How Ritual differentiated itself by promoting practices over product perks

The supplement market is pretty saturated. There are about 450 major supplement companies in the U.S. alone. Some of the products these companies make are as common as Vitamin D. Others are as unconventional as ox bile (yep, it’s a thing). 

To stand out among the rather large supplement crowd, you need a damn good differentiator and you need to tell people about it. And that’s what Ritual aimed for with its first brand awareness campaign. 

This week, Case Studied examines how Ritual set itself apart in the supplement world by promoting its product practices, not its benefits.

The Brief:

Shopping for supplements can be a confusing process. You have to be mindful about absorption and which ones can be taken together. Different doctors suggest different supplements, while the Internet tells you to take pretty much all of them.  To add to it, supplements don’t require reviews for safety or effectiveness from the Food and Drug Administration. 

That was part of the challenge Ritual founder Katerina Schneider faced when she was pregnant for the first time. Schneider couldn’t find a clean, science-backed, vegan-certified prenatal vitamin that she could get behind. So she decided to create one herself.  

Eight years after its founding, this “why” turned into the focal point of Ritual’s first brand awareness campaign.

The Execution:

Every ad you’ve seen for supplements probably promotes the health benefits of the product and talks about what it will do for your body. But Ritual took a different route. 

Done in partnership with agency Giant Spoon, its brand awareness campaign ads didn’t mention the products by name or mention any specific health benefits. Instead, it focused on the brand’s commitment to traceability. 

The tagline was “Trace like a Motherf*cker”—a play on the brand’s founder and the ability for its customers to track where the ingredients come from + why they’re there. 

The main ad was a :45 second film directed by Sundance-winning director Kate Jean Hollowell. It features a mom (sometimes with coarse language) talking about how important it is for her to know what ingredients she’s putting into her body. The vibe of the film leans bold and unabashed—at one point, the actor says, “Yeah, I take my sweet time researching. Because if it’s not the best, it doesn’t go in this rockin’ hot bod.” 

“Ritual asked for ‘punk rock’, so from the start, this was an exercise in defying convention,” said Giant Spoon Creative Director Olivia-Jené Fagon. “Portraying a multifaceted millennial woman—badass, charismatic, and warm—without tired mom cliches was key. Vitamin ads also tend to be dull and functional so comedy was our unexpected ace, but we didn’t sacrifice visual quality. We created a world of elevated realism for our mom that still packs a punch.” 

Ritual ran a variety of :10 and :15 second cut downs of the film on streaming and social platforms. On top of that, they ran out-of-home (OOH) ads with the campaign tagline in Los Angeles and Dallas (two areas that over-index with Rituals’ audience). 

The Results:

This campaign is fresher than the vitamin bottle in the back of your medicine closet—it only launched a few weeks ago so we don’t have a grocery list of achievements quite yet, but their has been incredible buzz around the campaign with plenty of earned media already won.

What we can say is that Ritual set itself apart in the wellness space with its approach and tone in the Trace like a Motherf*cker campaign. And after facing backlash in 2018 for its sponsored content, the company may still be hoping to gain or regain consumer trust. Leaning into the transparency and traceability of its products seems like a smart way to do that.

The Takeaways:

Finding ways to stand out ain’t easy, especially in crowded markets. Here’s are a few takeaways from Ritual’s approach:

1. Learn why customers aren’t buying

Ritual understood that not knowing where ingredients come from is a barrier for supplement customers. And they turned that barrier into an opportunity. 

Make sure you know why people do and don’t buy your product. Some of the reasons will be out of your control. But you might be able to take a reasons people say no and turn it into a reason they say yes.

2. Leave boring to the competition

It is hard to get excited about vitamins, Ritual understands that. So when it came time to develop a big campaign, fortunately they chose edginess over the same mundane messaging that gets played on repeat in it’s category.

If you want to disrupt a crowded market, you need to take risks and differentiate from the competition at every possible opportunity.