Overview
Nick's is a successful Swedish brand making snacks and ice cream that are less bad for you (free from added sugar, gluten, palm oil, etc). We re-imagined Nick's positioning, storytelling, design, and communication to make sugar free sexy again.
The Challenge
Nick's had strong products and a well-liked brand, but were perhaps a bit unclear in their identity. The founder story was about health, but health is perhaps not what you want to be thinking about when you grab a pint of ice cream on that friday night. Health is also a busy category and needs a more refined positioning strategy. We want to find a space for Nick's not only from a target audience perspective, but also withing the emotional space of that target audience.
The Solution
We wanted to break out of the rational health space and find a way back into it where we could mobilize excitement and desire as emotions. We drew up a positioning diagram where we started placing ice cream pints: Ben & Jerry's for the couples, Häagen Dazs for their parents, and Nicks's for a group that is fun and sexy but who also naturally care for themselves: singles. Nick's were using the words "playful", "devoted", and "authentic" to describe their brand persona. In zooming in on singles, we replaced these with "flirty", "indulgent", and "uncommitted". Suddenly, we could play, indulge in ice cream, and have a ton of fun, all while taking care of ourselves. The concept "Let's get yummy" was born. Now all communication had a natural flow that made sense where we could start being flirty far from the point of purchase ("hey peanut") and go in for the close when closer to the point of purchase ("take me home of lose me forever"). We also had a perfect platform for festivals, merch, and other places where we could build our brand without beins salesy and boring.
The Result
The end of this project was the start of a dynamic and inspiring brand platform and natural place to speak from. Singlehood and flirting is a never ending well of fun and inspiration to draw from in communication and design, and we can talk about our product features in a way that never feels preachy and stay relevant wherever things can steamy.
