Behind the Scenes

In the third installment of his series, “How it Started, How its Going,” Andy Kurtts, Founder and Creative Director at Buttermilk Creative discusses the the Mortal Kombucha packaging evolution with Founder and CEO, Becca Schepps.

Based in Boulder, copywriter and creative director Becca Schepps came up with the idea for Mortal Kombucha in 2017 when she was working on a packaging design for a new dessert that wanted to say ‘good for you’ but wasn’t that good for you. Holding a kombucha in her hand, she was looking to see how they worded ‘good for you’ and saw the ingredients ended in “100% love.”  Upon seeing those words something clicked and she felt there was an opportunity to develop an aggressive kombucha brand that had nothing to do with love. She came up with the name right then and there: Mortal Kombucha (a pun on Mortal Kombat, the notoriously violent video game). She initially launched in jest without an actual product but when people started buying from her website she got to work and launched her brand in earnest. In April 2020 Becca redesigned her packaging and relaunched the brand.

Andy Kurtts: What prompted you to re-design your packaging?

Becca Schepps: For pricing reasons we made changes to the bottle shape. The new bottle was also used by several category leaders. This made me very scared – so the thought was, if we’re gonna go into the same exact bottle and sit next to these big brands on the shelf, we better look drastically different. It would either work, or fail.

AK: What were your goals for the redesign?

BS: Well we knew we needed to standout on the shelf if we wanted to have any success. While we didn’t want to alienate female kombucha drinkers who traditionally are the largest target customer we also wanted to attract new kombucha drinkers with our reimagined look. Our goal was to create something that could exist in a yoga studio and a boxing gym. Plus we just wanted to have fun in the category. That was a major driver.

AK: What inspired the look behind your current packaging design?

BS: I love vintage Gwen Stefani, circa Tragic Kingdom. Also Santa Cruz skateboards and peak 90s brands like Roxy, Quicksilver, and Stussy sprinkled with a little Lisa Frank nostalgia. Think late 80s/ early 90s brands when fluorescent was the rage. Loud and proud. We wanted the look to be fun and playful with an edge. Plus, I love the aesthetic of hand drawn, but not messy.

AK: How did your messaging on the packaging change with the redesign?

BS: Our messaging actually remained exactly the same, even the back copy. By trade I’m traditionally a copywriter – so I wrote all the original copy. However I also designed our old bottle – which I’m NOT a designer. So while the words on the bottle always conveyed the brand I was trying to create, the visuals did not. Now with the redesign it is just conveyed much more colorfully with better hierarchy.

AK: How has this packaging redesign changed your overall brand messaging and image?

BS: Because the new look is so much more fun we’ve really leaned into bringing it to life on social media and our website. We have beefed up the attitude and personality. Personified our flavors and given them attitudes (and body parts at times). We continue to work towards bringing our look and feel to more aspects of our brand off the packaging in terms of where we show up and how we show up. It’s all about making sure we can be this “alt” kombucha.

AK: How has your packaging redesign impacted sales? What about customer reach? Wholesale accounts?

BS: We launched the new packaging in April of 2020 and in Q4 2020 sales were up 20% YOY as compared to our old labels. Now in 2021 as new packaging has been out a year we are up even more. Every month seems to be our best month. We have received great feedback from buyers who are excited about how different we are. One large chain buyer called and told me that he had reviewed 250 kombuchas and ours was the only one that stood out. We made a lot of changes in 2020, and while they all contributed to our amazing growth – I truly believe the label redesign opened the doors and the team and product’s integrity sealed the deal.

AK: What was your biggest take away from redesigning packaging?

BS: The risk was worth it. When we locked in on doing this design I thought – ‘welp we are either gonna blow up in a good way or blow the brand up in a tragic way.’ We had to choose between safe or dangerous with the redesign and we chose dangerous. It was a delicate dance between standing out and fitting in so we didn’t alienate the existing consumers. To do this we followed things like color trends, but were careful to stay away from design trends that everyone was mimicking.

AK: What was the biggest lesson you learned from the redesign?

BS: Go all in and don’t look back. We were playing it too safe early on. The brand from idea inception was about creating a true wild child rebel brand and to be honest, we are still working on dialing that even more.

AK: What was the biggest surprise from this process?

BS: The response from buyers – we didn’t know how it was going to be received. A buyer had a bunch of samples at her house and she told me that her kid, who never drinks kombucha, loved it. Our broker teams love the imagery of the redesign and it helps the product resonate with people who otherwise would not drink kombucha. I think it makes people thing – hmmm what’s this, maybe i’ll try it.

AK: Tell me about what ended up being your favorite part of the process.

BS: I love innovating. I love coming up with ideas. I love having a vision and pulling in the pieces to make it come to life. It was super exciting to create this brief of everything in my brain, hand it to the design team and see what came back — and how they’d interpret my musings. Usually I’m the one that gets the brief, so it was great to see concepts evolve and grow and play client. This redesign played a huge role in building and creating the brand exactly how I want it to be.

AK: What would you consider to be the most challenging part of the process?

BS: The biggest challenge wasn’t the design part. I think coming from that world I knew what to expect and was able to give the design team all the tools they needed for success. That means having all your assets (logos, upcs, nutrition panels, ingredient lists, flavor names, certification icons), label mandatories (net weight, disclaimers, fda regulations) and anything else important easily accessible and organized for the design team. Give them the box to work in, but also be open to looking outside the box if all the mandatories are met. Timeline wise – everything always will take longer than you think, so I knew we had a hard deadline that we had a production run coming up, so I wanted to have everything printed 1 month before that, knowing that sometimes things creep longer.

Actually the biggest back and forth I had with the designers was color. I think the designer was going to kill me. I kept pushing him in one direction and he really wanted to go a different way. I had him do the color I wanted and then the first time we printed labels I realized I was wrong and had to go back to them, dragging my tail between my legs and ask him to change the colors, because he was right. That said, I think its important to pick a lane and proceed, otherwise you can seesaw on a decision forever and delay things. It’s like yes, it should be perfect, but you can always iterate on perfect.

AK: What advice would you give to other business owners considering a redesign?

BS: Before you jump in on packaging design figure out who you are on a brand. Don’t just go with the trend. You package is all you have to tell your story when you’re on a shelf. Once you figure it out, lean into it 100%. Also trust your designers!

In the second installment of his series, “How it Started, How its Going,” Andy Kurtts, Founder and Creative Director at Buttermilk Creative discusses the Must Lovepackaging evolution with Co-Founder, Hannah Hong.

Best friends Hannah Hong and Mollie Cha came up with the idea for Must Love (formerly Hakuna Brands) in 2016 when they started experimenting with a non-dairy ice cream alternative recipe. Both women have been lactose intolerant since their early 20s and after trying a banana based recipe they whipped up one evening after work they knew they were onto something special. After perfecting their creamy, indulgent recipe they dove head first into launching their fruit based brand Hakuna Banana. In 2018 they launched Totes Oats, an oat milk based ice cream. Then, in early 2020 they relaunched all products under the brand Must Love.

Andy Kurtts: What prompted you to re-design your packaging and branding?

Hannah Hong: By 2018 we had two seperate lines, fruit based Hakuna Banana and oat milk based Totes Oats. We are a small company and while our banana line had gained significant traction and visibility we saw there was a lot of opportunity for our oat line. We wanted to invest in building out those products but we had a hard time creating traction for them. A year and a half after launching Totes Oats we took a step back to strategize and decided to rename and relaunch an umbrella brand for both lines to live under. In early 2020 we launched everything under Must Love.

AK: What were your goals for the redesign?

HH: First we wanted to combine Hakuna Banana and Totes Oats into one brand to eliminate confusion and to be able to refer to all products by the same brand name. Second, we wanted to capture the same appeal of Hakuna Banana for Must Love. We wanted to make sure our new branding spoke to the emotional side of our brand which required some soul searching and strategy. The foundation of our company and brand comes from my friendship with my co-founder Mollie. It was important to us that our products feel like something you want to share with your best friend.

AK: What inspired the look behind your packaging design?

HH: Our friendship! We talked about the brand’s personality and really, Mollie and I inspired it. When you experience our friendship in person, you experience our brand’s culture. We also made sure that the patterns we used on the packaging were inspired by the ingredients.

AK: How have customers received the new packaging?

HH: We’ve received some DMs from people and they ask in all caps “WHY DID YOU CHANGE?”. We of course explain but that’s the most negative feedback we’ve received so far. Most folks are very positive, and those who didn’t know about Hakuna Banana absolutely love Must Love.

AK: How has your packaging redesign impacted sales? Customer reach? Wholesale accounts?

HH: For our wholesale accounts we already had good buyer relationships with Whole Foods and Sprouts. We waited until we knew what we were going to rename the brand and had it 99% ready to share and then brought these buyers into our rebranding and redesign discussions to gather their feedback. We wanted them to be partners on the journey and they immediately understood and got excited about it. At this time we expanded nationally with Sprouts. We were strategic about this and intentionally timed the packaging relaunch with the expansion so that we could start fresh with a new brand and packaging. We don’t fully know the impact of the redesign on sales yet but we feel a lot more energy behind the new brand. Customers are really excited and we’ve gotten some great feedback so far.

AK: Did you use any marketing research or data to inform the aesthetic?

HH: We sought out feedback from one of our mentors who used to work in the ice cream category. We waited until we were about 60% done. At that point we showed the design to her; she gave us some great real talk and advice. I’d definitely recommend tapping into your network.

AK: How did your messaging on the packaging change with the redesign?

HH: We were very mindful of putting product photography of the product on the packaging. We did this to increase taste appeal. We also sent out a simple survey to help us zero in on which claims to include on the packaging. The survey results helped us chose the ones that best served our brand and resonated most with consumers

AK: What was that biggest lesson you learned from redesigning your branding and packaging?

HH: Our biggest lesson learned was to hire an agency to help instead of creating the design myself. We knew we needed professional help. It’s a major process and a journey when you’re undertaking a whole rebrand. It takes time to build trust and go through the iterative process. It was scary but you have to trust that your agency can handle it. We were scared in the beginning but quickly realized the only way out of it is through!

AK: What was your favorite part of the process?

HH: The end! Once we got through 80% of the design process we started talking about fun stuff like color families and really got to see everything come together. When you finally see all the proofs from the printer, it’s so exciting.

AK: What was the most challenging part of the process?

HH: Because the Hakuna Banana brand had a strong POV with imagery, divorcing from that packaging and thinking about new imagery was hard. We had to completely detach from the old brand in order to create the new packaging and branding. We loved the old packaging which was hard to leave behind.

AK: What advice would you give to other business owners considering a redesign?

HH: What really helped us was we had to be honest with ourselves. When we first decided to consider a rebrand it was very scary to rebrand both brands. But you have to really look at it and be honest with yourself with what is best for the brand long term. You have to do the hard work!

Andy Kurtts, Founder and Creative Director at Buttermilk Creative launched a new packaging design column for The Spotlight called How it Started, How its Going. In his first entry, he discusses the Bare Bones Broth packaging evolution with Co-Founder and CEO, Kate Harvey.

Bare Bones was started in 2014 by Kate and Ryan Harvey to breathe new life into a timeless staple: bone broth. Since launching, they’ve become one of the leaders in the category and continue to grow their distribution on a national level.

Andy Kurtts: Tell us a little bit about the packaging origins for Bare Bones.

Kate Harvey: As with most startup brands we bootstrapped in the beginning. The original packaging idea was limited by a couple of points: materials, minimums and lack of experience with what works in packaging. Our first bags were stock bags with printed labels because we did not meet the minimum order quantities for custom printing.

We initially worked with a local San Diego designer whose specialty was restaurant branding and design. Since the designer was more accustomed to restaurant design, translating to packaging was tough. The designer explored shapes related to the history of stock making, prehistoric shapes and hieroglyphs, however those details were lost on the consumer.

AK: What prompted you to re-design your packaging?

KH: While our original design was steeped in research, the concept did not communicate the brand’s core message and differentiators that Bare Bones would need to resonate with our target customer and stake our claim in the category. We knew this was a priority, so we included packaging design into our first round of investment which enabled us to work with a studio that specializes in packaging. The idea behind the first redesign was to convey home cooking, transparency, and farm to table. To do this we included a large window and animal illustrations. However, the first redesign had several shortfalls such as missing flavor cues which led to customers having trouble differentiating between the flavors. The window took up too much space and the animal illustrations were off putting to customers. They liked the product, they just didn’t need to know how it was made and seeing the animal made it very literal.

AK: So that’s interesting – for your redesign it actually took 2 iterations to get where you are now.

KH: Correct – while the second round was an improvement from the launch packaging, we knew the animal imagery had to go and the communication needed to be revamped.

AK: What were your goals for the current redesign?

KH: We really wanted to bring attention to the flavor and product name, bring them front and center and let the brand recede a little bit into the background. We also wanted to highlight valid claims on the front of pack such as Whole30 Approved, USDA Organic, etc. These were certifications we had invested in yet previously had hidden on the back. We realized they were important to our customers and to us and deserved more prominent placement on the packaging. We also addressed our consumers’ concerns over the literal representation of the animal on the package by removing it altogether. In our research we noticed the soup and broth set was stale and dark so we wanted to infuse light and bright into our packaging as well as feature illustrations of ingredients such as herbs and vegetables to really bring home the farm to table feel. Last, you’ll notice the product window is framed by a mug – we wanted to show customers a common use case for our broth.

AK: How has your packaging redesign impacted sales? Customer reach? Wholesale accounts?

KH: We started shipping the new packaging in the fall of 2020 and have seen velocity lifts of 20 – 45%. Buyers have been really excited to see the new packaging as well – seeing the animal illustrations go was a big deal. Also the previous packaging design made it difficult to differentiate between the various SKUs but our most recent redesign solved that problem. We also attribute a lot of the success to making sure meaningful differentiators were on the front of pack, specifically callouts like protein level and “gels when chilled”. We knew these were messages that would resonate with our core customers. The new packaging has also opened the door to more conventional retailers and given us flexibility to explore product development and line extensions such as our Instant Bone Broth line.

AK: What was your biggest surprise during the redesign process?

KH: We thought we had carefully planned operationally how to run through all the old packaging yet it still took five months for everything to flow through and transition to the new packaging. We just didn’t think it was going to take that long! Between all the different channels where our products are sold, we felt like we were not in full control of the process of transitioning the packaging on the store shelf.

AK: What did you find to be the most challenging part of the process?

KH: Finding consensus amongst the various stakeholders. Ryan would get feedback from board members, then we would synthesize and share with the designers. Then they would design and tweak and we’d present back to the board. It took about 3-4 rounds of revisions to finalize the design.

AK: What advice would you give to other business owners considering a redesign?

KH: Invest the money in hiring people who know what they’re doing! Do your research and familiarize yourself with the major designs in your set. Have an understanding of what resonates with your target customer as far as imagery and messaging. Make sure you highlight what makes you different and superior on your packaging and create clarity in the hierarchy of information on your packaging. Last, invest in mockups – we actually took them to a tradeshow and were able to gather feedback!

AK: What was the biggest take away from redesigning packaging?

KH: On the second round of packaging, we let an aesthetically driven approach drive the lack of marketing callouts- we wanted a clean design but did not realize the opportunity to market on the front of pack. This made us think about how there wasn’t enough emphasis to help customers make the decision to purchase us. We learned our packaging can work much harder for us.

AK: How has this packaging redesign influenced your overall brand messaging and image?

KH: While it did not change the identity fully, it did change the direction of lifestyle photos. We are rebuilding our drip campaigns to better highlight and support the new packaging. We want to get more mileage and allow the claims that matter to us and our consumers, reinform our marketing strategy.

AK: What was the biggest lesson you learned from this process?

KH: That you are never done with the process and evolution of optimizing your communication – visual and otherwise – for consumers.
Share this post: