Building Compelling Communications For A Product And Brand
TAPPING INTO THE DEEPER STORY AND GETTING TO THE CORE OF A BRAND MESSAGE
Service: Opportunity Roadmapping
Industry: Food, Beverage & Agriculture
\ Challenge
Rainier Fruit, one of the largest organic fruit producers in the US, wanted to secure market leadership in an increasingly crowded organics landscape. The ultimate goal… to make Rainier synonymous with organic fruit.
To do so, Rainier needed a new way to tell their story and communicate the value of their fruit to both retailers and consumers. That’s a big challenge when you’re working with a space the size of a sticker on an apple. It’s even more difficult when consumers have wildly different, frequently shifting beliefs and behaviors regarding the essence of your product — “organic”.
To approach this challenge, we needed to first explore Rainier through the eyes of consumers, then the bigger value proposition of organic fruit, and how Rainier delivered on it.
\ Our Approach
We leveraged a myriad of methods to build and vet new brand positions, tag-lines and imagery.
Scavenger Hunts: Explored existing positionings around organics and highlighted points of potential creative differentiation
Competitive Landscape: Mapped out what competitors were saying and identified white-spaces
Employee and Leadership Interviews: Revealed what was truly different about Rainier and worth tethering the brand to
Voice of the Ecosystem: Gathered insight from our ecosystem of participants, influencers and observers regarding trends in the organic business and consumer sentiment
In-depth Interviews with Consumers: Developed understanding around behaviors and beliefs, including points of confusion and opportunities for clarity
Design and Opportunity Thinking®: Creatively built out positions, tag-lines and imagery
Co-innovation sessions: Co-innovated with lead and non-lead consumers on the West and East coasts to improve concepts
Success!
The new positioning and tag-line — Wholesome to the Core — communicated to consumers that organic is more than skin deep — its benefits penetrate the fruit. This tag-line, along with additional marketing to people at health-oriented events, helped Rainier achieve its goal of becoming the dominant player in organic fruit.
Transcending product positioning, Wholesome to the Core also became corporate positioning — telling the bigger story of a company with deep values and a history of generosity with retailers.
Wholesome to the Core now appears on every Rainier apple, box and touchpoint. In fact, you may have seen it at the Boston Marathon where Rainier is an official sponsor, giving out thousands of organic apples every year.