Manufacturer: 1440 Foods
Agency: Beardwood&Co.
Pure Protein was at the forefront of the nascent protein-bar boom back in the 1990s, and it has been a leader in the category ever since. That could be why the brand’s package design had remained consistent over the years—after all, why change what’s working?
The answer was evident to the brand, in part due to research it had conducted as it considered a potential redesign. Testing revealed that category buyers found clear issues with the current packaging. “Consumers felt our current packaging looked outdated, and while our bars are very delicious, our packaging wasn’t giving their great taste enough justice,” said Alex Fishman, brand director at 1440 Foods, which owns Pure Protein. This feedback, along with the increased competition in the space, made it imperative for the brand to consider a new look.
Pure Protein tapped Beardwood&Co, the NYC-based design and branding agency, to help them modernize and optimize their packaging. The agency immediately saw a unique challenge: The brand had always been a go-to for fitness enthusiasts, but the protein-bar space had rapidly transformed in recent years. “The way people incorporate protein into their diets has completely changed, and the market was beginning to reflect that change,” said Tayler Spellis, client director at Beardwood&Co. “It was no longer just about performance; it was about enjoying something delicious that also delivered nutrition. So we asked ourselves: How can Pure Protein become a part of people's daily routines, not just their workouts?”
With a detailed creative brief in hand, Beardwood&Co was given leeway to create concepts that, in some cases, strayed far from the original packaging. When assessing those concepts, the Pure Protein team once again utilized consumer testing. “Our team was ready, willing, and even hungry to take a risk with this new design,” recalled Fishman. “We wanted to do something outside the box, but the consumer research helped us calibrate and pare back some of the evolutions we were considering. Having data at that stage helped us feel comfortable as we were making decisions.”
Eventually, the team landed on one concept—which Beardwood&Co called “Energized Nutrition”— that was designed to communicate the product’s flavor and nutrition as well as conveying the brand’s bold personality. “We went with a larger-than-life approach, adding dimensionality to everything from the bars and ingredients to the nutritional call-outs themselves,” noted Derek Horn, senior designer at Beardwood&Co.
Boosting appetite appeal was of primary importance for this new look, so flavor imagery took center stage. Photos of the bar are now larger and stylized with a compelling sense of depth. Set alongside the bar itself, the flavor and ingredient imagery is much more prominent and tantalizing, giving consumers a striking visual cue to crave. Horn gives credit for the impressive photography to TJ Vissing at OMS Photo, who handled the photo shoot for the redesign. “TJ and his team did a really great job making the bars look as yummy as possible, whether it was a perfect drip of caramel or the ideal amount of peanuts,” he said. “And the photos just blend well with the rest of the assets. It all comes together on the package in a cohesive little world of protein-packed deliciousness.”
Although the primary brand color is still blue, it is a reimagined and emphatic shade—a deeper, ocean-blue color now dominates every package, creating an eye-grabbing brand block on store shelves that is both familiar and fresh at the same time. “The blue on the previous design was a little dusty and less energizing, so we wanted to explore a fresher take on a brand blue,” stated Horn. “The new brand blue presents Pure Protein as a unique and distinctive player in the category.”
Pure Protein’s long-standing logo was reinvented as well, replaced with one reminiscent of its predecessor yet bolder and more modern. The brand removed the blue shading and angular lettering from its logo, opting for a white sans-serif typeface that takes up a considerably larger portion of the package’s real estate. “We intentionally maintained links between the old logo and the new one—the forward movement, a slight sense of dimensionality,” Horn noted. “With the type, we brought more boldness and a timeless feel to help bring it into the 2020s.”
There was also a shift in the placement and presentation of key information; while the old design offered a white box in the center of the package with nutritional statistics listed horizontally, the new design places the protein claim in a “bubble” atop a visual of the product itself, with sugar and calorie content in a slightly smaller bubble to the right. “The communication hierarchy is very clear in terms of protein, calorie, and sugar content, because we know that along with taste and flavors, these nutritional details are what consumers are looking for when making a purchase decision at shelf,” Fishman commented.
Consumers are loving this fit-and-fabulous new design from the protein-bar pioneer, and the results reflect that. During the six months following the redesign, sales of Pure Protein bars increased by 18% compared to the same period during the prior year, significantly outpacing growth for the category overall. Designalytics’ consumer testing aligns with this result, with two-thirds of category buyers indicating that they’d prefer to purchase the new design over the old one.
In addition to the clear impact the new look had on sales, Pure Protein now has a visual framework that could be applied to other products in its portfolio. “"It's a simple design system, yet it's bold and flexible for new sublines,” said Spellis. “We're already working on extensions, and we're finding it's so natural to take elements of the design system and adapt or evolve them for new offerings.”
For Fishman, the project went even better than he’d imagined. “We knew it would be a challenge to create a new package design that felt more modern and delicious, but was still recognizably the ‘Pure Protein’ that consumers know and love,” he said. “And I think Derek, Tayler, and the whole Beardwood team did a really great job of finding the connective tissue to take us from where we were to where we want to be.”