The Sweet Spot Campaign
Brand Identity Design
Toolkit: Adobe AfterEffects | Adobe Illustrator | Adobe Photoshop | Midjourney | Canva
Responsibilities: Branding, Commercial Vehicle Branding, Concept, Logo Design, Merchandise Design, Motion, Social Media Design, Typography
Team: Bailey Germain (Business Leadership), Grayson DiBernado (Media Planning), Haley Cogan (Strategy), Jayna Shah (Studio Design), Muskan Dharani (Copywriting), Nevaeh Bhagat (Project Management)
Coaches: Aliyah Brown, Balay Woodworth, Kara Redcay, Lauren Barnett, Mackenzie Lane, Zena Hanna
As part of the summer 2024 22Squared internship, a group of interns were tasked with reviving a struggling brand and make it ‘Impossible to Ignore’.
Problem: Dairy Queen needs to increase its relevancy among Gen Z in order to secure their longevity for the future.
What If: Dairy Queen bridged the gap between Gen Z and Boomers through their shared love of sweet treats? Introducing the ‘Sweet Spot Campaign’.
Manifesto: What’s a Sweet Spot?
The compromise of what you will watch today, just so you can spend time with a loved one?
Or the laughter after a joke, that took several minutes just to be understood?
Is it the keenness in learning about their interests, just so you can keep the conversation going?
Maybe, its the delight of sharing a sundae or two, because not deciding on the flavor is the easiest thing to do?
Or the learning of grandparent’s stories and the grandchildren’s dreams, that helps bridge the gap in between?
Or is it finding the common ground in all you do, just so you can build a bond that is strong and true?
A Sweet Spot let us tell you, is all these moments.
It’s a heart’s meeting place. The stomach’s happy place.
It’s where generations find their place.
The campaign’s visual identity builds on Dairy Queen’s existing branding and refreshes it with a more vibrant and saturated color palette aimed at attracting the younger audience the strategy seeks to target. The Gliker Expanded typeface adds a playful, ice-cream–inspired feel. The DQ logo is used as a framing device across activations to maintain consistency, while the system’s flexible layout allows designs to breathe and adapt to different channels and environments.
The first “Find Your Sweet Spot” activation, highlights places where Gen Z and Boomers naturally converge and encourages intergenerational connection through shared memories. These specific spots would display banners, posters and stickers, each featuring a QR code. When scanned, the code would unlock a short memory experienced by someone in the same location. Moments that reveal common ground and spark conversation. Passersby would have access to listen to or read that memory and then contribute their own, creating a growing archive of personal stories that bridge the generational divide.
To drive participation, each scan offered a coupon redeemable at any DQ location. This incentive encouraged discovery and sharing, turning ordinary spaces into opportunities for empathy, nostalgia and new conversations between generations.
The campaign includes out-of-home ads that are strategically placed in high-traffic areas, with bold and simple visuals making them hard for drivers to miss. Their purpose is to build brand awareness, drive engagement, and influence consumer behavior by reaching people in public spaces with unavoidable, high impact visuals such as billboards and transit ads. OOH complements this campaigns by capturing attention where people live, work, and play. We leverage the strengths of DQ’s diverse product portfolio to deliver clear, targeted messaging that reinforces the campaign’s two key audiences.
Meet them where they’re at...
Leverage Instagram to send clues to Gen Z. Let's surprise them and send them to a Boomer favorite location—a Sweet Spot where they have fun over our Blizzards.
