D375 Task 1 Creative Brief and Brand Alignment Example

Show the Farm, Not the Leaf: A Creative Brief and Brand Alignment Analysis for a Composite Direct-Trade Coffee Roaster Whose Packaging Promises More Than It Proves

Student Name

School of Business, Western Governors University

D375: Marketing Communications and Storytelling, Task 1

Course Instructor

Month Day, Year

Show the Farm, Not the Leaf: A Creative Brief and Brand Alignment Analysis for a Composite Direct-Trade Coffee Roaster Whose Packaging Promises More Than It Proves

The Brand and Its Positioning

Ridgeline Roasters, a composite small-batch roaster in Portland, Oregon, buys green coffee directly from four farming cooperatives in Colombia, Ethiopia, Guatemala and Peru, paying prices well above commodity rates under multiyear agreements. It roasts in small batches and sells through its website, two cafes and about 60 grocery stores in the Pacific Northwest. Its intended positioning is: for coffee drinkers who care where their coffee comes from, Ridgeline is the roaster that proves its relationships with the farmers who grow it, so every cup is both excellent and fairly sourced.

The company wants to grow grocery sales, where it competes on a crowded shelf with national specialty brands and many roasters that also claim sustainability. Its grocery sales have been flat for two years.

Creative Brief

Objective: increase grocery sales of Ridgeline's four single-origin coffees by 20% over the next year by making the brand's direct relationships with farmers visible and credible at the shelf and online.

Target audience: adults aged 28 to 50 in the Pacific Northwest who buy specialty coffee at the grocery store, value ethical sourcing and are willing to pay more for it, but who are skeptical of vague sustainability claims because so many brands make them.

Consumer insight: these shoppers want their morning coffee to reflect values they are proud of, but they have learned to distrust green labels and leaf icons that promise sustainability without proof. They will pay for ethical coffee only when they believe the claim is real.

Key message: Ridgeline knows the farmers by name, and you can too.

Support: named cooperatives and farmers on every bag; the price paid per pound compared with the commodity price; multiyear contracts; photographs and short stories from each farm; roast dates to show freshness.

Tone: warm, specific and honest; proud without preaching; never vague.

Deliverables: redesigned packaging for four single-origin coffees, shelf signage for grocery partners, and a brand story and short video for social media and the website.

Why the Insight Matters

Sustainability claims are everywhere in coffee, and many consumers have learned to discount them. Research on greenwashing describes it as misleading consumers about environmental performance or the environmental benefits of a product, and notes that its growing incidence can undermine consumer confidence in green products generally (Delmas & Burbano, 2011). For a roaster whose practices are genuinely ethical, this skepticism is a problem and an opportunity: Ridgeline cannot win by claiming sustainability more loudly, but it can win by proving it more specifically than competitors.

What the Brief Is Trying to Build

The brief aims at a specific kind of brand value. Customer-based brand equity arises when consumers hold associations with a brand that are strong, favorable and unique (Keller, 1993). Ridgeline's association with ethical sourcing is favorable among the people who know it, but it is not strong, because few grocery shoppers have heard it, and not unique, because every competitor claims something similar. Naming farmers and showing prices makes the association unique; repeating it across packaging, signage and video makes it strong. The creative work therefore has a clear job: turn a claim many brands make into a proof only Ridgeline can offer.

Brand Alignment Analysis

Brand alignment asks whether every element a customer encounters expresses the brand's positioning consistently. Packaging is especially important for a grocery brand because it communicates identity at the moment of choice; research on packaging describes it as a vehicle for brand identity that shapes consumers' lived experience with the product at the shelf and at home (Underwood, 2003).

Ridgeline's current packaging is poorly aligned with its positioning. The bags are kraft paper with a green leaf logo and the words Sustainably Sourced, which look almost identical to competitors' bags making weaker claims. The cooperatives are not named. The price paid to farmers, the brand's most powerful proof, appears nowhere. Roast dates are printed small on the bottom. The website tells farmer stories well, but nothing on the bag invites shoppers to find them.

Other elements are better aligned. The cafes display photographs from the farms and baristas can talk about each cooperative. Social media posts from harvest visits perform well. The brand's strength is real but invisible in the channel where it most needs to grow.

Recommended Changes

Redesign each single-origin bag around a farmer or cooperative: a photograph, the cooperative's name and region, and a short line such as We paid $4.10 a pound, more than twice the commodity price. Replace the generic leaf and Sustainably Sourced wording with this specific proof. Print the roast date prominently. Add a short link and scannable code on each bag leading to that farm's story and video. Use shelf signage in grocery stores that repeats the farmer photograph and price, so the proof is visible from the aisle. Keep the kraft material, which signals craft, but add a distinctive color band for each origin so the line is recognizable as a family.

Measuring the Effect

The redesign will be tested before a full rollout. Ridgeline will introduce the new bags in 15 of its 60 grocery stores for three months, keeping the old bags in the rest, and compare unit sales, the share of first-time buyers who purchase again and the number of shoppers who scan the code to read farm stories. A short shelf-intercept survey in test stores will ask shoppers what they believe about the brand's sourcing, which shows whether the proof is registering. If the new packaging lifts sales and belief in the test stores, the company will roll it out to all stores and extend the approach to its blends.

Conclusion

Ridgeline's ethical sourcing is its strongest brand asset, but its packaging hides it behind the same vague green cues competitors use. A creative brief built on shoppers' distrust of empty claims, and packaging that names farmers and shows the price paid, will align the brand's most visible element with its positioning and give skeptical shoppers a reason to believe.

References

Delmas, M. A., & Burbano, V. C. (2011). The drivers of greenwashing. California Management Review, 54(1), 64-87. https://doi.org/10.1525/cmr.2011.54.1.64

Keller, K. L. (1993). Conceptualizing, measuring, and managing customer-based brand equity. Journal of Marketing, 57(1), 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1177/002224299305700101

Underwood, R. L. (2003). The communicative power of product packaging: Creating brand identity via lived and mediated experience. Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, 11(1), 62-76. https://doi.org/10.1080/10696679.2003.11501933