Brand Experience Brief: Keep a Breast Foundation Pop Up Shop
(Check out this new video. It’s one of a series of brand experience briefs in which I provide audit and analyses of new or interesting restaurant or retail concepts.)
If you don’t operate out of a retail space, you may wonder how you can bring your brand to life and engage your target community. The pop up shop from Keep A Breast Foundation provides an excellent model for how to create a memorable, motivating brand experience. Take a look:
Brand Experience Brief: Keep A Breast Foundation Pop Up Shop (by Denise Lee Yohn) from Denise Lee Yohn on Vimeo.
other brand experience briefs:
transcript:
This brand experience brief is about how a non-profit or really any other non-retail organization can create an immersive and compelling brand experience. The pop up shop from Keep A Breast Foundation provides an excellent model.
Keep a Breast is a non-profit committed to promoting breast health among young adults. You probably have heard about it from its bright I Love Boobies bracelets. Keep A Breast uses breathtaking art exhibits, creative teaching techniques, and other fundraising activities to fulfill its mission which is to eradicate breast cancer for future generations.
Shaney Jo Darden started Keep A Breast when she was a young designer in the skateboard industry, making breast casts, plaster canvasses formed from molds of women’s busts that artists use to make stunning pieces of art. The organization is now a leading advocate for breast cancer awareness, education, and research, and is credited with pioneering a new non-profit model that effectively engages young people and inspires them to act.
Like many other non-profits and non-retail organizations, Keep A Breast has the challenge of engaging its donors, partners, and target audiences on a personal, ongoing basis. So to supplement its event-based schedule of activities, the organization set up a pop up shop for a month in Encinitas, just north of San Diego.
The shop allows visitors to experience the Keep A Breast brand in a way that prompts a visceral reaction. An Airstream has been converted into a temporary gallery to display some spectacular breast casts. The store’s product selection goes well beyond the typical merch to include cool cut and sew garments and custom posters. Mood photography lines the walls and cool tunes emanate from a retro turntable. And there’s free educational materials including a door hanger with instructions on how to do a self breast exam, the organization’s magazine, and of course those iconic bracelets.
Several special events were planned for the Pop Up Shop including a Coffee Tasting & Old Fashion Bake Sale, a movie night sponsored by a new local brewery, and a Farm To Table Vegan Fundraiser Dinner with food, music, and a talk curated by Shaney.
You really get a feel of the Keep A Breast brand mission, values, and personality through the Pop Up Shop. I’m sure it has encouraged more people to get involved and become supporters. And hopefully it’s given you an idea or two about how you can bring your brand to life and engage people even if you don’t own a retail space. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of these kinds of pop up experiences as organizations realize there’s nothing like an in-person experience to make a memorable, motivating brand impression.