“We love the Mushed by YOU brand. The rTraction team is authentically enthusiastic about our organization and they used that enthusiasm to pull us forward when we were stuck. Mushed by YOU is a brand that aligns with our vision, values, and story. I highly recommend rTraction’s work to anyone who is facing challenges with their brand or brand story.”
— STEVE CORDES, CEO OF YOUTH OPPORTUNITIES UNLIMITED
The Story
The Next Wave Youth Centre provides a caring and active space for youth to build their confidence and independence. Serving over 3,600 youth throughout London and Strathroy, they service a wide range of education, skills training, and employment initiatives. YOU also operates numerous businesses that offer employment opportunities for youth striving to overcome barriers due to homelessness, unemployment, or lack of education.
The YOU Made It Café is one of their social enterprises teaching youth hands-on skills to work in a kitchen and the confidence to create. Under supervision, local youth prepare jams, chutney, salsa, and sauces from scratch, creating a wide variety of flavours of Mushed by YOU products. They have also begun assembling gift baskets with wood products to compliment their artisan preserves.
Having launched a new website to promote their Mushed line, they turned to rTraction to elevate the online experience and explore digital promotion ideas. We began by photographing their products and pairing them with enticing descriptions. With the new content ready to use, we updated their Shopify site and began refining their ecommerce presence.
We then made adjustments to their web content and advertising; running Adwords and reconfiguring Google Analytics to get the important data needed for our next steps. We also streamlined their shipping options, adding pick-up locations so community partners across the city could have their products without the waiting time.
While each sale is hard-earned by telling the YOU story and its amazing social impact, we explored a shift in thinking from ‘people first - product second’ to ‘product first - YOU second’. Customers that invest their money into the excellent quality learn the story behind YOU, beginning their emotional connection to the organization as they consume their preserves. In doing so, we worked to tweak the selling voice they were using online while continuing to build on their exceptional community reputation.