What can a grocery brand do to stand out in the crowded weight management and supplements market with only a small budget? By making sure that their brand maximises every opportunity by creating distinctive brand assets, is memorable and tells a relevant brand story.
Our client’s brand was in shambles. Every new marketing and sales manager had left their mark on the brand that resulted in mash-up different looking products even for the same product line. With a large product range, that targeted different demographic segments – each with their own packaging design – the result were customers not understanding where different products fitted in with each other or feeling confident about which product that actually used. Feedback indicated that both consumers and sales staff were disengaging with the brand, and sales were declining.
Before our client could clean up their branding, they needed to know what to keep and what they could change. To give our client the guidance they needed, we undertook a semiotic analysis of the market. The first step in this analysis was an audit of all our client’s branding, their competitors’ branding, and the signs and symbols used in the weight management category. From this analysis we were able to more clearly define what were the key branding elements. While our semiotic analysis provided cultural context, we needed to speak with consumers to further understand how they interpreted different brands and how different brand stories framed their choices. While semiotic analysis provided us with the brand message, we still needed to understand what elements were used for recognising the brand. For this insight, we ran an online survey that used a correct recognition response-time model.
The results from the project uncovered branding elements our client had overlooked and had removed from some packaging that were central to the brand story and product identification, a small butterfly. Despite our client’s attempts to design different packaging for different markets, consumers had more in common and they wanted a brand that was inclusive rather than treating them differently. The results from project led to reduced packaging costs and a brand design platform that helped customers navigate the options available to them, explore new flavours, and have the brand with stand-out presence that revitalised sales.