FOCUS: BRAND SCALING RISKS | AUDIENCE: INVESTORS IN SLUGGISH BRANDS
I helped a health snack brand that scaled too early and failed—by gradually buiding distinction as investors wanted.
This premium health snack brand built its early traction through small-batch retail at wellness expos, boutique stores, and conscious gifting platforms. The product—an ayurvedic seed mix chikki—combined rooted Indian nostalgia with rising functional nutrition trends. With a few months of fast-moving sales and positive customer feedback, the founder secured seed funding and swiftly scaled into new metros, added multiple SKUs, and opened retail discussions across national distributors.
But scale arrived before clarity. Customers liked the taste but couldn’t remember the brand. Retailers weren’t sure whether to place the packs in the sweet aisle, health section, or snack category. And online performance dipped sharply due to positioning ambiguity and incoherent messaging. The product was real—but the brand wasn’t yet recognisable. It was growing in reach but shrinking in distinction.
When I mapped their content and packaging touchpoints, it became clear that the brand was over-communicating features but under-anchoring its identity. Every SKU carried a slightly different positioning—one spoke to gut health, another to low-GI snacking, and a third leaned into cultural flavours. Without one clear thread, the brand felt fragmented. It didn’t look like a scaled brand—it looked like a startup still finding itself.
Worse still, the tone of voice lacked personality. The packaging leaned toward generic minimalism, the Instagram grid was all functional descriptors, and the Amazon listings were loaded with benefits but devoid of voice. In trying to cover all bases—health, indulgence, tradition, modernity—they had ended up muddled and forgettable. There was no emotional handle for investors or consumers to grab.
I proposed a complete repositioning around one unifying core: “heritage health reimagined.” Instead of stretching across wellness trends, the brand would now stand confidently in its roots. The product would no longer compete with modern energy bars or protein bites. It would be a refined revival of the chikki—a snack steeped in culture, updated with clean nutrition principles, and worthy of daily ritual.
The creative metaphor I landed on was: “What if your grandmother’s chikki went to wellness school?” It was sharp, visual, and disarmingly memorable. It allowed us to fuse cultural credibility with contemporary values, and helped shift the tone from earnest to effortless. Everything—voice, visuals, benefits, flavours—would now orbit this core brand idea. Scaling wasn’t the problem—scaling without soul was.
The visual identity was stripped of overprocessed polish. Instead, I highlighted the seeds, the cracks, the golden jaggery texture, and reintroduced warmth in the form of earth tones and idiomatic copy. I consolidated the product line into three benefit-driven variants: Everyday Energy, Calm Focus, and Gut Joy. Each was given not just a flavour but a daily context to live in.
Sales decks were rebuilt to tell a cleaner story. Messaging pillars were introduced: Tradition, Tactility, Trust. Investor presentations now opened with the metaphor, not just numbers. Retail materials focused on shelf visibility and category clarity. The tone across platforms became human and wise, not clinical and loud. It was no longer a scattershot offering. It was a thoughtful ritual—packaged and ready to scale.
Here are 10 strategic ideas developed (and several executed) to support the new brand direction:
Founder’s Voice Series: Short reels featuring the founder explaining chikki memories and why modern health needed cultural revival.
Snack Wisdom Carousel Posts: Thoughtful quotes from grandmothers, ayurvedic texts, and food proverbs paired with soft product visuals.
Behind-the-Bite Process Reels: Showing jaggery bubbling, seeds roasting, and chikki being broken—all in ASMR-style close-ups.
Real Customer Reactions: Testimonial snippets where buyers compared the snack to childhood favourites, now “grown-up.”
Instagram Highlights for Each SKU: One per benefit variant—Everyday Energy, Calm Focus, Gut Joy—with pinned mood content.
Health Myth-Busting Stories: Using chikki to answer trending snack questions in casual swipe-through explainer formats.
Voice Notes for WhatsApp: Short audio forwards from “Snack School” giving health tips and product nudges—quirky, not preachy.
Amazon Storefront Narrative Blocks: New landing page sections featuring the metaphor, ingredient origin, and founder story.
Retailer-Specific Email Drip: A 4-part sequence to onboard retail staff with usage stories, shelf logic, and brand metaphors.
Branded Lead Magnet PDF: “Snack Smart the Indian Way”—a downloadable guide pairing traditional snacks with modern lifestyles.
Repeat purchase rate increased by 33% across D2C and partner platforms.
Amazon conversion rose 2.2× after narrative revamp and keyword refinement.
Retail placement improved in Tier 1 cities due to clarified category positioning.
Investor pitch acceptance rate improved after brand deck restructure and metaphor clarity.
CONFIDENTIALITY CAVEAT: This case study represents a confidential engagement. For privacy, specific brand identifiers, campaign names, and project phases have been withheld. It has been shared with permission while preserving client discretion.
If you’re brand owner or manager seeking stronger brand performance, here’s a case study that could interest you: “How a Germ-Fighting Antiseptic Soap Killed Its Own Engagement.“
And if you’re a solo expert looking to sharpen traction, this case study I worked on may resonate: “Why This Forensic Expert’s ‘I Help’ Statement Didn’t Help Enough.“
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KEY TOPIC CATEGORIES COVERED ON THIS SITE:
BRAND STRATEGY MISFIRES
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BRAND ALIGNMENT CHALLENGES
BRAND POSITIONING GAPS
BRAND CONTENT INCONSISTENCY
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