Kapiva Ayurveda
An already established Ayurvedic Wellness brand, Kapiva, approached Opposite HQ to revisit their entire brand identity. Kapiva had been in the Indian wellness market for close to 2 years, therefore they came with some baggage and heavy opinions of what needed to change to compete better in the retail market.
I lead and executed this project from start to finish, working in close quarters with the founders and marketing heads of Kapiva. Apart from project planning and management, my creative roles including working on the brand positioning, tone of voice, and packaging. The details below will help you understand the project and my role better:
Industry
Nutrition, Healthcare, Supplements
Scope
Brand and Product Positioning, Packaging, Brand Story, Tone of Voice
Team
Abhisek Sarda, Indranil Udupi, Sanjana Hegde, Vidit Agarwal, Mukul Soni
Planning
Being a comprehensive and extensive project, the tendency to miss out on details was high. I made sure every deliverable was broken down into fragments, which made it easy for both the client and my internal team to decipher. I had to meticulously plan, execute and deliver as we had to design and release artworks for 40+ SKUs, each with an illustration-heavy and content-focused packaging. Every milestone was dependent on completion of the previous deliverable, therefore timelines had to be strictly adhered to. I had to assign multiple designers and copywriters in addition to the creative director to successfully deliver.
Project plan containing action and milestones.
Project plan of action and milestones.
Scope of SKUs we had to design.
Brand Discovery
Prior to the brand positioning workshop with the clients, my team and I had to thoroughly research the Indian wellness market (Ayurvedic products), both online and retail. This involved competitor research by visiting drug stores, retail outlets, e-commerce websites (amazon.in) and studying branding and positioning trends of key players. This allowed me and my team to build a voice and strong opinion on the current market trends and prepare us for the workshop.
Find below the research on MCT oil competitors available in the market:
Positioning & Personality
PWe conducted an intensive 4-hour workshop that one, helped us gain a deeper understanding of the pain points and aspirations of the brand and two, the needs of the key audiences. While our back-end research set a foundation to understand the competitive landscape, this workshop also allowed us to visualise competition from the client's point of view, in terms of specific areas where competitors were doing better.
The information gathered, allowed us to explore a number of positioning directions and finally articulate a positioning fit for the brand. The set of images below taken from the brand positioning presentation showcases how we arrived at Kapiva’s new positioning.
BRAND POSITIONING
We wanted to highlight Kapiva’s ingredient stories and its origins - we called it provenance. From asking about the ‘what’ and ‘why’, we moved to asking the ‘where’ as well. In a world where food is increasingly abundant, there’s a growing desire for something which is hard to get. Therefore with Kapiva, we would build the brand with the provenance stories of their products; how Kapiva goes great distances to get the very best ingredients. Following are some brands that use the provenance story to good effect:
For Kapiva, the ‘Provenance’ positioning was truly authentic to the brand. The ingredients used in their products, were sustainably procured through years of relationships with artisans who grew and nurtured these ingredients. A new player in the market could not take this approach without first having to learn this unique procurement approach. Kapiva would focus its positioning around provenance, supported by authenticity, freshness and purity of produce.
BRAND PERSONALITY
The brand personality exercise helped influence the visual identity and brand communication (Social Media, Tone of Voice etc). We conducted a few exercise as shown below to arrive at Kapiva’s primary and secondary personality traits.
Brand Identity
We were designing to optimise the logo for a retail-focused, commercial brand competing with established names in the Indian wellness market. There had to be balance between uniqueness and high-visibility on dense shelves. We visited numerous retail stores to learn from the shelves. Through this market visit, we inferred that packaging design was the true identifier of the brand, much more than the logo. As a conclusion, we decided that the logo will only be second to the packaging design.
LOGO DESIGN
60-70% of food brands have typographic logos within a container for eg: Maggi, Nestle, Heinz, etc. The container idea felt like the right direction to follow. Hence we decided, we would differentiate in terms of packaging and follow the market trend of designing a simple, readable and recognisable logo.
We finalised a typographic logo enclosed in the monogram ‘K’ container (K for Kapiva).
PACKAGING DESIGN
With packaging, we had to pass design ideas through multiple filters like:
- Scalability of the design across multiple product categories
- Ability to work varying form factors
- The design should punch above its price point
Overall, on a dense shelf, the objective of the packaging, was to draw attention, encourage pick-up and create desire to purchase.
We finalised the idea of showcasing a hand holding the hero-product ingredient. The abstract idea behind the hand being -
“Putting in effort and going great distances, to procure the best ingredients for your wellness.”
Find below the final packaging designs for various products:
Tone of Voice
The tone of voice document would provide a framework to enable the reader of the document to write copy for Kapiva - whether it's for a hoarding, a social media post, or an internal mailer. It could be used by everyone writing for the brand.
The tone of voice document was drafted by the team copywriter and overlooked by me. My role here was to guide the tone of voice documenting exercise in a way that it remains true to the brand, by reiterating the positioning and keeping it customer-focused. Creatives tend to diverge from the point of focus when deeply involved in writing or designing alike, getting them back on track is essential. Find below some excerpts from the Tone of Voice document:
Learnings
This was a unique opportunity for me to interact closely with multiple stakeholdersrepresenting different verticals of the business like sales, marketing, and design.
I had to be exhaustive with my preparation while presenting project progress to the clients.From explaining positioning in the market viewpoint to conveying meaning behind visual identity explorations and decision making to answering resilient questions from the clients.
One of the hurdles I faced here was deciphering and application of client-feedback. When multiple stakeholders voice their opinion, it is difficult to identify opinions that count and will truly affect the outcome. I had to pick and choose client feedback that would truly make application sense, in a diplomatic manner so as to maintain a healthy client relationship.