What is Yogurtland?
Yogurtland is a self-serve frozen yogurt franchise that allows customers to fill their yogurt cup with a variety of different flavors and toppings. With over 250 locations, they are the leading frozen yogurt brand and have stores both across the U.S. and internationally. Their target audience mostly consists of younger children and families.
The Ask
UMA Design is responsible for brainstorming and designing ways to create an intuitive interaction space for Yogurtland Corporate to better communicate and motivate local stores to participate in local store marketing (LSM).
My Role
As a design consultant, I worked with my teammates and project managers to conduct research and create deliverables for Yogurtland’s marketing team. During bi-weekly check-ins, we presented our findings, ideas, and designs to our points of contact, and then utilized their feedback and follow-up questions to guide us through more brainstorming and iteration. At the end of the semester, we presented one final deliverable with detailed research findings, campaign mockups, and key recommendations.
HMW
To guide us with our research and ideation, we began by asking:
Research & Synthesis
Who were we interviewing?
For our preliminary research, our points of contact gave us a spreadsheet of franchise owners to interview. In each of these interviews, we asked about their LSM routines, factors or obstacles holding them back from further community engagement, hopes for future events, and feedback for Yogurtland Corporate.
Current LSM Routine
Barriers
Better understanding of Franchisees and their LSM experiences.
What did we find?
After completing our research phase, we synthesized our findings into 3 key insights:
Key Insight 1
In-person Marketing
In-person marketing is more effective and well-liked by franchisee owners than social media marketing.
Key Insight 2
School Partnerships
Directly reaching out to schools is one of the most common and successful forms of local store marketing.
Key Insight 3
Immediate Priorities
Franchisees focus on customer experience & retention and do not make their own assets because of more immediate responsibilities.
User Personas
To further synthesize the information gained through our interviews, we created 3 franchisee personas.
Ideation & Design
Campaign Assets
As one part of our final deliverable, our team decided to create campaign assets for YL corporate to distribute among franchisees. As many of our interviewees expressed that much of their time and attention went to more immediate concerns rather than local store marketing, giving pre-made assets to the franchisees would allow them to boost marketing and continue partnerships without needing to worry about designing their own assets. The campaign assets shown below are just my designs, but our team made a total of 4 unique campaigns, with assets spanning physical (ex. posters, school playbill advertisements) to digital (ex. social media) designs. Each of the campaigns have their own moral and are aimed towards school-age children/teens, as franchisees explained that younger demographics were most prevalent and school partnerships were most effective.
Local Store Marketing Toolkit
For the other half of our final deliverable, our team redesigned their digital “local store marketing toolkit” in order to make LSM policies and procedures more accessible and understandable. Unfortunately, this portion of our deliverable is not shown below due to NDA restrictions :(
The Idea
Once a year, Yogurtland will host a contest where customers can submit their drawings to be printed onto Yogurtland cups. This contest will be judged by age categories, and runner-ups recieve vouchers for free yogurt while winners will additionally get their drawing printed onto YL cups nationwide. Theme ideas include “Memories with Yogurtland” and “Inspired by flavors”
Positioning
Both “Doodle for Google” and the Starbucks “White Cup Contest” were extremely successful at garnering the attention of the public, especially those of students within the elementary to high school age range. This contest would keep the Yogurtland name circulating around communities while providing a creative outlet for artistic students nationwide.
The Idea
Annually on the week of Earth Day, customers are invited to bring their own cups to Yogurtland. Whether it’s a Christmas mug, a mason jar, or a teacup, customers can fill up to whichever size cup they bring and receive a certain percentage off their next purchase.
Positioning
By drawing attention to reusable containers and providing a fun, innovative way for customers to partake in sustainability, this campaign would showcase Yogurtland’s awareness of sustainable efforts.
Final Thoughts
This was my first time designing physical assets like playbills, coupons, and cups, so I found it super fun to experiment with different creative directions and styles! I also thought that this was a great experience to practice designing within their existing design system and build on feedback from the Yogurtland marketing managers. Especially since I’m an avid Yogurtland lover (my dance team and I had a tradition of grabbing Yogurtland after our showcases!), I really enjoyed this project and would love to work on more projects that involve both visual design and marketing strategy.
