Welcome to the deep dark underbelly of…the coffee business.
To access Caribbean Farms’ online-exclusive Pure Black Sunshine blend, coffee lovers go to Pureblacksunshine.com, virtually charter a flight to a mysterious island, make it past an imposing steel door and deal with a humourless gun-toting dealer who will shoot you on the spot if you rub them the wrong way.
Make the right choices, however, and once you place your order, a package of coffee resembling a brick of narcotics, with a symbol marking light (Lizard), medium (Scorpion) or heavy (Spider) will be mailed to you in a brown envelope wrapped with clear tape.
Created by Halifax and Toronto’s Extreme Group and Toronto digital production studio Lollipop, the website includes approximately 10 minutes of content filmed using a Steadicam, intuitive point-and-click decision-making navigation and photography by Frank Hoedl. Promotion of the site is currently limited to a viral effort through social media.
Extreme Group creative director Shawn King says that Caribbean Farms, originally a wholesaler before making this first foray into retail, gave his agency permission to run with something a little dark and subversive.
‘It comes from a bean that is in demand but a little hard to get, and because of that, we kind of landed on this idea of treating it like a narcotic,’ King says. ‘So we started with the packaging, and it led to this site. You can only get this [product] through a website.’
The campaign is ‘aiming at the online generation of coffee drinkers – probably a younger demographic. We’re aiming towards the type of consumer who is web-savvy, who understands and is not thrown off anything shocking that you might see online,’ he adds.
King says there will be further work on the site, plus a launch of another more retail-friendly Caribbean Farms product in the months to come.
From Media in Canada
