Like most other fields, marketing has felt the effects of the green movement. People care about energy consumption, about sustainable processes, about organic foods, and about a few dozen other points on the green checklist. With everyone making the green claim, how’s an organic cereal company to differentiate itself from the crowd?
Marty McDonald and Hilary Bromberg are important players for the Seattle-based brand development company Egg, whose client list includes Nature’s Path Organic, North America’s largest organic cereal brand. From a recent AdAge article, McDonald and Bromberg detail the steps Nature’s Path Organic has taken (and is taking) to stand out in an increasingly crowded field. Let’s take a look at how Nature’s Path Organic is distinguishing itself:
Consumers in this space want to be healthier, but they’re also part of a bigger, values-based movement that they aren’t necessarily aware of and yet are craving. Helping them see how they are a part of something larger is a powerful idea. For this target audience –intelligent, educated, questing and inured to advertising as usual — marketers need to offer something real if they want to actually connect. It’s all about encouraging systems thinking in order to drive change.
A comprehensive brand development process carried out in 2008 by Egg, which specializes in sustainable brands and marketing to the conscious consumer, helped Nature’s Path emerge with a thorough understanding of its brand, encapsulated by the tagline, “Eat well. Do good,” which, along with the key pillars of taste and health, incorporates the company’s fundamental values associated with sustainability. The core component of sustainability for Nature’s Path is embodied in its mission to produce only 100%-organic products.
The company’s independent status also allows it to extend corporate governance on social and environmental issues beyond what a public company might allow. Jyoti Stephens, the company’s sustainability and stewardship manager, recently produced a comprehensive corporate sustainability report.
[snip]
Perhaps most important, the agency developed a mnemonic tool so that consumers could remember the brand name Nature’s Path, which research had proven not memorable amongst a sea of “Nature’s blank” brands — another problem for all brands in the organic area. Converting a popular allegory heard in focus groups over and over again, which captured the idea of the personal journey and awakening one discovers when starting to become more socially and environmentally aware, the agency created a funky 1970s-revival logo using the words “Get on the Path” in the shape of a bare foot, thereby associating an individual’s personal path toward sustainability with the company’s mission and its organic cereals.
That’s the Nature’s Path logo up near the top of this page.
Nature’s Path is succeeding because it’s focusing on what differentiates itself from other organic foods. It’s independently owned; Kashi, owned by Kellog, is very much not. This independence allows Nature’s Path to act in certain ways, and the company is right to highlight this important difference. Also, I think the logo change is really key in this situation. As McDonald and Bromberg mention, there are so many companies focusing on green issues that it’s tough to keep track of all the brands with nature in the title. The logo, the visual identity of the brand, is memorable and it communicates the key values of the company.
I think this quick case study is interesting not because I think digital voice companies should necessarily go green–though sustainability is important for reasons beyond the current wave of positive publicity–but because it’s hard to imagine a more crowded field right now than the organic movement. Every company is positioning their products as healthy, natural, and sustainable; and it’s incredibly difficult for a consumer to know what’s real and what’s mere posturing. The lessons of Nature’s Path can help any business in a crowded field to distinguish itself. In what ways are you communicating the unique values of your company?
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