CHALLENGE
In 2015 the adult gummy vitamin segment was booming, and it was a major driver of Nature Made’s business success. Though, as competitor VMS brands grew their gummy offerings (more SKUs, more flavors, more forms) and niche gummy brands gained speed and popularity in market, Nature Made needed to ensure their gummies had a unique point of difference that could not only be sustained, but that could continue to drive equity growth for the masterbrand in an undifferentiated and fast-growing VMS category.

INSIGHT
As we worked toward establishing a point of difference for Nature Made gummies, there was a single product benefit that emerged as being both unique and potentially persuasive for their “sensory seeker” target. Nature Made now had the first gummy vitamin to be verified by the USP, a nonprofit third-party organization that sets strict purity and potency standards.

Problem was, this was a benefit that consumers weren’t necessarily looking for, and USP as an organization had little meaning to them. To guide the development of our new campaign, we knew we had to talk to consumers and better understand how we could communicate the USP benefit in a compelling and resonant way. BSSP helped develop a series of product positioning statements to bring into qualitative testing, and from there, two key themes emerged:

1. While quality is an important consideration for consumers, it is hard to define in the
VMS category.

2. For most, a “quality gummy” is one that simply contains the nutrients that they would
expect from a traditional vitamin.

For “sensory seekers,” something as simple as a gummy vitamin carried a lot of emotional weight. Messaging that pushed too far on taste appeal actually caused consumers to reject gummies out of fear they would be compromising nutrition. In order for these consumers to feel good about their decision, they needed assurance that their gummy vitamins were giving them the nutrients they were seeking.

SOLUTION
With a consumer-informed communications brief to use as our springboard, we set out to effectively bring the insight and benefit to life, in a creative way. After another round of qualitative testing and two rounds of copy testing, we had a winning TV spot, known as Herbal Wrap.

The premise of the spot was to juxtapose something that was in question ingredient-wise (in this case, a seaweed spa treatment) with Nature Made gummy vitamins, prompting consumers to question if they knew what was in their gummy vitamins.

We learned through IPSOS copy testing that Herbal Wrap demonstrated very high potential to drive persuasion and purchase intent for Nature Made Gummies. A few executional opportunities also emerged to help improve brand linkage, which we were able to address in production.

To support the spot in market and round out a 360-omni channel campaign, we also developed display banners and custom digital units within the same construct.

RESULTS
Out of the gate, creative optimizations based on testing results helped lead to a 2X improvement in brand linkage compared to the previous campaign in market. Additionally, during the first four weeks in market, Nature Made Gummies achieved 38.2% growth, and picked up +1.5 share points.

After six months of the campaign being in market, we saw a 52% lift in awareness, a 28% lift in consideration, and a 2X increase in unaided awareness compared to the year before.* We also saw “high quality” perceptions of Nature Made Gummies improve by 13%.* These significant results not only drove substantial lifts for the gummies business, but also haloed to the rest of the Nature Made brand.

After a year in market, purchase interest was up to 62%, 20% above the CPG norm, according to the Nielsen Sales Effect reporting ending August 2017, making the Herbal Wrap spot one of the most successful spots Nature Made has produced to date.

*Source: February 2017 Nature Made Brand Equity Tracker