January 28, 2015
At Meridian Group, we pride ourselves on providing our clients and friends with a unique holiday gift to celebrate a successful year. We strive to create something memorable in comparison to traditional holiday gifts like the baskets of fruit, cheese and sweets that are typically sent to the kitchen to be ravaged by the office natives. The agency holiday mailer is an effort to present our clients and partners with a gift that is enjoyable, hand-crafted and unique. Meridian Group has a fair amount of “foodies” and Joe’s vision was to tap into this culinary enthusiasm with completely original recipes created, tasted and approved by agency employees. The result is a premium line of sauces and spices that is both delicious and one-of-a-kind.
To create the recipes, the agency was split into teams. There was one lead for each spice, rub and sauce. After a failed attempt at red-eye gravy, we decided to include a marinade instead. Everyone was jealous of “Team Bloody Mary” since there was vodka involved in all preliminary tastings.
The biggest challenge for the seasonings was in perfecting the recipes so that they could be created in large batches. Each culinary creation was produced 150 times. We developed a prototype batch for each recipe and owner of Ashburn Sauce, Willard “The Sauce Wizard” Ashburn, worked with us to perfect larger batches of each recipe using the same ratios. Each sauce and seasoning was made using the freshest ingredients available and were held to Ashburn’s strict level of manufacturing excellence. It was cool to for the team to see how the sauces and rubs were created and put into the machine to bottle.
The idea for naming the seasonings themselves derived from an on-going list the creative team had on their white board of the best business “buzzwords” overheard during our day-to-day. While it started as a joke, the naming convention stuck because we wanted names that were a little bit bizarre, a little bit funny but something our clients would appreciate. We wrote and designed colorful descriptions and labels to showcase each sauce and its many applications. All rub labels were hand applied (not as fun). Everyone pitched in to build boxes, insert foam and assemble for shipping.
The entire process took over three months and while it was a tremendous amount of work to create, coordinate and produce all efforts, we are very proud of the finished product. The package is a feast for the eyes and taste buds. We have received an overwhelmingly positive response from all of our clients and it’s rumored that Joe is considering selling the sauce line exclusively from the trunk of his car.
We’d love to see the masterpieces you create with your Season’s Greetings packages! Share them with us on our Facebook page!
Not only is Meridian Group a well-established, award-winning full-service marketing agency, but we handle professional print, packaging and labels too. In addition to our package design for the Season’s Greetings, check out our recent work with Rowena’s Specialty Cakes and Drizzles and Smartmouth Brewing Company. Need a package design? Drop us a line and let’s chat!