Hindustan Unilever (HUL), Unilever's Indian arm and the country's largest CPG company, invited Yellow to pitch for the OZiva Advanced design mandate: packaging for a new premium tier above the existing range. What began as one line became three.
Effective products, a swirl and a roughly consistent green got OZiva to $100M in affordable nutraceuticals.
HUL took the brand over and wanted a more informed customer under OZiva Advanced: an identity and design architecture that read as an evolution of the base line. Yellow would set it with the first three products.
Research into the category showed brands moving up into premium nutraceuticals shed their ingredient illustrations for cleaner, more minimal packs. HUL's own data said the opposite. Packs that showed ingredients sold better.
Blind tests and polls on the baseline split the audience. New customers wanted wellness that felt less serious. Informed customers wanted something more considered.
Not one customer at three price points. Advanced closed the informed end and left no way in for the curious.
Three lines instead of a ladder, each pitched at how much its customer already knows. Distinct enough to tell apart at a glance, connected enough that one leads to the next.
Advanced carries the premium tier without reading as a separate brand. The baseline stops turning away the customer Go is there for.
I led the internal research and the first design pitch that won the account, updated the design architecture for the base line, and designed the new Advanced line alongside another senior designer. The HUL team provided the market research and guided strategy, and the Creative Director made the final calls.
An alternative route, argued for hard. The client felt it had strayed too far.
It fit the original brief exactly. Once the brief grew, HUL's reason became clear.
HUL already knew about the entry gap and had been planning for it. The research landed with their team.
The brief grew from one line to three: Advanced, an updated baseline, and gummies under a new entry tier, OZiva Go. Go was designed by another team.
