Campaign: Packaging healthy living

Client: Found Organic

Background

In 2007, Sydney entrepreneurs Mark De Luca and Onur Kece founded one of the world’s first carbon neutral juice companies, Found Organic. Found Organic is an Australian owned, 100 percent pure, exotic juice company.

Founders De Luca and Kece started Found Organic when De Luca was diagnosed with testicular cancer and Kece recommended pomegranate juice to help with his recovery during chemotherapy. The juice, in its pure, not concentrate form was extremely expensive and virtually impossible to get in Australia. This prompted the pair to look into starting a business, and import organic pomegranate juice from Turkey, where the highest grade of fruit is grown, for supply to retail stores.

De Luca and Kece were the first to launch a 100 percent organic pomegranate juice to a market where concentrate and additive-laden beverages were the norm.

As the only organic pomegranate juice brand in the Australian market in 2008, new product development was essential to achieve a greater market share and brand awareness in the most profitable segments. It took more than 18 months and a six-month stint in Turkey for De Luca and Kece to find the very best suppliers and overhaul the brand and product range. Packaging was redesigned and a new range of flavours was developed.

Initially launching with pomegranate, which contains up to seven times the antioxidants of green tea, Found Organic juices are now available in a range of flavours made entirely from cold-pressed fruit – apple, orange, sour cherry, strawberry and honeydew, with watermelon and mulberry in development. All Found Organic juices contain zero additives, preservatives and artificial flavours. The unique fruit flavours all carry high antioxidants associated with health benefits, such as better circulation and blood-flow, which lead to an improved physical appearance such as glowing skin.

Objectives

Throughout its life cycle, Found Organic has witnessed a marketplace where health is just perception, and a beverage category strewn with misinformation. Consumers are deceived by labelling, poor product content and large corporations, who dominate distribution, making it difficult for products dedicated to healthy living to see the light of day. Found Organic calls this the ‘Age of Artificial’.

Found Organic’s mission is to bring the Age of Artificial to an end – through purity and total transparency in its product offering and packaging. Found Organic is also committed to making organic beverages affordable for the masses – something which is currently lacking in the industry.

Strategy

The Found Organic strategy was to move away from the traditional fruit juice packaging conventions, representing earthy, organic category principles and dedicating itself to making organic modern and mainstream instead. This meant no more tree leaves and soil on the packaging, nothing niche and nothing hippy.

Distribution is focused on penetrating the masses. Found Organic’s mission is to be available for all consumers across every touch point they desire a beverage. While boutique retailers are an easy fit with the brand and product content, deals with convenience stores, café franchises and supermarkets have helped bring the product to the general public.

Found Organic’s audience includes working professionals living in busy cities who are proud to demand natural products and a sustainable way of life.

Consumers who drink Found Organic are intelligent and fashionable. They take care of themselves and have a keen instinct for quality, trendsetting products. They are intent on their own well-being and are socially conscious, desiring an intellectual challenge and dialogue with their peers.

Demographically, Found Organic speaks to metro-based consumers, 20 to 45 years old, educated and affluent. Their choices are considered and they make a difference, while delivering a sense of status.

Execution

The product packaging and design reflects the brand’s core values. For example, being the first carbon neutral juice company in the world, the design concept represents a transparent, ethical brand positioning – essentially, what you see is what you get.

The ‘nothing to hide’ message is illustrated by the fact that there is no front or back to the eco-friendly spray-printed label, that wraps around a conical bottle inspired by a high end cosmetic brand.

Since the unique fruit flavours all carry high antioxidants’ associated health benefits, such as better circulation and blood-flow, which lead to an improved physical appearance such as glowing skin, the design and marketing strategy was to marry a bold, high fashion look and feel with a direct beauty-led health benefit.

Unable due to government laws to make overt health claims, the brand’s design objective was to be associated emotionally with being good looking and healthy. The Found Organic design team, which included founders De Luca and Kece, was challenged to make a beverage look like a high end perfume brand, yet still maintain the ‘good taste’, ‘fresh’ and ‘exotic’ credentials a modern juice brand needs to sell at the retail level.

Results

Since inception of the new Found Organic packaging, Found Organic has sold in excess of one million units and experienced a 45 percent increase in its total revenue from financial year 2008/2009 to financial year 2010/2011.

It was also internationally recognised for its cut-through branding at the World Star Packaging Awards in 2010 and the organic product’s high quality is certified by the BCS-OKO Organic Certification Body and UK Soil Association.

Staff numbers have tripled and exports have grown in Turkey, Singapore, Maldives and other parts of south-east Asia since the innovative packaging hit the shelves in 2010.

Found Organic is available in 750 retail stores in Australia – cafés, health food shops, bars, restaurants and grocery stores, plus 11 Thomas Dux and 50 City Convenience chains. Expanding at a rapid rate, Found Organic is soon to commence distribution in Sweden, England and the US.