CASE STUDY, SHIRE FARMS

They were selling the farm. Their customers were buying the crunch.

Shire Farms grows organic blueberries on a single farm in BC’s Columbia Valley and freeze-dries them whole. Good product, real story, and a product page that led with the wrong thing.

What we found

Their page opened with where the berries come from: the single farm, the mountain air, the glacial water. We ran Scout over everything their customers were saying in public, and almost none of it was about any of that.

What customers talked about was the taste, and after that the crunch. Fruit is not supposed to crunch, and the surprise of it was the thing people wanted to describe. Crunch appeared nowhere in the page’s claims.

We read the nine brands they compete with too. Eight of the nine make the same promises: nothing added, real fruit, simple, healthy. The category is crowded with claims and silent on feeling. That silence was the opening.

The half-finished ad

The answer was sitting in their own advertising. One of their ads opened with “Bye bye mushy berries,” then stopped and listed features. There was no payoff for the headline. It was half an idea. We completed the thought.

BEFORE: SHIRE FARMS’ ORIGINAL AD

Shire Farms’ original Bye Bye Mushy Berries ad

The original had too much copy. It used two headlines with no pay off for either one. No call to action button.

AFTER: OUR CONCEPT AD

Portage’s Hello Crunch concept ad for Shire Farms

Same headline, but now there is a payoff. A colour corrected product shot. Less copy and a tighter ad.

Bye bye mushy berries, hello crunch.

Five ideas, five feelings

Each idea came from something customers kept coming back to, and each one claims a feeling no competitor had taken.

Each one came with eight headlines, three imagery directions, five calls to action and a concept ad.

Hello, Crunch.

The crunch nobody expects from fruit. Bye bye mushy berries, hello crunch.

Share It. Or Don’t.

The snack too good to share. Some snacks are for sharing. This one is testing you.

No Catch.

Sweetness with nothing given up. Sweet. Crunchy. One ingredient. No catch.

Packed for the Day.

The three o’clock drawer at the office. Wherever the day takes you, the good choice is already in your bag.

Summer, Kept.

Blueberry season on any day of the year. Summer doesn’t have to end.

Concept ads. Photography and packaging are placeholders.

The product description

We rewrote the description to lead with what customers said and keep the farm story underneath it as the reason to believe.

Freeze-dried organic blueberries from a single farm in Columbia Valley, BC. One ingredient, nothing added, and still sweet enough to surprise you. Light, crunchy and easy to carry, with a taste of blueberry season on any day of the year. Meant to be shared, and rarely is.

Where it stands

The work is ongoing. The ideas are built and ready to test, and Shire Farms is gathering customer emails that we will read into the next round.

“We thought we were selling the farm. Portage showed us our customers were buying the crunch. We had been reading those comments for two years and never once saw what was in front of us.”

Marcus Mitchell

President and CEO, Shire Farms

PLACEHOLDER QUOTE. FINAL TEXT TO COME.

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