Maharishi Ayurveda, which offers Ayurvedic solutions across wellness, consumption and personal care categories, has recently undergone a brand revamp exercise in partnership with Almond Branding that helped them refresh the brand to make it contemporary yet authentic.
Almond Branding helped in the end-to-end brand overhaul by drawing equity from the brand’s existing heritage in Ayurveda and aligning the values of the brand with the needs of today’s customers. The brand lacked uniformity in packaging design across its products on the shelves, hence Almond Branding recommended ‘Packaging Design Alignment’ as the first step towards the rebranding exercise.
Almond Branding crafted a strict ‘Visual Architecture’ to define the constant and variable elements of the design language. Also, color coding was proposed for differentiation between categories in which formats may be very similar.
Considering the short attention spans of today’s consumers, a one-liner benefit was added just after the product branding to quickly decode the offering. The more detailed benefit list was introduced further down into the hierarchy. A handmade paper textured background was imparted to the entire domestic herbal supplement range to connote the authenticity of Ayurveda. Additionally, smart visual assets like the Brand button helped conjure the desired imagery.
“Ayurveda has always been intrinsic to Indian culture but has become far more relevant to consumers’ lives today. In the last decade or so, there has been an upheaval in the category. Maharishi Ayurveda has been a research-based organization using authentic ayurvedic formulations and methods to suit modern living conditions,” said Shashwat Das, founder, Almond Branding.
“Our brand immersion revealed that they looked at their offerings through windows of modern science to appreciate the holistic concepts that governed Ayurveda through centuries. Hence, our design solutions had to reflect the change from a dated brand to one that brings to life the values of authentic Ayurveda for a progressive lifestyle,” Das added.
Maharishi Ayurveda also has a strong presence in Europe with headquarters in Herkenbosch, Netherlands. Its international range consists of mostly certified natural cosmetics that use only organic ingredients. The range had to hence give a feeling of purity so Almond Branding proposed a pristine white and gold color scheme to compete on shelves with the European natural/organic cosmetic counterparts. A wellness band with icons of natural goodness and overall wellbeing ran across this particular range and also housed the brand button.
“We wanted to re-look at our brand strategy that involved brand revamp and certain strategic priorities in terms of category choices with an objective of making Ayurveda relevant to today’s audience by listening to their needs and requirements,” said Ramesh Yadav, global marketing head, Maharishi Ayurveda Products.
“The idea was to reach out to those who are pre-disposed to natural, herbal and Ayurveda, however, may be fussy but are willing to explore the category/products that cater to their lifestyle-related health issues. Almond Branding helped us in the entire rebranding exercise from understanding the objectives to deriving meaningful insights. Distillation of research into one strong concept and designing strategy by Almond Branding were the most critical steps for making this happen. Coming up with packaging solutions which were aligned with the master brand philosophy yet contemporary was the most challenging part of the entire project which was tackled very well by team Almond,” Yadav added.
