THE HERB FARM REVISITED
Developing and consolidating the brand
An early priority for Sarah was a radical rethink about The Herb Farm brand and the way it was promoted. A partial re-branding had been done before Sarah joined the company, but she wasn't particularly happy with the results. "The logo wasn't very modern and the feedback from customers was that the labels looked a bit dated. It gave me a chance to take a fresh look at things."
Their distributor agreed. "He told us about some comments he was getting that the labelling wasn't stacking up against our competitors," says Lynn. "He thought we would need to change things if we wanted further growth in sales."
For Sarah this was a way for her to make an early contribution within her new role. "The re-branding was something I really wanted to do – it gave me more ownership of the business and the products and made it all real."
The company name
With the possibility of a complete rebranding process, the first thing to consider was the name of the company – should they continue with The Herb Farm name? "There is some confusion with our name – a lot of people see it and think we only sell plants and ring us up wanting to buy some," says Sarah.
She presented this problem to a Massey University marketing class who were equally divided on the issue of a name change. "Some thought we should change and some thought we shouldn't. In the end we decided that we'd keep the original name. We'd already put so much time and money into the brand, and it had developed a definite reputation. If we changed it we'd have to start all over again."
A new logo
(click to enlarge)
Having decided to keep the name, the next step was the redesign of The Herb Farm logo and product labels. This was done in close collaboration with Sarah's photographer/designer husband, Adam.
"With cosmetics the look is important and we wanted to keep the brand quite simple," says Sarah. "The existing logo definitely looked dated. We were also still using the Gaia symbol, which people didn't really understand, so I thought that needed modernising. We also used a lot of different and very bright colours. We wanted a clean look, and for the range to be more recognisably differentiated – using colours still, but in a more subtle way."
"We didn't get the design we were looking for straight away. It was a long process because we had to do a good deal of market research. Adam did mock-ups of different things which we'd show to the team and some of the customers, then take what they had to say on-board. Getting the look was trial-and-error really. We went out to the customers to some degree, but it had to be what we felt comfortable with and, of course, what sat well with retailers."
The core values
The new branding included a succinct statement that encapsulated The Herb Farm's core values within a single strap-line to use in their promotional work. "It was hard to encapsulate the brand," says Sarah. "We had a brainstorming session and came up with three words that captured what we felt our brand is about: natural, effective and trusted. 'Natural' is what we feel people are looking for - it's what we're all about, 'effective' because the products really work, and 'trusted' is the obvious third one. We gave those words to Adam and that was the way he ordered it, and it seemed to work well."
Sarah also recognised an opportunity the rebranding exercise provided: to relook at the specifications of the raw ingredients that they were using.
"We wanted to be able to put our hands on our hearts and say that our products were 100% natural. We had to do a lot of research and there were a few things we found out that we were pretty disappointed with." As a result, a 'supplier's pledge' was put in place to ensure that strict criteria were met in terms of the quality of the ingredients supplied.
Designing the labels
With a clear idea of what they wanted in the new labelling, the next challenge for Sarah and Adam was to make those ideas work on the physical product, which provided them with some constraints. "Because the labels aren't that big, there wasn't a lot of space to work with, so we were a bit limited in terms of layout. We decided to focus more on making it look different with the use of colours. We played with black and charcoal labels at first but we were going down a path where the colours were too dark – even though it looked quite sharp it didn't really fit with the brand."
"The labels were a huge thing – everything else had to be on hold till we got that right. We couldn't do the website or produce the brochures and the new catalogue until we had images of our products with their new labels."
