Inika Superfoods
a 48 HOUR MARKETING sprint
CLIENT
Iníka Superfood
TEAM
UX Designser and Economists
MY ROLE
Rapid Prototyping, Social Media Strategy
YEAR
2021
“How might we create incentives for existing and new users to turn to Iníka superfood?”
The Client
Inika Superfoods was dreamt up in a kitchen in Stockholm. The first seeds were sown during spring 2020. A strange time in history, when suddenly the whole world's vibration felt dampened. Sharing a spiritual, positive outlook in life, and the understanding that natural and healthy food can help heal and turn things around for body and mind, calm and rational Gabriela Åfeldt and creative and intuitive Nicole De Geer, knew they had to join forces in their quest for balance. They created Inika Superfoods, with Iníka (iḍikā or “इडिका) meaning ‘little Earth’ in Sanskrit, which is a modern holistic modern wellness brand cautious of the finite nature of our planet, and how our and the planet’s wellbeing interconnect.
Their products are developed drawing inspiration from modern scientific breakthroughs, combined with the collective wisdom of humanity’s ancient cultures found across our little Earth. From Ayurveda’s devotion to inner balance and calm, the ancient Greek view of food as medicine and vice versa, all the way to Mesoamerican wisdom on vitality and nature, we stay true to a balanced, holistic approach to health as a means of lifting you up, becoming happier and enabling you to live your best life.
The target group
The target groups for this projects were two groups of people, those who are already customers and clients of Iníka Supoerfoods to begin with, and then there were the people who are not using it. This meant that the ideal goal for this sprint was a solution that could engage the already existing community while still creating enough of a noise to make new people become part of their community and ultimately costumers.
My Role
The team consisted of four people representing the schools of Hyper Island both Karlskrona and Stockholm as well as one representing the Stockholm School of Economics. The team members in addition had different background ranging from UX Designers, marketing strategists and digital media creators. Because of this, we had a solid foundation of skillsets and experience to pull this off within the 48 hour timespan.
My role in particular project was to create visualisations of the concepts and pitch-material alongside with the digital media creative individuals who would serve as examples of future campaigns on different devices as well bringing concepts of said campaigns to life.
The Brief
When debriefing the case given to us by Forthsecond, we realised that there was only so many things that we could do in terms of marketing strategies. Did we want to create a social media marketing campaign, did we want to create pop-up stalls for people to try their products out or did we simply want to clutter the entirety of downtown Stockholm with banners and posters stating that Iníka Superfood is the only reason to live in this day and age?
As ridiculous as some of these ideas may sound, some of them did carry their weight better than others - and we ended up focusing on the Iníka community instead. The main reasoning behind this stance was as follows; by creating an enhanced sense of belonging for their customers and clients, this will allow for the word to spread about the close-knit community, the quality of their products and create an incentive to join and become a customer.
The main initial challenge
The main challenge of this project was most definitely the time frame since this was an endeavour that was just over a weekend in time. Within this time frame, we were presented with the brief, put into groups with people we’ve never met before and ended up with a result that we in the end felt really good about. The main thing was though - how could we spread the word of what Iníka Superfood is all about and what can we do to help them expand their reach further compared to where they are now.
Research
The information-gathering was quite simple, we were given the vast majority of all the information that we needed upfront as the hackathon started, and had scheduled meetings with the Iníka Superfood team at any time we felt necessary during the weekend the event was held. This allowed us to get as much information within a short timeframe, nothing was unobtainable and we could get all the answers that we needed quickly and fairly easy.
“You want to come up with the ideas as to how to make people want to buy our products”
“The best solution for us was if we could make our community even stronger”
Design Approach
In order to create the best thing we could manage given our limited timeframe, we instantly dove back into where they were standing at the time of the hackathon. By using their current system and platform as a foundation for our idea, we could save a significant amount of time on the style guide, terminology and iconography sections of the design work.
We chose to from this point forward, create a mock-up of their existing website, and then adjust the layout of it to create space for the new community tabs and pages. There were two reasons for this decision;
By creating something that both Iníka Superfood can relate to and recognize, makes it easier for them to understand, implement and decrease any potential resumption lags that may occur.
A similar layout for the community tab will also create a familiar feel for the users of the platform as well, making it feel like they are a part of something bigger than just a customer.
After experimenting with the layout and style guides, we could hop into the prototyping as well as the pitching of our idea. To sell this to the client, we created a fully working prototype, social media campaign filters, and lastly, a community space on their platform - to gather everything Iníka on one place to create a sense of unity
Design Language
The design language that Inìka used was fairly easy to identify, mimic and further elaborate upon. What made it complicated was their values and their vision with their new approach to things - mainly because it was up to us to create their new brand - or Iníka Superfood 2.0 rather.
The design language is built upon their already established, warm and soft colours. While keeping their core colours, while combining them with the terminology and shadings and our new idea for their marketing strategy, we landed with the community pages. One of these pages was to highlight every tagged photo from Instagram using their tags in order to highlight their active community, another is the community newsletter, and these are just two examples of all the community pages we created for Iníka superfoods.
The soft colours and font of Iníka superfoods, combined with a modern layout, clarity in terms of the text and the simple and recognisable layout for veterans of Iníka Superfoods, allowed for a new chapter with a smooth transition.
Furthermore, we decided to take a gamble with brand recognition VS minimalism in terms of the backdrop of the layout of the page. But after several iterations, the team came up with the community page as seen on the right here. The imagery used as the background is one of Iníka Superfoods own pictures of their products, and by selecting the ones that remind of a coffee shop, a.k.a. a popular place to hang out, we could create a warm and brand-appropriate community feel to it.
It is worth mentioning however that this isn’t as clear and minimalist as some of the team members may have wanted it to be - but for this case, the branding was of the essence. Regardless, all of us were more than happy with the end result of everything considered.
Social Media Strategy
The last step of our plan was to get the word out to the public and get the conversation started. In order to get this, we created four concept tag-campaign. Iníka Superfood focuses on organic health and value, because of this, we focused on health and what brings value to people. The tags that we were using were;
#OneIníka
Focusing on the rebraiding, the locally produced products as well as the unique, tight community that the Iníka community really is. By being a part of this community, you will get community newsletters, trivia and information about locally produced goods and more
#BacktoBasics
Take a step back and focus on yourself, who you are and what you are. Regain self-control and share your progress and tips with others. This is something that we all need to do in the hectic world of today, by allowing yourself to slow down and let the Iníka campaign, platform and community help you - you can achieve just that.
#HealthisWealth
Embrace and spread the idea that you don’t have to be monetary rich in order to be wealthy. Wealth comes in many forms and health is a greatly underestimated form of wealth and luxury. This allows the user to get out, activate themselves and increase their quality of life.
#SlowDownonthego
Urban meditation, recentering within minutes and allowing yourself to listen to your needs. This is what is greatly overlooked. But through this campaign, we allow the users to get the tools that they need to manage their days better, as well as giving them the reminder to eat some healthy snacks to maintain their energy - something that Iníka Superfoods have plenty of.
Outcome
The end result was simple, convincing and close to the existing Iníka Superfoods branding. The feedback that we received was that we had taken the concept of creative and rewarding marketing and merged that together with promotions of the Iníka community in an engaging and informative way.
First step was quite simple and straight forward, generate a community section on the current platform that allows for integration with community newsletters, information sharing and allowing the sense of family to gain a growth spurt in a healthy way - just along the lines of the core values of the Client.
Second step had to do with availability in order to feel like the few family is just one click away. This meant that just like the website itself by the time of the hackathon, it had to be optimised for mobile use. This would allow for easier access and a significant increase of potential traffic. This also ties into the other main aspect of the community section; community sharing. This could be described as a feed of images scraped from Inika related tags on social media to create a family wall that illustrates unity, health and motivation for a better and stronger life together.
Unfortunately, despite these words of praise, our team did not win the hackathon. However, we are not sad about that at all as we created a polished, high fidelity marketing campaign and concept that we can proudly showcase in our portfolios in a timeframe that was less than 48 hours from start to finish.
Simple, Scalable and familiar
In the end it ended up exactly where we wanted it to land, our client really appreciated that we took their current UI library and style guide to heart rather than coming up with something new and unfamiliar. Our philosophy was that if something isn’t broken, don’t fix it. In this instance however it was the designs that wasn’t broken. The client had a solid foundation to start from, something that would ensure familiarity, all that needed to be done was to shed some light on new possibilities and allow for a smoother user experience regardless of scale. The fact that this is exactly what they addressed in their final feedback to us just further proves that we were successful in the task we took on - something we all wear as a feather in our hats.
My Takeaways
My personal takeaways from this project all comes down to being humble. This project ended up on my table fairly early in my UX career and to this day it is still something that I think back on with great pride. I have learned that if I just take a step back and absorb everything, I won’t be overwhelmed or get stuck in because of a complex brief or intricate design system. To be able to openly communicate and not be afraid to do so while practicing an agile work methodology is something I have taken with me from this project and it has been serving me well. Lastly, I take with me from this project the importance of note taking, the fact that large organisations don’t feel as scary anymore and it has given me an ambition to always try my best to one day hopefully end up in a role like that.