the expert in coffee.

CEL­E­BRAT­ING BARISTA CRAFT

We cham­pi­oned an ​‘unchain the chain’ approach – design­ing a new uni­form, inspir­ing and engag­ing baris­tas with new tools to deliv­er knowhow, as well as new art­work and sto­ry­telling around the Brew Bar and with­in the brand more broadly.

COM­BIN­ING CRAFT AND CHARACTER

Sto­ry­telling and bespoke art that ampli­fied the cof­fee mak­ing process replaced cor­po­rate-look­ing design ele­ments. We explored new mate­ri­als – print­ing our sto­ries on hes­s­ian, wrapped can­vas and laser etch­ing into wood. We also col­lab­o­rat­ed with a range of artists, spear­head­ing a project to cre­ate unique art using Cos­ta cups, and work­ing with a graf­fi­ti artist to reimag­ine Costa’s her­itage sto­ry for renewed relevance.

A CON­SID­ERED CUS­TOMER JOURNEY

Through­out, we cham­pi­oned a holis­tic approach to the brand cus­tomer jour­ney. With Cos­ta this meant join­ing up every touch­point and active­ly engag­ing with barista teams to give them the tools to improve com­mu­ni­ca­tion with cus­tomers. Our work inte­grat­ing Costa’s Roast­ery sto­ries into the brand work also forged strong new bonds and joined up ways of work­ing between Cos­ta mar­ket­ing, Roast­ery and Barista teams.