Ainoa Vitamins

Pharmacies are full of different vitamin products. Consumers have difficulties in telling brands apart. How to advertise a challenger brand in a way that is not only distinctive, but leads directly to sales?

Duran Creative’s commercially creative thinking helped Finnish vitamin brand Ainoa to discover that sometimes ‘Keep it simple’ is the most effective way to advertise.

The Ainoa vitamin product family wants to stand out from competitors with its all-natural ingredients, Finnish origin, and black-and-white packaging that bring to mind Finnish birch woods.

Previous advertising campaigns by the brand on TV, social media and in print relied strongly on emotion and atmosphere. The adverts were stylish and high quality, but the actual product was in a minor role.

Duran Creative’s proposal for a new advertising concept was to cut all unnecessary complications and communicate in a much simpler, more direct style. Together with Ainoa, we decided to highlight the black-and-white colour scheme and the natural ingredients. As a result, the new advertising concept was titled The world’s not black and white – but the Ainoa vitamin is.

The concept places the distinctively black-and-white Ainoa packages in the middle of colourful Finnish nature. Around the vitamin containers, the seasons change and an ASMR-style elegant voiceover creates an impressive mood.

Because we keep the product in shot during the entire TV ad or Instagram Story, it’s not possible for the audience to confuse an Ainoa vitamin ad with a lifestyle magazine’s or a yoghurt’s brand messaging.

Utilising this simple concept, we created a multichannel advertising campaign that included video, still images and social media content. The campaign was premiered on TV, in on-demand streaming, and on social media in early 2022.

The concept was successful in simplifying Ainoa’s product benefits and building the brand in the right way for the right audiences.

On TV and streaming, the first outing for the campaign was during the last two weeks of February. The graph below illustrates how Ainoa’s retail sales increased considerably in late February / early March.

What’s more, the sales remained elevated during the summer season, a time that is generally pretty slow for vitamin products.

Ainoa continued with the same concept later in 2022 and expanded it from TV, social, and print ads to also product placement content on television.