Filed under Natural Branding.

I’ve been writing about natural products for over ten years, but was always too busy to go to ExpoWest. Now, ExpoWest is the largest food, supplement and personal care show in the natural products industry and, when I arrived Friday morning, my first-timer’s eyes were wide with wonder at the range and volume of the offerings. I spent the next two days walking the floor and talking with vendors. I sampled more protein bars than I can count and sipped more teas than a tree has leaves, and at the end of the two days, I realized I had been missing out on five very important things.

First of all, no one told me how I would fall in love with the products I discovered, like PowerBlend’s super-charged spoonfuls of seeds (I can’t stop sprinkling them on my salads) and Svelte’s organic protein shakes (who doesn’t like a product that tells you you’re looking good?). While I have always considered myself passionate about natural, health-promoting products, consider that passion stoked.

powerof3

PowerBlend seed mixes at www.powerof3nutrition.com

Second, the ability to compare apples to apples brought an overwhelming amount of product information into useable focus. For example, I encountered over 40 different probiotic product lines. I gathered all their information into one pile and later compared how many billion live organisms they started with and how many different strains they included. The differences were startling.

Third, seeing so many products in close proximity, it was easy to see which stood out and which were ignored. This helped me understand how difficult it is to catch the eye of busy, overwhelmed customers and how hard PDP copy needs to work. Take the example of hardworking Tubulars, a vitamin-filled straw to mix with milk that sports the tagline, “Absosuckinglutely!”

TubularsLogo

 

Fourth, I was reminded that less is often more when it comes to copy (a point my creative director has tried to drum into my head more than once). I appreciated clean ads that directed my eye to a small amount of salient information and summed up the brand’s value proposition in no more than a sentence. This less is more principle often applies to websites and sales sheet as well, as in this example from Orgain.

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Orgain organic nutritional shakes

Fifth, I enjoyed the opportunity to meet some of the people behind the products. While it’s easy to get jaded reading the About Us section of websites, meeting the real people behind a product venture positively altered my perception. Nowhere else will you find more earnest, health-minded individuals who are working to bring about better health and wellbeing on the planet. To everyone I met at ExpoWest I say, it was a pleasure.

 

Sharon Benedict
Senior Copywriter
BrandHive