That feeling seems to have become a fairly normal part of running a business. Especially for SMEs. The pressure to create "content" is everywhere. To do that hand-waving, dancing thing. Just go away and leave me be. Instagram wants more of it. Linkedin wants more of it (you've turned up in a bazillion searches). Every marketing expert recommends more of it. Every success story seems to involve more of it. After a while, it becomes easy to stop asking why you're posting something. You know, is this helping people understand the business? Is it showing the work in a better light? Is it giving someone a reason to care? You just start worrying about whether you're posting enough.
For the last few years, marketing advice has been consistent. People want authenticity. They want behind-the-scenes footage. They want founder videos recorded on phones. The want to see you working. They want unfiltered moments. They want to see the person behind the business.
I love coffee that is as bitter as I am, so BK Coffee Shop was always going to be an easy sell. The videos are clearly produced, but the production never feels like the point. The colour grading is warm and cinematic. Conversations take centre stage while the coffee shop exists in the background through the IKEA shelves, the counter, the little green tip jar, decorations in the window and the little door chime. Even the subtitles feel like part of the experience rather than an afterthought.
They're selling what it feels like to spend time there and have your very existence ripped apart by two pretentious, unamused baristas.
The fact that BK Coffee Shop isn't a real coffee shop at all is the mind-blowing thing. We know everything is exaggerated and that the baristas and characters are parodies but most of us have met some version of this world. We've all felt seen at places like this. The videos aren't really selling coffee. They're selling what it feels like to spend time there and have your very existence ripped apart by two pretentious, unamused baristas.
I eat tinned fish quicker than Garfield eats lasagne, so convincing me to buy tinned fish isn't a challenge. Convincing everybody else is a different story. Fishwife is solving a different problem. BK Coffee Shop is built around recognisable observations. Fishwife is built around a cultural shift. The founders saw a category that had become commoditised, where, as Becca Millstein put it, "all canned fish is blue and white and has a green fish on it."
The bold colours, hand-drawn illustrations and art-directed photography are all helping to reposition tinned fish from something practical to something desirable. I have stood in Tescos and looked at the packaging of other tinned fish because of this, but that's for another article. Their imagery tends to place the tins within gatherings, meals and occasions rather than treating them as something sitting at the back of the press. For international readers, that's a cupboard or even a pantry. They're not selling fish, they're trying to change how people think about tinned fish in the first place.
What struck me about both examples is that they changed how I look at something. BK Coffee Shop has made me notice little behaviours and interactions that I'd probably have ignored before. Fishwife has made me pay attention to a category that I barely thought about in the first place. I have genuinely stood in Tesco looking at the packaging on other tins because of it.
They're not selling fish, they're trying to change how people think about tinned fish in the first place.
As designers, we spend a lot of time talking about colour, typography, photography, motion and layout. Fishwife uses all of those things brilliantly. BK Coffee Shop relies more heavily on writing, characters and observation. Different tools. Similar outcome.
Both have managed to shift perception and once somebody starts looking at something differently, they're unlikely to look at it the same way again.
So, what should I post today?
