The Digestible Brand -

A Tough Nut to Crack: Nutrition Marketing for a Rapidly Expanding Brand

How Justin’s Nut Butter achieved massive expansion, while staying true to their roots. How can you apply these lessons to your brand?

There are brands people like, brands people love, and then, those that tap into the most coveted rank of consumers: the brand obsessed. Justin’s Nut Butter has managed to do that from the beginning — winning over consumers with their farmer’s market roots, simple ingredients, and addictive flavors. But, this could have become a riches to rags tale when Hormel Foods, the Skippy Peanut Butter giant, acquired the company in 2016. When I heard the news I thought it might be the beginning of the end of the Justin’s tribe. I waited to see if their cult following of [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-10-15T22:46:01+00:00 October 15th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Marketing, Packaging, Public Relations, Retail Support, Tradeshow|0 Comments

Nutrition Marketing That Puts Some Skin in the Game

If you really, truly, passionately believe your food or beverage product offers a big benefit to people, go all in, take the consumer’s side in a big way. And watch interest grow into fervor.

I try to do double duty with these articles — be super respectful toward someone’s life’s blood while offering suggestions that might help their brand and yours. But this time, especially given Vital Proteins’ Collagen Peptides is a cow-based product, I might just step in it. Here goes. We’ve come a long way since “glucosamine.” You know, the stuff that was supposed to help our joints get some young back in ‘em. RIP old school, long live Collagen Peptides. New, better, sexy name and the promise of additional good stuff for hair, skin and nails — all kinds of [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-10-08T16:40:10+00:00 October 8th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Broadcast, Digital, Influencers, Marketing, Media, Packaging, Public Relations, Retail Support, Social Media, Tradeshow, Video|0 Comments

Nutrition Marketing with a Wilde Idea

What the rise, fall, and rise again of Wilde Brands says about innovation and perseverance.

With an all-star team of food industry veterans, a seemingly innovative product idea, and millions in funding — Wilde Brands was too big to fail. At the core of this Boulder-based brand was the idea to create a meat-based bar, less like jerky, and more like a traditional nutrition bar. In 2015, the prettily packaged Wilde Bars hit the shelves of Whole Foods. The brand took inspiration (and their name) from Oscar Wilde who once said, "Be yourself; everyone else is already taken." It turns out that the eponymous writer’s words would foreshadow what was to come for the bright-eyed [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-09-28T22:05:50+00:00 October 1st, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Marketing, Packaging, Research, Retail Support, Sampling, Tradeshow, Trends|0 Comments

Turning Chocolate into Nutrition Marketing Gold

I’ve written three brand stories for one of my favorite products. See how your brand can follow suit.

To me, enjoying chocolate is like petting a basket full of puppies. 99% of the population loves it and everyone else is missing out. So, when I came into contact with Rau – a healthy, plant-based cacao drink that’s basically chocolate milk for health snobs – I was immediately in. However, despite being a big fan of this product, I still don’t feel like I know what they stand for as a brand. Sure, I know that they seek to provide a healthy option in the drink aisle, as well as a handful of other tidbits, but, I still [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-09-17T16:31:51+00:00 September 24th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Marketing, Packaging|0 Comments

Marketing Your Nutrition Brand like a Family

If you created your food brand out of a personal need to help people, why market to them like strangers with wallets? Give everything the family touch, then keep that family together.

I know, really I do — you started your brand because you wanted to fill a need for people. Maybe you started out by filling your own. You shared your new passion with friends and, yes, family. Everything was loving and glowing and personal and altruistic — and then, you decided to ruin it all by becoming a marketer. Bill Keith, oldest brother of many and CEO of Perfect Bar (I put the first thing first for a reason) has not ruined it all — at all. Instead, he, along with his siblings, teammates, investors and maybe even you [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-09-17T16:51:49+00:00 September 17th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Broadcast, Digital, Experiential, General, Marketing, Media, Packaging, Public Relations, Retail Support, Sampling, Social Media, Tradeshow, Video|0 Comments

Marketing Nutrition That Makes “Superfood” the Brand Hero

Buzzword branding doesn’t work. Here’s how “superfood” can break the mold and find it’s rhythm.

Superfood. It’s a word that catches your attention. As consumers, we like things that promise to be super. Super easy. Super affordable. Super healthy. But decades of quick-fixes and fad diets have taught us to be wary of too-good-to-be-true claims. So slapping a buzzword on your product simply isn’t enough. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s all about education. When you think “superfood” you might think, Sure, goji berries and kale. But what does the term actually mean? According to the Oxford English Dictionary, a superfood is “a nutrient-rich food considered to be especially beneficial [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-09-10T19:26:13+00:00 September 10th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Digital, Marketing, Packaging, Public Relations, Research, Retail Support, Social Media, Trends|0 Comments

Nutrition Marketing That Turns Lemons into Lemonade

When you’ve found the passion that drives a great brand story, don’t dilute it. Instead, let it be a part of everything you do, internally and externally.

Go to super-simple lemonade brand 4P's homepage, read the long version of founder Will Boyle’s origin story and you’ll get a passionate taste for what this brand is all about — saving forests and saving people from overly processed, garbage drinks (and food). It’s a good tale, told from the perspective of a boy who became a man who wanted to do better for humans and nature. In fact, when I asked Will to tell me the essence of his brand in one sentence, he responded, “4Pure was born from a simple commitment to do good for all by [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-09-05T16:21:29+00:00 September 3rd, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Broadcast, Digital, Experiential, General, Marketing, Media, Packaging, Public Relations, Retail Support, Sampling, Social Media, Tradeshow, Video|0 Comments

Marketing a Nutrition Brand That Lives Up to Its Promise (Not Its Name)

What your marketing department should really be talking about when it comes to EVOL Foods.

“LOVE” spelled backwards is “EVOL.” Evil? Really? According to the frozen-food brand’s social media accounts, it’s pronounced e-vul, which doesn’t seem much better. I could spend the rest of this article debating whether the name is a devilish distraction or an attention-grabbing denouncement of Big Food. But I won’t. Because as perplexing as the name might be, their brand story is much more straightforward — and they present it in a way that leaves no room for debate. So let’s ignore the name for now, and dive into what makes EVOL not so bad after all. Take a quick [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-08-30T17:31:58+00:00 August 27th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Digital, Marketing, Packaging, Public Relations, Social Media|0 Comments

Marketing Nutrition Like a Warrior

Your brand story — the essence of your brand and its products and people — should fuel a marketing campaign that makes people believe in you and themselves. Health Warrior Superfoods wins that battle.

It’s mental food inventory time. Take a second and think of the CPG food brands you have in your pantry, fridge, bag or glove box (if you can’t think of any, you probably need a snack). Which of those brands are always with you? The ones you pick up every time, the ones you pay full price for when lookalikes are on deal, the ones you seek out? These are the brands we all want to build, right? Well, it’s easier said than done, because to accomplish this, a product has to go beyond tasting great and delivering on [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-08-23T23:53:10+00:00 August 20th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Broadcast, Digital, Experiential, General, Influencers, Marketing, Packaging, Public Relations, Sampling, Social Media, Tradeshow, Trends, Video|1 Comment

Marketing Nutrition by Playing the Hits with Heart

Quinn is setting out to do a lot of the same things you are. So why do they seem so fresh?

Crafting a unique story for a nutrition brand can be tricky. Not because you don’t have a story to tell, but because there’s a very good chance that a thousand other brands are already saying exactly what you want to say.“We’re reimagining food.”“Something was wrong with the industry, so we fixed it.”“We work WITH the farmers. Look, see the farms?!”“We only use ___ ingredients. That makes us SIMPLE. And that means we’re better.”Sound familiar?Fortunately, you can play the hits and still make your product seem unique. Take a look at Quinn, a snack company that has made it their goal [...]

By Eric Kiker| 2018-08-22T03:09:18+00:00 August 13th, 2018|Brand Positioning, Branding, Marketing, Packaging|0 Comments