Putting a hush to the noise

Goodness is an experienced skin care marketer and saw an opportunity in the FMCG space to create something effective, natural, truly differentiated and part of a new skincare product story taking the world by storm; Chia Seed Oil. The Personal Care category in the FMCG space is heavily crowded. Products are formulaic and not seen by consumers as being that personal. Multinationals rule the game and it is notoriously hard to get shelf space; unless you have a clearly differentiated offer that consumers are readily following.

The key to unlocking large FMCG opportunities are around distribution deals and relationships; but these all have to work on the back of products the retail networks can see will easily sell. I needed to come up with a brand that would work to these key network buyers. Consumers are also very sceptical of the efficacy of products (with particular price points) in FMCG, so any new product needed to communicate this well.

With a tight research sample I worked on the three key drivers people saw as important for a product such as this; Honesty, Simplicity, and Efficacy, all starting with the philosophy that ‘Simple is good’. I kept the chit chat on pack down (because bullshit meters are well primed in this space). I needed to avoid too much foil, gloss and overpacking. It needed to look like this stuff works, and support the key Chia seed story as the unique product benefit.

The right balance between affordable supermarket gloop and cosmeceutical needed to be struck. We also worked hard on making this leave-out-in-the-open-able (ie that no product cringe is suffered by leaving it out in a bathroom).

In four weeks of sales discussions Goodness was taken by four major retail networks across Australia and New Zealand, and being sold in thousands of stores in a couple of months. This gave Goodness Beauty Lab a huge supply chain headache and they had to upscale all forecasts and projections to meet demand. Other retail networks are hearing the buzz and getting on board. Goodness has developed a lot of editorial noise as a result and a cult social media following; all with an initial range of five SKUs.