Spirit Wares: marketing solution

The Problem

I was contacted by one of the partners Spirit Wares to help them solve a problem marketing a new line of plates. The collection is beautiful, with unique unfinished sandy edges and thick bright white glaze.

Spirit Wares plate collections immediately evoke images of nature: blue water, silvery ice, mottled quail egg. The colours and textures are bold and recognizable. This is part of their brand identity. It sets Spirit Wares apart from other plate manufacturers, giving modern chefs inspiration with an original and natural canvas to work from.

But these particular plates are….WHITE… Although they are beautiful, their identity and how they fit into the Spirit Wares collection is not so easy to divine. The original name “Glazed White Marble” was not making an impression and sales were weak.

I was tasked with coming up with a new identity for the collection.

Here are a few examples of the plates:

The Solution

When I got a chance to see them in person, their appeal was immediate. I saw something in them; I recognized them, especially on the edges where sandy raw stone meets the bright white glaze. This image is a perfect example:

marketing these plates involved making a connection between their design and nature

Marketing these plates successfully required making a connection between their design and nature.

Over the last few years I had been thinking about traveling to Hokkaido in winter. I wanted to experience one of the snowiest places on earth. I remembered seeing a few images of Japanese coastlines in winter that reminded me of the plate edges that I was looking at now. Here are a couple of the images below:

here is a phot of a natural phenomenon that inspired the name Hokkaido in marketing these plates
This is a photo of Tottori Sand Dunes in winter. It was posted by photographer Hisa Matsumura (credit and copyright is his) and became quite famous on the internet as “Hokkaido Beach”. In reality it is nowhere near Hokkaido (don’t try to learn geography on social media!) Nevertheless…this beautiful image stuck my mind and it was what I was now seeing on the plate edges.
This is Otaru beach which is actually on Hokkaido. Snow and sand meet in the same way although this image is maybe not as spectacular.

I thought that naming the collection with an easy association (“snow and sand” for example) was not very interesting. Instead, naming it after a place where this unusual natural phenomenon happens was far more appealing. The idea of naming it the “Hokkaido Collection” came from here.

The name “Hokkaido” sparks curiosity and gives personality to this snowy sandy plate collection that would otherwise get lost among its more colourful and easily recognizable competitors. A bump in sales after the renaming seems to back this up.

You can see all the collections at Spirit Wares

2 Comments

  1. Reply
    Myles Kaufmann March 24, 2025

    Hey Marty! Long overdue in checking out your blog! Loved this informative piece 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *