Daiya Foods
Bringing a More Meaningful Brand Positioning to Life Across Communications
The Task
Daiya—a pioneer in plant-based food—was losing share as the market nearly doubled in 2020. In order to compete with the new set of purpose-driven brands, they had to move beyond product marketing to find a deeper connection with their audience through more consumer-driven communications.
We were tasked to both deepen the brand meaning beyond food and also create a process that allowed the teams to shift and activate a more meaningful brand in the market.
“Thank you for the endless expertise, flexibility, and ultimately very practical deliverables in record time. We couldn’t have turned the ship without you.”
— Director of Digital Engagement
The Positioning
Working with leaders in brand, marketing, and innovation we uncovered a deeper positioning for the brand.
Daiya had always been for everyone—a nationally distributed brand located not just in health stores, but Walmarts.
Their welcoming, non-judgmental core allowed us to position them with their ‘flexitarian’ audience as the non-intimidating option.
The emotion of judgement-free celebration and individuality paired with the brand's approachable and welcoming portfolio gave the brand the ability to stand out against a stuffy and mildly pretentious category with a message that could attract anyone who was slightly interested in swapping something for plant-based.
Brand Activation
We developed the process, tools, and training required to implement the new positioning into their communications—rightsizing it for their teams and organization.
First, we adapted the process.
Using the newly positioned brand, channel budgets and potential (people) barriers, we defined a process that would work for their specific challenges. With each touchpoint in the process—we laid out the goals, the people responsible, the tools needed to pull it off and the outputs and timing expected. Working with the leader of brand and the leader of channels, we integrated deeper creativity and collaboration, increased space and time for bigger picture thinking—ultimately providing clarity in how they could work together to deliver the newly positioned brand through an experience that felt unified, empathetic and timely to consumers—all through an easy to implement process that everyone understood.
Then, we built the right toolkit.
We built a Brand DNA to align all communicators on key elements of the brand, a Mindset Planning Calendar to help Daiya’s channel planners plan content based on the brand positioning and mindset of the consumer, and lastly — a Quarterly Comms Brief — which helped the teams to deliver a consistent and thoughtfully delivered body of content each quarter — all held together through the brand positioning. These tools allowed communications to be integrated, for cross-channel teams to collaborate and increased efficiency across the entire communications planning process.
Brand DNA
Mindset Planning Calendar
Quarterly Comms Brief
Finally, we practiced together.
Adjusting to a new process and utilizing a new toolkit all at once is a lot to take on. In order to ensure everyone understood exactly how to implement it, we guided them through it for one quarter.
Our first step was to run three training sessions to ensure teams understood exactly what their role was and how to utilize the tools. We then showed them how to do it by driving and running their first quarterly campaign—from brief writing to creative consulting to measurement. We hosted office hours and leadership training sessions in order to ensure that we understood the success of the implementation—smoothing out any of the tweaks as they arose
By bringing the positioning concepts we built together to life with our partners, we were able to teach them, show them and prepare them to take it on as their own.
Brand Manager
Every time I talk to you, I feel such a relief.
Director of Digital Engagement