Overview: Gaia Herbs knows that every detail matters in the delivery of herbal medicine, so it maintains a complete chain of custody over the quality of its products, literally from seed to shelf.

Challenge: Gaia Herbs’ core brand message wasn’t clear and didn’t foster a connection with consumers or inspire the natural products retail staff to recommend their products.

Solution: Beyond its commitment to science, process and medicine, Gaia Herbs understands their role as stewards of a natural continuum between plants and people—a role that compels them toward sustainability, environmental responsibility and a commitment to the vitality of every inhabitant of the earth. Consumer research and trade interviews revealed that participants were not only open to this kind of thinking, but in fact, would embrace it wholeheartedly.

With these right-brain insights in mind, Pure Branding conducted multiple consumer studies with over 2100 regular users of herbal medicine to determine how best to articulate Gaia Herbs' left-brain story in an approachable way. These studies revealed that across the board, herbal medicine shoppers have one thing in common: They are seeking assurance in an industry fraught with questions, recalls, and an onslaught of negative press. Pure Branding recognized the potential to elevate the promise of an herbal medicine company from "Trust us," to "Let us prove it."

Thus, Meet Your Herbs^™ was born. The industry's first herb traceability program makes Gaia Herbs' chain of custody transparent and open. By entering the Meet Your Herbs ID number from any (newly redesigned) Gaia Herbs product at the new GaiaHerbs.com or on the new mobile app, consumers can see proof of careful cultivation, meticulous harvesting, the right extraction methods and state-of-the-art validation and purity data for each herb inside their product.

Meet Your Herbs^™ enabled deeper ways to “meet” as well. Pure Branding's research revealed that people shop herbal medicine within four distinct "need states." To truly "meet" these shoppers, Gaia needed to get the "right herb to the right person at the right time." Pure helped organize Gaia's complicated product offering (over 700 SKUs) into four distinct product lines.

The rebrand was brought to life with a new logo designed to invite brand name recognition and new packaging that celebrates its clinical and consistent nature while answering the oft-posed question, "What's in it and what will it do for me?" right on the front of the package. The brand pillars—Purity+Integrity=Potency—define Gaia’s competitive advantage within the category and a new tagline articulates the symbiotic nature of its role through both promise and a play-on-words: "Plant Intelligence."

The rebrand doubled sales in three years with no new product launches; besting goal by two years. Gaia Herbs’ investor TBL Capital reflected, “Pure Branding helped us turn Gaia from a manufacturer of herbal medicine into a leading natural products brand—then they gave us the tools to make it happen.” The rebrand has been honored with a numerous prestigious awards including a 2011 REBRAND 100^® Global Award for the brand research, strategy, and experience, a 2011 Webby Award (hailed as the “Internet's Highest Honor” by The New York Times) for the web site relaunch, and a 2011 American Package Design Award for the packaging restage.

• Doubled sales in three years with no new product launches, besting goal by two years
• Launched the supplement industry’s 1st traceability program
• Identified $20M market opportunity by repositioning existing products
• Identified $100M retail opportunity in trial purchases determined by store evangelists
• Increased Expo West orders 200% in the
  first year
• Grew level of engagement online 150% after the rebrand