As part of the celebrations for SGIC’s 5th Anniversary, P&G wanted to make a difference through skills-based volunteering with its R&D team. With understanding of P&G’s objectives and expertise, Empact identified APSN’s bakery enterprise as a suitable match. Their business challenge was to enhance their brand of their line of cookies and pastries.
Background
Association for Persons with Special Needs (APSN) is a social service organisation that gives special education and vocational training to persons with mild intellectual disability with an IQ between 50 – 70. As part of their mission to empower their clients, ASPN provides realistic on-the-job training before they are ready for the workforce.
The centre caters realistic work training and the bakery is one of them. The clients bake cookies and pastries, and they are sold to corporates. The proceeds are channelled back to support the individual APSN’s programmes, as well as to give the trainees an allowance.
The challenge scoped for the Done-in-the-Day was presented for P&G’s volunteers to solve and provide a solution: Designing new packaging for products of bakery enterprise arm of APSN.
The team of volunteers from P&G having a discussion on some of the possible design concepts of the new packaging.
Outcome
The volunteers delivered prototypes of new packaging designs for each of their cookie products. The prototype designs also addressed the challenge of allowing customisation for festive seasons or corporate clients’ events whilst maintaining APSN’s brand identity.
Prototype of different brand designs and packaging material for different flavours and tiers provided by the P&G team by the end of the day.
The volunteers delivered prototypes of new packaging designs for 3 different types of cookies – Individual x1 cookie (40 cents), Goodie bag (6pcs $2) and for 11pcs $4. The prototype designs also addressed the challenge of allowing customisation for festive seasons or corporate clients’ events whilst maintaining APSN’s brand identity.
The team of volunteers also provided useful advice from their experience on how to design and market packaging/products using an innovation framework: Customer, Problem, Solution. Suggestion was also given on APSN adopting a proactive calendar – where regular customer orders are locked in to enable a more streamlined production process.
The team from APSN with the 5 volunteers from P&G who successfully used their expertise to plug a need for the bakery enterprise.
The P&G volunteering team produced what we needed and asked for – a prototype for a new packaging design for our cookies. This would have taken us 6 months to develop with our limited resources, knowledge and manpower. But with these volunteers who were the subject experts, we got the expert ideas we needed in one day! – Philip Lim, Senior Centre Lead
It was easy for us to volunteer our skills because design and innovation are what we do everyday at work. Hence, it was truly meaningful to apply my skills in a different context. It was also inspiring to learn and witness how APSN gives their best to their clients. – Gloria Cheng, Senior Scientist, R&D team of P&G Singapore Innovation Centre
