Oct 4, 2017
How We Turned A Bottle of Egg Whites into an Award-Winning Health Food Brand
Working with Pumperlgsund’s founders, we branded and built a delightful consumer experience for the health-focused lifestyle product.
This week, many viewers witnessed the success of Pumperlgsund, which won €500,000 in funding for their “Good Eggwhites” in VOX network’s “Die Höhle der Löwen” (known as “Shark Tank” in the US and “Dragons’ Den” in UK). After their pitch, not only one, but two investors were keen to make a deal with them. Pumperlgsund chose Frank Thelen, a German serial entrepreneur and investor, who has helped many startups grow into successful businesses.
Here’s how it all started.
In 2014, we were approached by Jan and Fabian of Pumperlgsund with a unique challenge: sell bottles of organic, liquid egg whites to health-conscious consumers, dieters, athletes and yoga lovers. Most importantly, they wanted to create a new product category and a lifestyle trend in the market, and asked us to create a delightful physical and digital user experience to get them there.
Branding organic liquid egg whites was a unique challenge. Such a product had never been sold in Germany before, and was still a novelty for end consumers. Egg whites are healthy, low in calories, but are not particularly sexy. Targeted at trend- and health-conscious consumers, we needed to communicate the product’s value at first glance through the packaging, as well as through its website.
We faced three main challenges:
- The bottle design needed to be self-explanatory with regards to its content
- We needed to explain to consumers why they should buy bottles of egg whites. People knew what egg white was, but during our user interviews, the first question they asked was: “What should I do with it?”
- We also needed to explain why egg protein is good for their bodies, and why we were separating it from the yolks.
Working on a Winning Solution: Brand Elements
The Name
First, we needed a name that would communicate the key value proposition of the product: health. Because the founders and their target market are German, we worked through several iterations, finally settling on Pumperlgsund, a word that relates to health and being in motion, similar to the idea of a pumping heart.
The word is of Bavarian origin, and so we knew it would be a slightly unfamiliar word to most German speakers. We chose it for its novelty, and its ability to stick in the mind of the consumers.
Logo, Colours, Font
We chose curves and round shapes to convey the fact that the egg whites are natural and organic. We developed three key attributes (Natural, Pure & Sporty) and created mood boards to capture the company’s spirit. Given that Pumperlgsund sells high quality organic food, we decided on green and white to highlight the premium and organic contents. The colour green also elicits the idea of something that is healthy, alive and good.
On the website, we animated the logo, so that it morphs into logo variants for a subtle mouse-over effect, underlining the sense of being alive and in motion that Pumperlgsund stands for.
The font featured smooth shapes, chosen to compliment the organic feel in the logo and imagery.
We used a narrow and tall sans-serif for the grey headlines. The dense, straight look was chosen to contrast with the plump shapes in the logo, and the smooth text font.
Packaging: The Bottle
We faced many questions when on the search for the perfect packaging: What is the perfect bottle shape? Glass or plastic? Transparent or opaque? What kind of cap should we use?
We studied 30 to 40 bottle shapes, testing for qualities like: the ease of pouring (how foamy does the bottle make the protein, how fast does the liquid pour?), robustness, and whether it was possible for the bottle to visually represent the product.
After many tests, we carried out user interviews to figure out what shape to use. We wanted the consumer to understand immediately the contents of the bottle, and so looked for a shape that suggested the roundness of an egg. It turned out that the most “egg-shaped” bottle was also the favourite with our interviewees.
We included an image that emphasised the texture of an egg shell, and decided to paint the bottle white in order to hide the rather unsavoury look of egg white. However, we chose to maintain some translucency to show the fill-level and texture of the contents. We also opted for a print-on label instead of a sticker.
The Website
Together with the animated logo, we created realtime liquid and glass distortion effects to explain the product, its value and how to use egg whites in a concise and attractive way.
We also built a complex library of recipes based on egg whites, filled with mouth-watering images and an intuitive structure.
Development
The fully responsive website was built on Django CMS. We used WebGL (hardware-accelerated 3D graphics) for realtime renderings to tell the story in a unique way, and utilised parallax scrolling to build a seamless narrative.
Lessons
MING Labs’ Chief Creative Officer, Marc Seefelder, highlighted the importance of a strong team and a great client as key to creating the right conditions for Pumperlgsund’s success.
“With full control over all work streams, and having the best possible team for every stage of the product development, we were able to make zero compromises,” he said. “We worked with founders who trusted us as a partner, and that leads to great results.”
Being able to build the product from scratch, and from start to finish was the secret behind achieving a cohesive brand and product that continues to delight a growing pool of consumers today. Our mantra, “From Founders for Founders”, means that we help our partners avoid costly mistakes when it comes to design and development, so that they can focus on bringing their product to market.
Together with our experience in building and launching over 100 digital products in our 6-year history, we enable business founders to become successful entrepreneurs in a digital world.
Awards and Results
Pumperlgsund has won awards for both its packaging and digital experience design:
Awards and Mentions — Website
- Awwwards: Site of the Day on April 23, 2016
- CSS Winner: Site of the Day on June 16, 2016
- The Lovie Awards: Silver Winner 2016 in category ‘Food & Beverage’
- Webby Awards: 2016 Honoree in category ‘Food & Drink’
Awards and Mentions — Bottle
- Red Dot Award 2016: Winner 2016 in category ‘Communication Design — Packaging Design’
General
- Winning contestant in “Die Höhle der Löwen” (“Shark Tank”)
The Team Behind Pumperlgsund
- Jan Göktekin & Fabian König, Pumperlgsund GmbH, Founders
- Marc Seefelder, CCO MING Labs, Creative Supervisor
- Matthias Roebel, CEO MING Labs, Strategy Advisor
- Sergey Skip, previously Design Lead at MING Labs
- Christoph Gromer, MING Labs, Interaction Designer
- Gerhard Seitzer, Designer (Packaging)
- Pavel Zyr, Pavel Zyr, Developer (Landing page development and special effects)
- Martin Balfanz, MING Labs, CTO
- Biliana Valeva, MING Labs, Developer/Senior Software Engineer
- Henning Mueller-Dannhausen, Copywriter
- Kristina Wuerz, MING Labs, Copywriter
- Stefan Hoermann, MING Labs, Project Manager
MING Labs is a leading digital business builder located in Berlin, Munich, New York City, Shanghai and Singapore. We guide clients in designing their businesses for the future, ensuring they are leaders in the field of innovation.
Liked this story, and curious to know more? Start a conversation with us on twitter, or drop us a note at hello@minglabs.com.
Read on about our mission to be an end-to-end partner to dedicated and brilliant founders:
