Designing a Meaningful Digital Brand for Chobani
Chobani Greek Yogurt came to us with a brilliant idea: to redesign themselves as a wellness company that uses food as a force for good. With this mission in mind, we took the lead to redesign their digital brand and eCommerce site. We spent months learning what makes Chobani so loved and what we could do to elevate the brand. We then crafted a new brand that merged this nostalgic love with their vision for the future to create a digital experience that promotes social well-being in communities and ensures the planet’s environmental wellness.
Challenge
How might we redesign Chobani’s brand to focus on wellness and community?
Outcome
A new set of principles conveyed through Chobani’s digital presence and organic designs.
My Role
Partnered with a team of designers and engineers to focus on design and UX.
Key Takeaways
17% Increase in Traffic to Chobani.com
5% Increased household penetration
10k+ recipe/article shares in the 1st 6 months
The Opportunity
Chobani wanted to redefine itself to reflect its loyal customer's lifestyles in stores, online, and in new Chobani cafes. This meant they wanted their products, mission, and company to promote positivity worldwide and spread a wellness mindset at any touchpoint. Our goal was to create a universally inspiring omnichannel brand beloved by Chobani customers and be a meaningful step in their wellness journey.
Talking to Chobani Fans
We immediately noticed growing consumer preferences for simple, natural, and healthy foods, and these consumers thought that the big companies have had to catch up. We discovered that Chobani's fans wanted natural ingredients with food on the go. In conversations with our consumers, their perception of the Chobani brand is that their Greek yogurt was a simple step in their wellness story.
Through many shop-a-longs and interviews, we learned that knowledgeable messaging and informative experiences were a significant opportunity to highlight our mission and ingredients. Additionally, we could use strong visual queues to help customers connect their right product with their daily life.
I see food for the role it plays in my daily life and what it contributes to my overall well being. - Jen, Ohio
Chobani Personas
Our Nutrition
Key Customer Touchpoints + Opportunities
Our customers crave information about ingredients and nutritional facts in their everyday foods. We can break down scientific language into everyday words to communicate what our products are made of.
Our Mission
Chobani benefits greatly from the personal mission of its founder Hamdi Ulukaya and its values as the front line of ethical business practices. We need to bring these initiatives to the forefront of our brand on our products, site and new cafes.
Our Lifestyle Content
Our customers are continuously looking for new recipes or information on the latest sustainability initiatives. We can bundle up our products and our mission in lifestyle content that our customers can use in their life.
Location + Competitive Analysis
Our Vision: Merge Customer Lifestyles with Chobani's Desire to Do Good
The Chobani vision says to make universal wellness happen sooner. Chobani wanted to do everything it could as a company to use the scale and resourced to improve nutritional well-being, take care of employees and communities, and take large sustainable initiatives in the entire supply chain. Our overall strategy was to look at how our consumers were engaging with each touchpoint and create distinct groupings.
01 Food Should be Healthy
These foods that consumers choose are good, healthy staples in their lives.
02 Food Should be Fun
These foods should be entertaining and experimental. They should be enjoyed for trying something new or different.
03 Food Should be Fuel
These foods should help consumers perform and feel their best each day.
04 Food Should be Social
These foods bring people together, whether it's sharing breakfast at the table or enjoying a snack with a friend.
Site Architecture
Design Exploration & Iterations
Our design strategy was to demonstrate the impressions we get from enjoying the food we love yet lack the words to describe. Organic, blocky shapes and color mirror the simplicity of our ingredients and create an approachable atmosphere in the store, at home and online.
Idea Validations & Usability
We had a persistant need to evaluate how product information stacked up against storytelling to understand how to prioritize navigation, content, and more. Overall, our audience favored distinct section the emphasized either product (PDP, PLP etc) or storytelling (Impact, Start Up Incubator, etc). This fit their two distinct needs without hindering their ability to find the information that they wanted when they visited Chobani.
Final Designs
Our site had to preserve brand unity while also catering to a purely digital platform. The core brand values were to be handcrafted, be approachable and have a sense of naivety. With these in values in mind, we merged them with our Chobani fans insights and desires for the digital experience.
Add Delight Throughout Interactions & Messaging
We utilized a mix of engaging interaction animations, illustrations, and conversational language to create a a fresh experience between traditional food brand informational and our audience.
Encourage Discovery
Every touchpoint in our site highlights new ways to explore content to allow for constant exposure to new things that are going on within the brand. Messages from our farmers, recipes from top NY chefs, non-profit efforts, and new products are a few ways we demonstrate how robust Chobani is as a company.
Deliver Bite-Sized Information
We wanted our site to be a "choose-your-own-adventure" which meant conveying a lot of information in many small chunks. We learned from our audience that this allowed them to understand what we were about with the ability to dig deeper through buttons or links.