GoodBelly, which markets a line of juice products infused with probiotic ingredients, had a problem.
Two years ago, the company’s quart- and shot-sized products underwent a packaging revamp, in which GoodBelly traded traditional colors for a new jet black look. Lined up on a shelf, the set offered standout appeal and separated GoodBelly from the throngs of other juice brands that it shared space with. Executives saw the redesign as key to the company’s efforts to expand beyond the natural channel and achieve broader appeal for its products.
However, there was a major misstep in the new packaging, one that company executives hadn’t expected: most consumers couldn’t identify GoodBelly as a juice.
Despite imagery that included raw fruits and vegetables and even a glass of juice on the cartons, the packaging lacked flavor appeal and focused too heavily on the formulation of the products, according to Kelly Reedy, the CEO and chief creative officer of LRXD, a Denver-based marketing firm.
Working in conjunction with GoodBelly, which relies heavily on consumer research and data-driven analysis, Reedy and his team were enlisted to reframe the brand and packaging in such a way that consumers could quickly and easily understand the products’ use, and most importantly, how they fit into a context of everyday health.
The refresh was over a year in the making, beginning with a measured and scientific approach in which GoodBelly cultivated consumer feedback and information gleaned from focus groups as way to lay the groundwork for a new design. As a result, the company reassigned the visual hierarchy for the package with probiotic function, refreshment and a dairy-free formulation representing the new top-down approach for GoodBelly products. It came as a surprise to Reedy and company executives that 60 percent of GoodBelly customers eat yogurt on a regular basis, leading to slightly less of an emphasis on the non-dairy aspect of the brand than in the past.
While maintaining the black color, Reedy also sought to deemphasize packaging aspects like a detailed description of probiotic bacteria used in the juices (“consumers really don’t understand what this ‘digestive thing’ is all about,” Reedy noted.) Instead, GoodBelly’s label has been pared down to a message that now, as Reedy puts it, “lives up to the name of the brand.”
“We’ve taken the positioning and elevated GoodBelly [to] ‘if you want to be healthy, it starts with having a good belly,’” Reedy said. “People really like that idea. It’s a part of a routine and less of a prescription.”
GoodBelly now sports a tagline of “Drink daily for healthy digestion,” and features fruit images that are more reminiscent of those found on conventional multi-serve juice products. Moreover, GoodBelly’s quarts and shots are also now consistent in their appearance; it’s something that Reedy said wasn’t the case in the previous rendition.
While Reedy views the refreshed look as far and away improved as compared to the old packaging, he noted that GoodBelly is still walking a fine line of between telling consumers that its juice versus as describing it as probiotic drink and a functional product.
Nevertheless, it’s clear that GoodBelly is attempting to focus on the latter in a new campaign called “The Belly Reboot,” one in which customers and renew their digestive health. Calling on consumers to drink one 8 oz. glass of GoodBelly juice or one of its 2.7 oz. shots every day for 12 consecutive days, the company has also created an online app in which drinkers will be able to track their food intake, learn daily health tips and obtain coupons for GoodBelly products. Promoting results as “Happiness Guaranteed,” the company offers a money-back guarantee for the 12-day “reboot.”