Royal Beneficials’ brand parent is an established European mineral water company that has been bottling mineral waters from 3 different Slovakian Tatras mountain sources for years. The brand’s 3 waters had distinctly different mixes of beneficial minerals which the Europeans from the region had relied on for over a century.

Insite was asked to assist in positioning the brand for the North American market place and increase the saturation of the product within various specialty and mainstream grocery stores channels.

Culturally, the European audiences understood the functional benefits of the brand’s mineral waters as well as how to fit the 3 waters into their lives like solutions to daily lifestyle maintenance.

Unfortunately, communicating the benefits to North American audiences was not so easy. We identified the challenges for the Brand in North America were:

1. Retail resistance — retail buyers are saturated with waters of all kinds and as such the category has been commoditized and diluted with waters that have no additional benefit beyond hydration and convenience of portability. Buyers were indicating to the brand owners that the stores didn’t need another water.

2. Audience Knowledge — audiences in NA are not as knowledgable or aware of the benefits of the specific minerals within the brand’s mineral waters.

3. Audience Fatigue — audiences in NA are inundated with waters that have focused on hydration and re-hydration as the main benefits which has diminished the category of importance to a health regimen.

4. Claim Regulations — much of modern dietary health is still emerging and consequently not yet considered concrete science in Canada and the US. Talking about even the content of specific minerals is taboo if they don’t fit the standard recommended doses set out by the country’s dietary food guidelines.

In jumping in we simplified the brand’s soul value and essence and trimmed some of the old brand’s layers of communication that we felt were potentially confusing or simply distracting.

We concluded that a name change as part of the brand change would sharpen the message and allow us to create a more modern position.

Next we looked hard at the product line and determined that users were organizing the products into lifestyle needs. We created 3 distinct uses and descriptive product names — 1. Detoxify for cruising through the week and staying well  2. Defend for preparing your body for more elevated output of play or party and 3. Restore for easing the impact of the party and a quicker recovery.

We then set out to redesign the identity, palette and package. Pushing the concept of Royal as a suggestion of living well, power and self control we designed a visual palette that drew from the heritage of Royal crests or playing cards, re-interpreted in a stripped back modern context. We intentionally removed all colour to be purposely black and white — a suggestion of the definitiveness of self control but also with the goal to visually fit in or blend in to the lifestyle of the audiences. Sort of “stand out” by not standing out.

To subtly re-enforce the lifestyle use of the product, the basic bold line work of the Royal figures relate state of the user. Horizontal lines for cruising, inclining lines to winding up, and declining lines to heading down toward rest.

We also addressed the ubiquity of the water challenge by stating that “This is not bottled water” as a casual position statement. To get viewers and specifically buyers to look again. We support the assertion with the term functional water or “Beneficial” water. Consequently Beneficial was sewn into the naming convention and copyrighted.

When it came to package, we dialled back the importance of the minerals themselves and elevated the use and emotional benefit. Starting with name and supported by descriptions of as it relates to the audiences’ weekly routines, we fit the products into the lifestyle of the active energetic and urban target users. 

Then further to reinforce the brand’s fit, we created image content to capture the spirit and situation of the users lifestyles with the product in situation.

Web: Royalbeneficials.com