Once syn­ony­mous with being healthy and whole­some, the Whole Foods brand has become inad­ver­tent­ly embroiled with a per­cep­tion of being expen­sive (seem­ing­ly unable to shake off the “whole pay­check” nick­name), and per­haps even more detri­men­tal to the brand, have devel­oped a rep­u­ta­tion for “quack­ery” or pseu­do­science around healthy eat­ing – per­ceived snake-oil sales­men for so-called super-foods and pricey pro­bi­otics. The com­pa­ny’s new brand­ing ini­tia­tive looks to reclaim its iden­ti­ty.

Whole Foods has been strug­gling with a brand­ing prob­lem for the past few years. With­out a doubt, it has been a dif­fi­cult few years for the retail­er.

The effect of the reces­sion on con­sumer food bud­gets, com­bined with the fact that com­peti­tors such as Wal­mart have been grad­u­al­ly increas­ing their organ­ic and eth­i­cal food offer­ings, has con­tributed to the brand’s trou­bled growth. Their stock lost more than 43 per­cent of its val­ue in one year, declin­ing from a high of $65.24 per share in Octo­ber 2013 to just $39.94 per share for the same 2014 trad­ing week.

A Problem of Perception

The issue for Whole Foods: the com­pa­ny has­n’t been in com­mand of neg­a­tive influ­ences that impact their brand. While all brands suf­fer from con­flict­ing mes­sages to an extent, Whole Foods has­n’t coun­ter­act­ed these with a uni­fied mar­ket­ing strat­e­gy that affirms their val­ue propo­si­tion.

For this rea­son, Whole Foods has announced their inten­tion to deliv­er a nation­al brand­ing cam­paign to restore cus­tomer faith in the com­pa­ny’s core brand val­ues, par­tic­u­lar­ly in regard to qual­i­ty and ethics.

Led by a series of dig­i­tal video spots under the col­lec­tive moniker “Val­ue Mat­ters,” the con­tent pro­motes qual­i­ty, and eth­i­cal farm­ing as two of the key val­ues of the brand.

It rep­re­sents a seri­ous com­mit­ment to brand­ing from the gro­cery retail­er. The New York Times reports that the bud­get is esti­mat­ed to be between $15 mil­lion and $20 mil­lion, rep­re­sent­ing up to four times the brands mar­ket­ing bud­get in pre­vi­ous years.

Jean­nine D’Ad­dario, Whole Foods glob­al vice pres­i­dent of com­mu­ni­ca­tions, said of the cam­paign:

“Not every­one knows what makes Whole Foods dif­fer­ent from oth­er gro­cers. This cam­paign will dis­tin­guish what makes our brand spe­cial, our food dif­fer­ent, and our qual­i­ty supe­ri­or.”

It’s a short­fall that has per­haps been caused by a lack of rein­force­ment of the brand’s iden­ti­ty. Pre­vi­ous years’ mar­ket­ing efforts were pri­mar­i­ly focused on local and region­al mar­kets, and often took a posi­tion that could be seen to be fight­ing against the cur­rent. For exam­ple, in many cas­es cam­paigns pro­mot­ed prod­ucts such as the 365 Every­day Val­ue line of prod­ucts espous­ing low prices. Arguably this has nev­er real­ly been a sig­nif­i­cant part of Whole Foods’ val­ue propo­si­tion.

Value Matters (More Than Price)

‘Val­ue Mat­ters’ direct­ly address­es the major con­cerns that have afflict­ed the Whole Foods’ brand. Essen­tial­ly, the neg­a­tive mes­sag­ing sum­ma­rized by “whole pay­check” under­mines the Whole Foods val­ue propo­si­tion, how­ev­er as this cam­paign right­ly puts forth, val­ue isn’t linked sole­ly to low price.

From a copy­writ­ing per­spec­tive, it’s cer­tain­ly a neat turn of phras­ing, sin­gle­hand­ed­ly rebuff­ing a per­cep­tion for being over­priced, and rein­forc­ing the brand’s healthy image and rep­u­ta­tion for qual­i­ty pro­duce. In a sense it reclaims the brand’s mar­ket­ing iden­ti­ty — a mes­sage that ulti­mate­ly it’s qual­i­ty and val­ue that mat­ters, and it’s worth pay­ing a lit­tle more for.

It remains to be seen whether the nation­al brand­ing ini­tia­tive will win back sen­ti­ment among con­sumers. How­ev­er, the direct­ness and intent of the brand’s mes­sag­ing is cer­tain­ly there.

As John Mack­ey, Co-CEO of Whole Foods Mar­ket explained to investors ear­li­er in July:

“We’re try­ing to adver­tise who we are. We’re try­ing to change what we think is a neg­a­tive nar­ra­tive about our com­pa­ny. What remains to be seen is whether that will be enough to win frus­trat­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned cus­tomers over again.”

Inter­est­ing­ly, the cam­paign then seems to be posi­tioned not to win new mar­ket share, but to win back that which has recent­ly been lost. Will this exten­sive exer­cise in brand­ing make the nec­es­sary dif­fer­ence for con­sumers to return to Whole Food stores?

Do you think Whole Foods’ rebrand­ing will change neg­a­tive sen­ti­ment among con­sumers? Leave your thoughts in the com­ments.