Brands Briefing: Brands like Hint Water are redoing packaging to reach new audiences and gain market share

“A lot of the old positioning and advertising told people what is not in Hint: There’s no sweeteners, there’s no preservatives, there’s no artificial colors,” Pengue said. “That’s meaningful, but it never really communicated what Hint is. … We have a healthy product, and it’s exactly what health and wellness consumers are looking for. They know they should be more hydrated, but it’s a task for them. When you have flavors like Hint does, … it’s easier to meet your hydration goals.”

Hint is one of a number of consumer brands redoing their packaging to draw in — or, in some cases, better retain — new consumers. This year, Ergobaby, which makes ergonomic baby carriers, added updated lifestyle imagery and more product information to its packaging, largely to appeal to new parents. And last year, Yankee Candle changed its logo to better showcase its scents and feed off the candles’ “nostalgia factor.” For all brands, competition for consumers’ dollars is tight — and new packaging gives companies a chance to show the next generation of shoppers who they are, who they serve and why their products are better than their competitors’.

In March, hair-care and skin-care brand Raw Sugar Living decided to redo its packaging and products to bring itself into “the modern era,” CEO Michael Marquis told Modern Retail. Raw Sugar Living added sugar-cane extract to its body wash formulas, and it worked to simplify its packaging by adding more negative space. To accomplish this, it moved some key terms like “free of sulfates and parabens” from the front of the bottles to the back, knowing that “consumers are now being trained to read labels,” Marquis said.

Raw Sugar Living brought “multiple versions” of the new packaging to its retail partners, like Target and Walmart, Marquis said. A big goal with the redesign is making sure “we didn’t confuse the shopper,” Marquis said. “People are using the three-second or five-second rule to [evaluate and then] buy products,” he continued. “We wanted to make sure we can translate our brand to the new packaging.”

Raw Sugar Living largely caters to millennial women, and it wants its redesign to resonate with that core customer. “We’re still designing for her, but her tastes are changing, and her expectations of design [are, too],” Marquis said. “We operate in very competitive categories, so the expectation is that we stay relevant with design and packaging — she holds us to that same standard, as well.”

On the flip side, men’s care brand Every Man Jack is currently in the process of a larger brand refresh to resonate with young men, including anyone unsure about their skin-care routine. In July, Every Man Jack will debut new packaging that’s more masculine, stresses adventure and nature, and is easier to recycle, executives previously told Modern Retail.

“[Packaging] is our billboard,” Lindsey Scholtz, director of brand management at Every Man Jack, said in an interview. “It’s the first point, a lot of the time, that the customer is experiencing our brand. So, we need to make sure it’s really resonating with them.”

This summer, Every Man Jack is adding more nature imagery and scent notes to its bottles. At the same time, the brand is keeping the same color blocking and wood-grain design that customers like in existing packaging. Continuing with those “core elements” was a must, Scholtz said, because the company has “been building brand equity for so long.”

Executives at other brands echoed this point. Even with new packaging, Raw Sugar kept its bottles white and stuck to bamboo tops. “You don’t want to jump the shark and make the bottles purple and black and confuse people,” Marquis said. Hint, for its part, stayed with a vertically-positioned logo, but made the font a bit bolder.

Rebrands are becoming more common as companies look to stay relevant. But a rebrand is a huge undertaking for any brand, and a risky one, too, said Leslie Zane, whose marketing agency, Triggers, worked on the rebrand for Lay’s. “Over 40% of rebrands fail,” she said. “A significant portion of rebrands lead to confusion and loss of equity.”

Zane told Modern Retail that shoppers tend to make purchases based on stored “cumulative memories” of a brand. Key aspects of a brand’s packaging — like its fonts, colors and mascot — are key in shaping that memory, Zane said. When a brand changes its name or its look, “You are cutting off the linkage to the memories in people’s brains,” Zane said. “You are making your brand harder to find.”

Zane said that she often hears of brands wanting to “modernize” to court the next generation of consumers. But, for too many of these companies, “modernize” means “minimize,” she said. “It ends up being a stripping away and a minimalistic approach to packaging,” she said. “In doing so, they may very well have wiped out cues and codes that were lodged in [the brain] and now are no longer there.” One way brands can get around this, Zane said, is to “accentuate what they stand for, instead of changing their identity.” In Zane’s eyes, Hint’s refresh works because “the visuals of the fruit are much more hyper-realistic.”

Executives acknowledged that rebrands, on their own, aren’t a dedicated game-changer. Companies still need to manufacture effective products, maintain great customer service and make attention-grabbing marketing plays. But, already, some rebrands are paying off. Raw Sugar Living kicked off its rebrand last month with influencer campaigns and an event featuring “The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives” cast member Jessi Draper. “After that, we saw a lot of our sales increase double digits,” Marquis said.

Still, brands don’t expect to suddenly grow market share just because they changed the look of a bottle. “When you make a change once every 10 years, you don’t judge it on two months,” Marquis said. “We have a long way to go, but we’re excited about the initial results.”

What we’re reading

• Jersey Mike’s, which was last valued at $8 billion in 2024, has filed for an IPO, per CNBC.
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• Primark will officially open its New York City flagship on May 8, according to WWD.

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