ABOUT:

Two university students with love for good coffee found a supplier of high-quality beans and herbal drinks.

As first-time business founders, their plan was:

• Create a beautiful premium-looking packaging
• Launch an e-shop featuring 16 coffee blends, yerba maté, and kratom powder
• Drive sales through online ads and social media content

BRIEF:

Review and evolve packaging concept and define clear direction for target audience and brand story.

CHALLENGE:

Hyper-saturated niche

The product quality was great, the ambition was high, but the strategy would make the business burn out before receiving first order.

If Herbal Gods wanted to spin it, we had to look beyond the standard marketing playbook since the market is flooded with premium specialty niche design coffee.

OPPORTUNITIES:

Strong starting position

Herbal Gods, though, had some strong cards to play with too:

• Target audience (creative people who rely on natural brain boosters) matched the founders themselves, giving us an opportunity to leverage true authenticity.
• The university environment gave them direct, low-cost access to a ready-made audience within nearest proximity.
• Some universities even have entrepreneurial clubs supporting their students’ endeavors
• The name Herbal Gods hinted on potential for a strong brand story and concept.

SOLUTION:

When everyone aims up, we go down

We flipped the standard marketing on its head.

Rather than try to out-design or out-advertise other coffee & tea brands, we said let’s go where the audience already is, not where competition is loud. And make it a fun ride.

1. Target audience

We narrowed it down from a vague ‘creative people who like brain boosters’ to Gen Z students with natural desire for self-expression. Why?

1. Way more clear and specific
2. There’s emotional angle to speak to
3. The founders are one of them

This TA makes it easy for the business owners to feel their customer and connect authentically without forcing the vibe.

2. Brand story

The name Herbal Gods together with audience’s desire for unique expression works pefectly in sync in a brand narrative that speaks to the creative spirits:

3. Product naming

Each drink and each blend got named as a deity evoking the drink’s powers like:

4. Packaging

And finally, we got brave: instead of making the packaging shinier, we stripped it down to basic paper pouches with a little game.

Punky paper pouches because they are the a great medium for creativity, and crazy cheap to produce. Even DIY in dorm room.

PERKS OF PUNKY PAPER PACKAGING:

Purposefully understated packaging does 90% of the brand’s work here

There are five different angles from which the pouch strategy works, and we are almost certain that even more can be found as we go:

• Visually stands out among shiny coffees and teas
• Interactive element invites the customer to pause before they act
• Truly helps achieve the desired state of mind
• By extending the interaction with the pouch, we also strengthen brand recognition
• Allows for more play further down the marketing road

MARKETING CONTEXT

How it all fits in the real world

While the project focused on audience, brand, and packaging, the final idea is grounded in a simple marketing strategy that fits the business’s maturity stage:

Distribution:

• Focus on university canteens and student cafès instead of mass retail
• E-shop can be stripped down to match the DIY student vibe without pressure to look big
• Push referrals and word-of-mouth over online ads to make it feel like an underground find

Promo campaign:

• Towards the end of semester, before the exam month starts → drop a campaign “May the Gods be with you” → hand out free single-dose samples with discount code for eshop

Referral contest:

• At the beginning of a new semester, announce a referral contest → who brings the most new customers will get a batch named after them

WHY THIS WORKS

Being small is an advantage when used right

By focusing on a clear audience, a bold narrative, and packaging that speaks for itself, we positioned Herbal Gods in a space where they can be discovered organically, and off the mainstream radar.

Every element from packaging to promo reflects brains over budget. With low production and advertising costs, the founders have more room to play and grow.

CLIENT SAYS:

Feels a lot more doable

“We thought everything had to look super professional and premium, like big brands do. But we had no idea where to start, so we just kept procrastinating.

This whole exercise helped us realize that our buyers are already all around us, and that the brand doesn’t have to look better than everyone else.

Now it feels more like us and a lot more doable.”

Adam & Mathias, owners

EXPLORE OTHER WORK

How we made customers buy the brand, not the product:

The Great Clean Upgrade

How we tackled corporate training to keep sales up:

Can Sales Agents Become Millionaires?

How knowing what not to touch doubled ad clicks:

It Was Just A Banner, But Somehow It Clicked

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