Shikatani Lacroix

Background

Herbon, the original Echinacea throat lozenges, was founded in Canada and the first company in North America to put therapeutic amounts of Echinacea in a cough & sore throat lozenge. The brand was acquired in 2007 by Purity Life as part of the organization’s growth strategy and the product is currently sold across Canada, the United States, and a number of other countries overseas including China and Japan. Most recently, under new Marketing direction the brand has been completely reformulated using scientifically guided R&D to effectively bridge the gap between traditional cough and sore throat medications and herbal remedies.

Challenge

The brand had very limited distribution and weak brand architecture, packaging design and voids in the product portfolio. Therefore the brand was never strong enough in the domestic market to compete with mainstream competitors. Research also showed the brand had the right product attributes but did not have a clear position and insufficient innovative products to effectively compete in the mainstream cough & sore throat category. In addition, the Herbon brand had a children’s offering that had received limited success and was in jeopardy of being delisted. Purity Life retained Shikatani Lacroix to explore new structural design and branding initiatives that would help grow its presence, not only grocery, drugstore and mass retailing, but also in the fast expanding convenience retailing segment.

Solution

SL initiated extensive consumer research to understand the emotive needs of the core target group. Based on these insights, SL developed a range of unique package shapes and systems, in addition to label designs that could effectively connect with customers at store level. A range of product names were explored for the kids product that would more effectively connect with this segment at retail. The “Rockhoppers” name was selected for the children’s sub-brand and working with the manufacturing team, a new product with visible flavour beads was created. Through the use of research, a final design direction was selected that leveraged a more dynamic label design with a convenient zipper bag along with a line of convenient, purse-friendly rolled package. SL developed a new identity for the Rockhoppers sub-line that included a range of illustrations of the famous Rockhopper penguins.

Results

Sell-in to the trade has been extremely strong and the product is currently being introduced at retail. Retailers across Canada in every channel have described Herbon as very innovative and the energy shot that the category needed very much to stimulate sales and profit.