Before we dive into how to brand your vegan business, let’s take a minute to cover the basics of branding.
When it comes to branding your business, there are three key concepts you need to understand: brand, branding, and brand identity. Think of them as the “three B’s.”
The differences between the three b’s may be subtle, but those differences are important to understand as you’re building your brand:
All three B’s play a key role in building a marketable, thriving and recognizable vegan brand. Think of them like building blocks; each of them builds off the other—and you need all three in order to build a cohesive and successful vegan business.
Understanding the basics of branding is a good jumping off point—but before you start building your vegan brand, there are a few key questions you need to answer.
In general, the most successful brands are the ones who truly connect with their customers. And because the vegan industry is so competitive, forging that connection is even more important.
Your customers aren’t going to be able to connect with you if you don’t have a clear identity for them to connect to, which is why it’s so important to define who you are as a brand before you start the branding process.
Before you start branding your vegan company, take the time to get to the root of who you are as a company, and how you want that identity to come across to your audience. One helpful, and simple, way to get to the root of who you are as a brand is to ask yourself “how would I describe my brand in three words?”
If, for example, you’re launching a line of vegan butter targeted towards parents. Your adjectives might be “convenient, clean and ethical.” If your vegan butter line was targeted towards foodies or chefs, those adjectives might change to “gourmet, high-end and exclusive.”
The point is, boiling your brand down to a few adjectives can help you get really clear on who you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. Once you have that clarity, you can use it to guide your branding process and decisions.
Again, the success of your brand depends on how well you can connect with your audience, which is why it’s so important to get clear about who that audience actually is.
Before you get too far into the branding process, take the time to create an ideal customer avatar. Get as detailed as possible. Who are they? What are they looking for in their products and brand partners? Are they experienced vegans, new vegans or “vegan-curious?” For example, maybe your target customer is new to the vegan lifestyle and is looking for alternative products to replace the meat and dairy they’re used to incorporating into their diet. Or maybe your target client is vegan for ethical reasons and is looking to partner with brands that are focused on sustainability and animal rights.
The more you know about your ideal customers before you start branding, the more you can use that knowledge to guide your branding decisions and ultimately build a vegan brand that truly speaks to those customers.
As mentioned, the vegan business has grown a tremendous amount in recent years and is continuing to grow rapidly. With that growth comes countless new vegan brands.
That’s why, if you want your vegan brand to succeed, it’s important to know who your competitors are and, more importantly, how you differ from them.
There are already a ton of plant-based, health-conscious vegan brands on the shelves. Knowing what makes you unique, innovative, and different from the other vegan brands out there (known as your point of difference) will help you break through the clutter, grab your customers’ attention and encourage them to choose your brand over the hundreds of other options on the market.
Having a strong brand mission and values are important for any brand, but they’re especially important in vegan branding.
A huge percentage of your customer base are vegan because of their beliefs, ethics, and values and they need to know that any brands they work with or products they buy are aligned with those beliefs, ethics and values.
Before you start actively building your brand, it’s important to understand your corporate mission and values.
Your mission statement is the “why” behind your vegan brand, so it’s a great place to start. Why are you launching your vegan brand? If you need some help defining your corporate mission, try filling in the blanks of the following statement: “Our company exists to ______. In five years, we plan to _____.”
Once you have your mission, it’s time to define your corporate values. Your values aren’t just key in driving your internal vegan branding strategy, it will also help you forge an authentic connection with your customers. What do you stand for as a brand and how does that speak to your vegan audience? For example, plant-based food and beverage brand Good Karma puts their corporate values right in their tagline: “Good Karma isn’t just our name—it’s the inspiration for everything we do. We believe in celebrating tiny but mighty acts of goodness.”
Your corporate mission and values communicates who you are, what you stand for and what you’re trying to accomplish to yourself, your team, and your customers and they play a key role in helping you carve out your spot in the vegan industry.
Another question you need to answer before you start branding your vegan business is whether you’re going to use vegan terminology in your branding.
It might seem like a no-brainer (we’re a vegan company; of course we’re going to use vegan terminology in our branding!) but the truth is, using certain terms (like “vegan” or “meat-less”) might not be the best idea for your brand.
First off, vegan food and products can be enjoyed by anyone but putting the term “vegan” on a product can make it seem exclusive and turn non-vegans away. Using terms like “plant-based” can help get the same idea across without potentially turning away would-be customers that aren’t exclusively vegan.
Also, using terminology like “meat-free” or “free from animal protein” can make customers question the quality and taste of your products. A recent study from Stanford University found that participants chose vegetables with “indulgent” language 41% more than vegetables with “healthy restrictive” language.” So, if you want your products to sell, it’s important to avoid language that people might read as overly “health restrictive,” like “meat-free” or “free from dairy and eggs.”
A great example of how to do this well? Beyond Meat. Not only do they avoid using “vegan” on their packaging (they use plant-based language, like“plant-based patties” or “plant-based” sausage), they also focus on what their products offer, not what they’re missing. Instead of focusing on the lack of meat, the “beyond” in their company name suggests transcending traditional meat products and by using enticing words like “sizzle” and “now meatier than ever,” they’re leveraging the kind of indulging language that draws in customers.
Once you’ve answered the above pre-branding questions, the next step of the process is to define your brand’s design building blocks.
There are a few key design principles and elements you’ll need to define to drive your vegan branding process, including:
Once you’ve defined the basics of your brand identity, it’s time to use those basics to start designing your key vegan brand elements.
There are a few brand elements you’ll need to launch your vegan brand, including:
All of these elements play a key role in the vegan branding process. Before you bring your vegan brand to market, you want to make sure they’re well-designed, on-point and on-brand.
Going through the branding process helps you define the key elements of your vegan brand. But moving forward, you want to make sure that any new products, packaging, copy, or anything else tied to your brand is aligned with that branding and that’s where a brand style guide comes in.
Your brand style guide is a centralized document that houses all the must-know information about your vegan branding. You can go into as much detail as you’d like in your brand style guide (and in fact, the more detailed, the better!), but at the very minimum, you should plan to include:
Having a brand style guide is a must; not only is it convenient to have all of that key information assembled in one place, but it helps to maintain consistency as you grow your vegan brand. A brand style guide helps to get everyone on your team on the same page, which ensures that whatever they create for your brand (whether that’s a new packaging design or a social media post) is in line with your big-picture vision and overall vegan branding strategy.
Want even more info on how to brand your vegan business? Here are a few additional points to keep in mind throughout the branding process:
The vegan industry is growing like crazy and now that you understand how to brand your vegan business, you have everything you need to get out there and make your mark on this emerging industry. So what are you waiting for? Get out there and start branding!