May 2009: Baby Planet

Market Outlook

Going "green" has evolved beyond an environmentally friendly trend and has become a way of life for many people. The heightened awareness of one's "carbon footprint" affects the products people buy, the food they eat, how they get to work, and other day-to-day activities. It's not just individuals who are living more consciously, but even companies have started to change the way they do business and sell goods in order to appeal to this environmentally aware customer base.

Opportunity

Baby Planet, a Chicago based manufacturer of baby products, saw the opportunity to provide quality baby and infant gear to the environmentally conscious family while in return position itself as a steward of the planet. Beyond creating a dedicated line of strollers styled after endangered species with a portion of each sale going to the Wildlife Conservation Society, Baby Planet has put in place a recycling program that parents can take advantage of. When the child or children grow out of a stroller, if the stroller is still in working condition, Baby Planet will accept it and donate it to a family in need (no matter what brand of stroller it is). If a Baby Planet stroller is not in working condition, it is broken down into parts and recycled guaranteeing that none of the waste goes to a landfill.

With such a great mission and quality product, Baby Planet needed a way to communicate their environmental promise and educate consumers about their quality products. They needed a quality website along with professional product and lifestyle photos to use with all their marketing material. TribeAgency was the perfect fit for such tasks and was engaged to launch a cutting edge website and execute multiple on-location and in-studio photo shoots.

Solutions

Baby Planet required a site that conveyed their product lines commitment to quality, function and baby safety all while positioning the company's ethos of being environmentally aware. TribeAgency's Creative Team went to work putting together multiple layouts for the client to review, taking each concept through a series of revisions to arrive at the final interface design. The final look and feel of the site is composed of a nature inspired color palette peppered with a mixture of nature and lifestyle imagery.

In order to portray the quality and unique design of the products, TribeAgency suggested Baby Planet feature 360-degree views of their entire product line. While the creative team set up, shot and readied multiple views of each product, the Technical Team developed custom code to allow users to turn each product in a full circle by holding down the mouse key and moving left to right, allowing the consumer to see the structure and functionality of the products found in the Baby Planet line in real time. The Technical Team also developed a suite of content management tools for Baby Planet's in house staff to use in order to handle site functions such as adding or editing products, press releases, product warranties and resellers listings, with no outside assistance or code knowledge. This feature gives Baby Planet the freedom to alter and change the content of their site immediately.

Beyond in-studio product photography Baby Planet still needed professional grade lifestyle photos to use in packaging, ads and other marketing materials. TribeAgency's Strategy Team conducted talent searches for baby, child and adult models and arranged multiple shoots at popular destinations such as Brookfield Zoo and Millennium Park. The various photo shoots captured the ease of use and award winning product designs of the Baby Planet line in real life situations. The photos turned out so well that soon they went beyond use as marketing material and were selected for covers of major trade publications, increasing the exposure of Baby Planet products beyond expectations

Results

TribeAgency was able to launch a sleek website that gives parents the unique ability to fully inspect all of Baby Planet's high quality products with interactive 360 degree views as well as obtain full product details and documentation in advance of purchasing. This online destination also allows Baby Planet staff to add or update information without technical assistance. TribeAgency was also able to orchestrate multiple in-studio and on-location photo shoots for Baby Planet that solved their product and lifestyle imagery needs. Through their partnership with TribeAgency, Baby Planet was able to gain a strong foothold in the competitive baby gear industry and spread their commitment to improve and enrich the world that surrounds all babies.