Background

When entrepreneur Livio Bisterzo approached us, his vision was to launch a credible challenger to the global snacks market – a brand with a purpose and a unique personality to match. He came to us with a name and a product: Hippeas – the world’s first organic puffed chickpea snack - and we set out to create the rest. Our target consumer? The modern day ‘hippie’. Health conscious, with a desire to make the world a better a place; an audience who value authenticity above all else, and seek brands with a genuine sense of purpose that do good.

Creative Idea

We helped build the brand from the ground up – packs, in store, personality, purpose and all.

Taking the Hippeas name as our key inspiration, we set out to create a brand that would appeal to today’s modern hippies.

As the brand name alone unlocked such a rich visual language in the mind, we wanted to avoid the clichés of the hippie era and create something truly charismatic and relevant for the global snacking market.

Strategy

For a brand to be big, it needs to be brave and confident. We knew that if we played by the rules of the niche health or organic sectors, we would limit our potential.

So we focused on creating something distinctive, charismatic and engaging: a brand with a sense of purpose, its DNA inspired by the spirit of an era, but made relevant for today.

Playing on the brand name we reinterpreted the motifs, symbols and language of the Summer of Love, reimagining recognisable cultural references and adopting them as part of our own visual and verbal identity.

Simultaneously, we helped Hippeas reach its ambition of becoming a leading name in driving positive change. By identifying that chickpea crops are good for the earth by making the soil more fertile, we suggested a partnership with Farm Africa, establishing a long-term commitment to community development.

Execution

Every touchpoint became an opportunity to build a bold, vibrant and truly campaignable identity to tell the brand’s story. By creating a complementary partnership between visual and verbal expressions, the look-and-feel is strikingly bold and simple – a bright yellow brand colour and an abstracted Hippeas smiling face, with the eye subtly referencing a chickpea. This creates a smile in the mind and instant recognition. The brand language and tonality strike a balance between the socially conscious ethos of the hippie movement and an irreverent humour to appeal to today’s savvy consumers.

Words and phrases such as ‘power to the peaple’, ‘peas, love and giving back’, along with the flavour descriptors ‘In Herbs We Trust’ and ‘Far Out Fajita’ became part of the brand vocabulary. From brand positioning to brand idea, we created every touch point for Hippeas: packaging, in-store displays, outdoor activations, website, social media content and promotional merchandise.

Distribution

In just 4 months, Hippeas has already secured listings in over 18,500 stores across the UK and US, with packs being found everywhere from Starbucks and Whole Foods, to Planet Organic and Holland & Barrett. So far, not one retailer that has been approached has refused to list Hippeas and no price promotion has taken place.

Consumer engagement

And it’s not just retailers who have been engaged by the brand. Consumers have also fallen for Hippeas' unique personality and proposition. A number of consumers who have discovered Hippeas have emailed the brand to express their affection and excitement; the Hippeas team now receives around 80- 100 emails everyday from consumers expressing their love for the brand. Projected sales The brand is now on track to hit revenues just shy of £1m in less than 7 months (UK) and $6.5m by summer 2017 (US).

“The design and brand proposition has given us that ‘special something’ that immediately resonates with consumers. Without this, we would not have been able to cut through all the noise in the oversaturated snacking market and have the impact we are experiencing today.” Livio Bisterzo, Founder of Hippeas and CEO of Green Park Brands.

“In 25 years of selling, I haven’t seen this level of interest or rapid retail distribution. The reaction from the trade in the US and UK has been phenomenal. The strength of the product proposition and brand world combined are ticking all the boxes for retailers when it comes to cultural relevance for consumers.” Craig Hughes, Director European Sales, Green Park Brands, Former European Foodservice Director Heinz.