Carambar & Co.
“The best sugar
effect comes
from sugar itself.”
Project Managers Carambar & Co.: Jürgen and Maria Braun, Alexander Frohnert
Fresh and colorful, just like the cult sweets of the French manufacturer Carambar & Co. That was the how the company’s exhibit was designed for the ISM 2017. Visitors should literally hear the shower hissing, feel the squeaky colored fruit strings on their tongues – and, why not, sit on glycerine sweets and gumdrops. And most of all the feeling should be as animated as the chewable sweets themselves.
Carambar & Co. is the authority in France when it comes to schoolyard classics. Every child (and adult) is familiar with the juicy chewable sweets Malabar and Carambar, the morning cocoa from Poulain or the refreshing Vichy pastilles. The exhibit focused on the sweet and sour fruit gummies of the Lutti brand, prickling delicacies coated with granulated sugar that tingle pleasantly in the mouth. Wouldn’t it be great to communicate such a tingling sensation to visitors?
We went totally 3D: The products and their world should be grasped by all senses – visually, haptically … and of course by taste. To achieve this we reached deep into our reserve of expert stand builders and created something completely unique. A brightly colored liquid wallpaper served as an almost juicy shimmering backdrop; glitter elements and lighting effects brought life to the optics. And the wallpaper could be easily peeled off the surfaces and re-used, since it was only spread across the surface.
We designed all furnishings ourselves – as oversized fruit gummies in the shape of rings and miniature sticks. An arch of fruit strings stretched over the counter as an eye-catcher.
All that was missing was the sugar. We experimented extensively with a range of options until we realized: The best sugar effect comes from real sugar!
So we applied real sugar. That is daring, since rain during transport would have damaged the construction. But all went well. Colorfully designed areas, digitally printed and laser-cut plexiglass figures, dummies, models and a monitor with advertising recordings gave the exhibit a light mood – as did living mascots who distributed samples. A flashy-sweet overall experience that was a complete success.
