CLIENT
PAPER BOAT DRINKS
THE CHALLENGE
Creating a brand that evokes nostalgia and memories is rare, but Paper Boat Drinks aimed to do just that. The challenge was to depict childhood memories in a way that would resonate universally with their audience.
THE OUTCOME
Through a ten-year collaboration, Headless Hippies successfully created evocative illustrations for Paper Boat that not only became viral on social media but also helped solidify the brand’s identity as a keeper of cherished memories.
OVERVIEW
Paper Boat Drinks, a brand that encapsulates the essence of childhood memories, partnered with Headless Hippies to create a visual identity that would resonate deeply with its audience. By using hand-drawn illustrations reminiscent of childhood art, Headless Hippies helped Paper Boat stand out in the market, connecting with consumers on an emotional level.
ABOUT PAPER BOAT DRINKS
Paper Boat is more than just a beverage brand; it’s a gateway to reliving childhood memories. Each drink is a nostalgic journey, inspired by the simple joys of youth, from the first lessons in arts and crafts to the thrill of a paper boat’s journey in the rain. The brand’s name itself is a nod to a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, symbolizing innocence and a yearning for eternal childhood.
OUR PROCESS
BRAINSTORMING
Memories have to be imagined to be recreated and it is so hard to perfectly depict the past and yet evoke emotions from a viewer. Early on in its journey, Paperboat was among the first to create images of our childhood that they are well known for today. How did that happen?
The team at Paperboat coincidentally met the team at Headless Hippies (HH), a creative agency that helps brands make friends with people and that turned out to be a memorable relationship.
HH presented 4 approaches towards design for social media and that struck a chord. Among the first were images like the one below that started becoming viral on social media. These digital illustrations aim at mimicking mediums such as colour pencils, crayons and watercolours, commonly used by children and have an effect of evoking childhood.
Headless Hippies and Paper boat have an interesting way of coming up with posts. No prizes guessing what that is – reliving and talking about their childhood memories, of course. This has been a process that has evolved over six years.
The highlight of this relationship is that now both Paper boat and Headless Hippies teams think alike and are almost like a single brand team.
What is special about these illustrations is how universal and personal these memories are how they connect with just anyone.
The Experiments
The usage of water colours and pencil strokes for illustrations was the artistic value that was introduced by the Headless Hippies team. These are digitally done mimicking real strokes by water colors or pencils and not only do they introduce new artistics forms but also make every illustration look like a poster from childhood.
A SPECIAL MIXED MEDIA ILLUSTRATIONS
The team at HH has explored mixed media images combining photography, papercut, clay which evoke memories of childhood arts and crafts classes
MIXING PHOTOGRAPHS WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
https://www.instagram.com/p/COpeIgUIPhp/
This post was one of the toughest ones to convince the client. But its engagement proved that it worked well
Never Tired
The best part of this ten year journey is that no one is bored or tired. Artists at Headless Hippies are able to bring out their best – both artistically and by sharing their memories and they have refined their own illustrations and detailing over the years.
The details here were the most interesting part. The boys are enjoying themselves, one of them is anxious, a girl is annoyed, another is excited. The paper plane thrown by someone points at the teacher and also Gandhi ji’s expression on the poster!
Clever portrayal of what was happening under the blanket and also the color of lines- blue and yellow shows who is warm and who is cold.
Artists are now able to create illustrations everyday as they have mastered their strokes and also are completely aligned with the client’s brief. What has helped is that they have connected with themselves and the Paper boat brand has gained immensely through this artwork.
Formats such as GIFs and reels have given life to still images and the HH team creates short animations with music (like the one below) to give a real-life feel to each memory. Within minutes a post gains thousands of likes and that showcases how the connection with the audience still flourishes.
The voiceover for the boy was by a female in the client team. This is an example of seamless collaboration on creative execution that was well received by the audience.
Have you realised this?
The more we grow up, the more we want to remain connected to our childhood. Hence memories will always be a part of who we are. It is similar to Paper Boat and its imagery. These illustrations stand out not only for their artistic value but the feeling they evoke of the games we played. Hence, here is a formula that will always find relevance with the audience. Together, HH and Paper Boat have created a game well played.
IMPACT
2 Mn
Total Reactions, Comments, Shares
341%
Follower Growth of 341% increase (Mkt. std. for a brand with 25k-100k followers is 81%
8.9%
Engagement: Mkt. std. is 2-5%
