JKR

Brooklyn agency The Rooster Design Group have hit on a neat idea. They asked a group of local culinary hopefuls (140 candidates winnowed down to 5) to enter their “The Next Big Small Brand Contest for Culinary Genius” competition. The prize? Free design consultancy to make a great product into a viable brand.

Rooster’s founder (the wonderfully named) Fernando Music told the New York Times “(we) had some real head-scratchers. Insects as nutritional supplements, positioned as a food that was borderline vegetarian. The insect ingredient would either be ground or mixed into the food product whole to make it more accessible and digestible. We also had a team with a perfectly nice product, good flavour profile, but one of the presenters was drunk … that was pretty dark”. Other candidates included truffles, wild honey & corn nougat, cinnamon sugar butter and smoke-cured, grass-fed beef jerky. Who knew Brooklyn was such a hotbed for artisinal foodies?

The winner was brewery Kombucha Brooklyn’s (KBBK) “pleasantly mild iteration of fermented tea”. They now plan to open a larger full-time brewery. And the competition is to be an annual event.

What a neat example of connecting with an agency’s neighbours, drumming up an exciting brief, having some fun and also generating a little free PR. “Think Local” has become an over-used phrase, but these guys are doing just that, making it work for them and celebrating the kind of diversity that can be found within a stone’s throw of one’s door.