Goods & Services Branding Holiday Crackers

Creative Agency: Goods & Services Branding
Creative Direction: Carey George and Sue McCluskey
Content: Mike Barber and Dylan Schoenmakers Design: Kristine Planche and Sarah Rafter
Production: Derek Moxon App development: Jeff Denham
Project Management: Jess Arnold and Alexandra Montgomery
Printing: Flash Reproductions
Project Type: Produced, Commercial Work
Location: Toronto, Canada
Packaging Contents: Holiday Crackers and prizes
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Paper: Lynx cover and text
Printing Process: Offset, die-cutting

Every year, Goods & Services agency creates a festive holiday gift for our clients; for 2016, our creative team decided to have some fun with holiday crackers.

So we searched the globe to capture the most unusual “giving” holiday creatures. Each cracker includes a story that is unique to its character. Tío De Nadal, a friendly log found in Spain, is beaten with a stick by children on Christmas eve until it poops out small presents. Yule Cat, a notorious feline native to Iceland, pounces and gobbles up farmhands who haven’t finished their winter’s work. Kallikantzaroi, a southeastern European goblin, creates mayhem during the 12 days of Christmas, by souring milk, terrorizing farm animals and generally being a nasty menace. The final character, Namahage, is a New Year’s ogre who storms into Japanese families’ homes and can only be placated by tasty treats.

To complete the experience, we created an online “click” game app featuring the characters, with an addictive high-score notification and results messages such as, “you’ve disappointed everybody.”

The gift components included:
· Octagonal box
· Four crackers
· Four crowns
· 12 button prizes—three for each character
· Online “click” game app

What’s Unique?
Holiday crackers generally rely on typical Christmas decorative designs. For this project, we wanted to create a concept that both integrated the story of the characters with each other, and also integrated all of the components (prizes, crowns, etc.) into a cohesive package.