Coffee for Educators by Educators

Press

After a few months of going live in the community, the local news picked up on what they were doing during the education issues with COVID-19. Check out the press here. It's amazing seeing a vision grow into reality.

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When TwentyFive-Eight was explaining their idea and brand to others initially, there wasn’t much excitement around it. They really believed they were on to something great but didn’t know how to tell it’s story or create fans around their brand. They didn’t know how to create value beyond the good they wanted to do.

Their initial product line didn’t really entice anyone to buy anything. There wasn’t anything unique about them and no one really knew why they existed. We needed to build the story around why they want to give and communicate it at the fore front. We also needed to clearly position their product and build a staple product for the brand to operate around.

After getting the same lackluster feedback, they decided to go all in on strategy to rethink their approach. The initially came to me for my focus on brand strategy and positioning. They also wanted to work locally as they had poor experiences with remote work using fiverr and similar places. They loved our work with The Grind as well.

Discovery

We wanted to move quickly so we put them through a design sprint. We kicked off with a brand sprint to build the brand and work on positioning. By working on positioning, we were able to figure where a market need was for what he wanted to do. He mentioned wanting to do something with coffee but it was going to be just another offering.

Their users

Educators are their main users. However, two things we noticed were going to be really important for later was their email usage and how much coffee they drink!

What problems are they solving for people?

They wanted to make a better environment for educators. Their main issue was how much they have to spend to supply their classroom. They wanted to do this by getting them supplies. But how?

What are they trying to communicate to their users?

Twenty five eight is trying to communicate their “why.” Why they do what they do and why they are using coffee. They want to be a voice for educators and give back to them since the owners are teachers themselves.

Did any unexpected insights pop up during discovery?

Yes, there wasn't a coffee designed around educators! They are the third largest coffee drinkers in any industry. This gave us an opening for a product to generate revenue in order to be able to give back to teachers for all their hard work and passion.

Did anything funny or unique happen during discovery?

He had come up with the quote "more coffee, less mugs" since teachers get a ton of mugs, just no coffee to put in them. We wrote this down on a sticky for our design sprint and it came back up again when we shifted into our positioning phase of the sprint. We found it as an opening to create a product that educators would both find value in and enjoy.

While going through competition and positioning, we realized the product didn’t offer anything of value to be able to generate the funds to give back. So we needed to move back to the product after researching the competition. This lead us into more of a product design and story telling project. We had to rapidly prototype lots of parts of the brand. The product page, brand identity, product, and packaging all now became a part of the strategy.

Thursday was the testing day. We built a product landing page that also contained some information about the brand and rough idea of the direction the brand was headed visually. We gathered workers in the education force from early learning to college and the feedback was overwhelmingly great. They thought they could buy it right there! They loved the mission behind the company as well.

Now

Now, the company is presented in a totally new way that immediately sparked interest in their brand. The coffee gets educators interested and their story is what ultimately allows them to buy in. As they start interacting more with TwentyFive-Eight, they start to see how they offer other resources to fully support educators in the classroom. The support and focus on educators who are the ones grinding day in and out lets them become fans and get engaged with TwentyFive-Eight.

The company shifted from commodity goods for teachers with no clear story to a coffee company that gives back to educators. Their story and data around education is the first thing educators see when going to the site. There is also a new focus on how to approach both their giving and resources  for educators. They realized how to fulfill their purpose of keeping passionate educators in the field through their products, free resources, and giving.

Their goal was accomplished. Their main goal of making enough money to make a donation of classroom supplies for teachers to a local school has been met. Now, they have a growing social presence and email list. Their products have hit all their preorder goals during launch as well.