ABC to design a simple & meaningful product

Recall last time you walked into a pharmacy.

Pharmacy shelves are full of confusingly packaged products that are often hard to prounouce and covered with obscure medical jargons. This overwhelms consumers and eventually may lead to a dosage or dangerous intake of wrong drugs.

Doesn’t this sound like product shelves of financial services?

Credit cards with so many irrelevant features or investment products that have a complex structure that is hard to comprehend… and what about insurance products that are explained with full of industry jargons.

Now, look at Help Remedies

– a simple health care product brand based in New York. How do these drug boxes make you feel?

They are calming and friendly.
It feels as if each box has a little person in it who talks to you and offers you help.
Help Remedies was launched in 2008 to cut through the confusion by offering single-ingredient drugs in low doses, with clear, symptomatic titles, such as “Help: I Have a Stuffy Nose” or “Help: I Have a Headache”. It soon became a case study in the triumph of branding.

To me Help Remedies showcases more than an example of great branding. It’s the mindset and a clear business priority in making a simple and meaningful product for consumers.

What did Help Remedies do right?

Attunement:
Help Remedies is taking the perspective of consumers who suffer from those symptions. The way they design product names is very empathetic. Their tone of voice is of someone who cares.

Buoyancy
Being sick definitely is not a pleasant thing, but Help Remedies conveys a sense of wellbeing and even a cheerful outlook. They design this sunniness through humour in product naming, copy writing and bright packaging design.

Clarity
Help Remedies stands out among other murky health care products, that mainly tell you about the effects or ingredients of the medicine. At a glance, consumers just get what Help Remedies product is about. It is because the products  address the basic symptoms of consumers, and they use the everyday language that consumers understand. This gives assurance and confidence in choosing the right product.

Banks, look at your product shelves in the eye of a customer.

Are the products attuned to customers’ functional as well as emotional needs?
Are you communicating with a sense of optimism through simple writing and effective visual design?
Are you transparent and able to help customers make a confident decision?
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Embed ABC* (Attunement, Buoyancy, Clarity) in designing and communicating a financial product.

*The new ABC is from Dan’s pink’s great book ‘To sell is human’. He suggests this new ABC of selling, compared to the old ABC (Always Be Closing). A highly recommendable reading!