Business unusual

Client: Oddbox

Challenge

Oddbox is on a mission to fight food waste. By rescuing unwanted fruit and vegetables and delivering them to people’s homes, co-founders Emilie and Deepak had built an entire business around that cause. The mission was clear to the organisation, but Oddbox was struggling to tell a compelling story of its fight against food waste to inspire customers. In addition, the company had experienced rapid growth in recent months (partly due to consumer behavioural shifts due to lockdown) and the business needed a challenger mindset and a new brand to clarify and strengthen its positioning as it expanded beyond London and into new regional markets.

Solution

Working closely with Oddbox’s brand and marketing team, we realised that ‘Oddness’ was really central to the brand. Celebrating ‘Odd’ meant more than just rescuing curvy cucumbers, it was fundamentally about the way Oddbox does business. Together, we reflected that in today’s turbulent world, business as usual is broken. Instead, the brand would champion and be proud of their ‘business unusual’ approach as the way forward. This connected with unusual practices such as Oddbox’s overnight deliveries, which many customers love but are far from a category norm, to their constraint-led approach to innovation and creativity. The fight against food waste was made visible and dramatic by visualising data in surprising and engaging ways while customers could also measure their personal environmental impact for the first time. The new ‘Odd’ brand story was brought to life across all brand and customer touchpoints including the ‘weekly rescue mission’: a reinvention of their delivery boxes which empowered customers to fight food waste, measure their environmental impact, and feel a stronger part of the collective mission — all from the doorstep.

Impact

Oddbox now has a compelling new challenger story that flipped what can be a fairly depressing narrative around food waste into a constructive and positive story that customers engage with and feel they can participate in. The new story informed a brand identity refresh that included a new logo, delivery boxes, and website which were all developed in-house providing a bold and consistent look and feel across touchpoints. Over 60% of Oddbox customers say the new brand experience is a “huge improvement” rating it 5/5. Customers feel more involved in the mission to reduce food waste and our partnership with Oddbox has helped energise and rally the organisation as it expands and enters exciting new markets.

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