“Too often brand owners neglect the innate value of their product”
The once indulgent, just for ‘a treat’, chocolate is edging towards a more physically beneficial positioning.
The widely reported natural health claims and consumer demand for healthier living has spurred innovation, particularly in the US, where a trickle of fortified chocolate products offer the consumer the latest in a growing list of functional foods. Step aside the blueberry and make way for the new ‘healthy chocolate’.
Too often brand owners neglect the innate value of their product and packaging and over value their new ‘big idea’ (in this case a healthier chocolate) and risk alienating the consumer in the process. But the challenge here is much greater, especially when it relates to a set of beliefs so embedded in our psyche. A claim that doughnuts are suddenly good for you won’t swing it – we’d love to believe it, but really? That very same glazed round doughnut?
This is what we observed within the new ‘healthier’ chocolate sector: brands continuing to use traditionally shaped confectionery bars and share bags with added health claims. We felt strongly that a revelation in the marketplace required much more clout. When your core product is associated with indulgent, high sugar, inferior affiliates, what you really need is to create distinction. Your product is different – people need to understand why and believe in it. So we gathered a team of Echo experts and created our own brand of functional chocolate, building in a ritual that would change the way people consumed the product and importantly challenge those deep-rooted, historical perceptions.
Health benefits
We explored how chocolate can, most convincingly, deliver health benefits and looked further into its connection with the brain. Already known to have a chemical effect on the body to boost serotonin levels, stimulate endorphins and create a euphoric buzz, chocolate seemed to be the natural carrier of additional brain boosting vitamins. IQv (intelligence quotient vitamin), our intelligent chocolate that works with the body’s natural responses to stimulate the synapses, was born. All we needed now was a brand, and behind every strong, believable, brand is a story; so we created one.
The story
Our background story was built around two experts providing sustenance to this consumer behaviour transition. So we brought to life the owner of an artisan chocolate company, living in Shropshire, UK, who works with farmers in Ecuador to produce some of the finest, single origin chocolate. We also brought to life a world renowned nutritionist and author who advises global organisations on the biochemical values of food to enhance mood and brain function. From these two experts we created a meeting of minds that would give brand IQv credibility and power in the marketplace.
What transpired from our chocolate innovation journey was an interesting dichotomy: the complexities and current imbalance between the worlds of science, nutrition and taste. Science doesn’t tend to titillate the tastebuds but IQv wanted to be a game-changer; a delicious healthy chocolate that could sit in health stores alongside the wall-to-wall anonymous library of vitamin jars and boxes.
Chocolate, contrary to supplements, delivers an immediate sense of well being; an emotional response, the celebrated beauty of the product. Chocolate really does have the feel good factor. So how do you translate these emotions into functional health? You create a guilt-less ritual and you do it through clever design and packaging.
Doses
Instead of a chocolate bar, we created doses – individually packaged and presented in a desirable box of seven. Each dose perfectly engineered to melt slowly on the centre of the tongue, stimulate the tastebuds, activate the synapses and kickstart the body’s process of transforming this high quality chocolate into food for the brain. We fortified each dose with brain enhancing vitamins to aid concentration, create clarity of thought and calm an overactive mind – building a range to support different lifestyles, embedding itself in consumers’ lives.
The brand
Whether it’s through our use of colour, tactile packaging, tone of voice and product promise – each layer addresses that original dichotomy balancing science with taste; in effect balancing functional food with emotional reward. And that includes creating an emotional journey for consumers, not a quick fix supplement washed down with a glass of water. Packaged individually, IQv is designed to be part of a one-a-day ritual where healthy brain boosting chocolate becomes as much part of peoples’ lives as buying a coffee on the way to work.
The day after we launched our concept, I read the news of Barry Callebaut’s extraordinary positive Scientific Opinion on cocoa flavanols from the EFSA – suddenly our idea seemed closer to reality than we had thought.
By Rachel Felwick, senior marketing manager, Echo Brand Design
