The Maine Man
Maine is a Ballymena born soft drinks business, established in 1919. Their products are an Irish household favourite, with popular flavours including Raspberryade, Sarsapirallla, Brown Lemonade and Cloudy Lime.
Maine Mineral supply soft drinks to supermarkets across the UK. However, they have always focused on delivering soft drinks to households across NI, which customers referred to as ‘The Maine Man’. ‘The Maine Man’ and his delivery van are iconic in Northern Ireland.
Whilst the soft drinks are supplied to supermarkets in plastic bottles, their delivery service bottles are glass. These are collected, washed and reused to minimise waste and contribute to environmental conservation.
Maine Mineral’s aim was to increase home delivery subscriptions across Northern Ireland and sought Rapid’s assistance in establishing a unique identity for their delivery service. With this, we created ‘It’s the Maine Man’. We provided them with a variety of marketing services, including brand, website, graphic design, social media management, content creation and email marketing.
Upon the creation of the the new brand for It’s the Maine Man, we identified the nostalgic significance of ‘the Maine Man’ persona. We tapped into the emotional nostalgia associated with the brand, developing a new brand that would emphasise the uniqueness of their new subscription service offering.
For the new brand identity, we aimed to highlight the nature of the subscription and delivery service. As a result, we crafted a hand-drawn illustration of the Maine Man with his instantly-recognisable van.
Although the brand was designed with modernity in mind, we also paid homage to the nostalgia of the brand. As a result, we included navy and yellow from Maine’s original colour palette, with a versatile logo that can be used across packaging, vehicle wrapping and other communications.
Our in-house designers created the digital brand identity by creating graphics to be used across social media.
Our web design team created a cutting-edge Shopify website for to house their ‘It’s the Maine Man’ subscription service and provide a seamless and modern experience for customers.
We leveraged our expertise in UX/UI and e-commerce web design to craft a visually captivating and intuitive website design that showcased It’s the Maine Man‘s brand identity and product offering,
The website’s interface also featured engaging product descriptions and displays. With a meticulous attention to detail, we created a fully optimised Shopify website that allows customers to embark on a journey of discovering and savouring the authentic soft drink flavours from the comfort of home.
We integrated a robust and customisable subscription platform into the Shopify website for ‘It’s the Maine Man’. The subscription service aimed to meet the diverse preferences of their customers – we recognised the individuality of the drinks selection, knowing that many people relate a specific flavour of Maine to their childhood nostalgia.
The subscription platform allows users to create customised crates, selecting their preferred assortment of up to 12 flavours.
To cater to individual preferences, we implemented a user-friendly interface that allows customers to choose from a 3, 6 or 12 month subscription – and customers could gift a subscription to their family and friends.
Using these convenient features, we gave customers the freedom to experiment with different flavours over time and enjoy the taste of home.
We created engaging content for ‘Its the Maine Man’, including a summer photoshoot showcasing the delivery service and the drinks to be used across social media channels. In addition, we created reactive TikTok content to increase the exposure of the brand and therefore aiming to increase subscription services throughout NI.
Social media accounts were set up on Facebook, Instagram and Tiktok to establish the ‘Its the Maine Man’ brand across socials. Our strategy also differed on TikTok. This is because its algorithm and style of content differs to Facebook and Instagram. Additionally, we created TikTok content in-house. Facebook and Instagram content also consisted of graphics created by our in-house designers alongside photography captured by Rapid.
Rapid supported It’s the Maine Man through the creation of engaging, customer focused and design-driven email campaigns. These focused on the delivery service, as well as their sustainability practises, upcoming holidays and offers on subscriptions.
