How Playbook Studio Helped ~Pourri Bust Out of the Bathroom to Take On the World’s Funkiest Odors

Founder Suzy Batiz’s idea for the iconic “before-you-go” natural toilet spray known as Poo~Pourri was born in 2006 at an all-too-intimate dinner party with multiple decadent courses, and only one bathroom. With its ability to trap unpleasant odors under the water’s surface, it wasn’t long before the product became a sensation on the shelves of over 50,000 retail locations and a household staple. However, despite millions of dollars in organic sales, Poo~Pourri began to stray from its unique voice and image, and like so many consumer-facing brands, was negatively affected by the 2020 pandemic. With the goals of redefining its visual and verbal identity and potentially scaling to new markets in mind, Poo~Pourri turned to Playbook Studio, a specialist in helping brands express themselves powerfully and authentically. Over the course of 2021, Founder/CEO Graceann Bennett, a master brand strategist, working with Poo~Pourri’s founder and internal team of creatives, designers, and content creators, would help right the ship, allowing Poo~Pourri to rediscover its roots and align on a unified vision for expansion, in and outside of the bathroom.

Why brands that experience rapid organic growth can still struggle to scale

The reason Poo~Pourri eventually struggled was not due to the product, but ironically, because of its explosive growth right out of the gate. With such strong and rapid word-of-mouth marketing to bolster sales, there were never any guidelines put in place for how to articulate and present the brand to the world. Ultimately, this meant the brand’s DNA was locked up in the minds of Batiz and a few heritage team members, leaving new hires to fill in the gaps as best as they could and resulting in disjointed brand messaging that hindered any real possibility of successful growth or expansion.

The chaos and confusion of the pandemic only magnified these issues. Poo~Pourri needed concrete, actionable brand guidelines to restore its foundation and crystalize the brand’s messaging in a clear and compelling way. The solution was to recruit Playbook Studio, which turns strategies into tight execution action plans, or “playbooks,” in which roles, responsibilities, and intended impact are clearly spelled out to inspire, inform, and direct.

How Playbook Studio drove significant increases in the brand and shareholder value of Poo~Pourri

Central to getting Poo~Pourri back on track was Graceann, who for decades has shaped brands for major global ad agencies. Throughout the project, she embedded herself into Poo~Pourri by working with its team onsite for two weeks out of each month. She analyzed all facets of the company, including operations, R&D, sales, marketing, digital, and design. Her team also conducted 10+ stakeholder interviews, a competitive audit, archetypal analysis, and audience discovery. This key information would allow Playbook Studio to align Poo~Pourri’s internal and external resources and set the brand up for a bright future.

“The biggest question, of course, was how Poo~Pourri should scale in the most authentic way,” says Graceann. “To help answer that, we did deep work to discover what is core and central to the brand, regardless of the odor it is tackling. A lot of the brand expansion exploration prior to that had been focused around the superficial aspects of new graphics and designs, which left decisions up to subjective opinions with no way to evaluate whether something was on-brand or not.”

How Playbook Studio helped Poo~Pourri drop the “Poo”

Beyond working with the founder and internal creative teams, Playbook Studio conducted consumer research that consisted of quantitative studies, surveys, and online focus groups, which revealed the core customers of Poo~Pourri: The Keep-It-Togethers, aka, KITs. Simply put, they are naturally social people who care about keeping embarrassing odors away. On the outside, they may look perfect, but like everyone else, they want to let it all out; they just don’t want the world to know about it.

“Our global research and testing all pointed to expansion into other categories. Poo~Pourri was definitely ready to bust out of the bathroom,” Graceann recalls. “So, they dumped the ‘Poo’ and became ~Pourri. That key decision empowered them to penetrate multiple product categories and reach an even wider consumer base.”

With this vision in mind, Playbook Studio leveraged the insights from its archetypal analysis to develop ~Pourri’s voice through the lens of the Jester, which speaks to our emotional need for levity, connection, and reprieve from life’s pressures and heaviness. The brand’s verbal identity was also distilled down to three words: liberating, cheeky, and natural. Graceann and her team helped ~Pourri define itself even further by detailing that it breaks free of social taboos, conformity, and convention, empowering its customers to show up as they are.

“That kind of insight is crucial for any company’s growth, but it cannot remain locked in the minds of its leadership,” says Graceann. “So, already the brand was going in the right direction. Everyone at the company, no matter their role, was now going to understand who ~Pourri is, what it stands for, and why it exists.”

All that was left to tackle was a new and improved look for ~Pourri – one that would match its vibrant and witty personality. Graceann and her team collaborated with ~Pourri’s internal design team to update the brand’s visual elements, including logos, typeface, color palette, illustration guidelines, and iconography. The hand-drawn illustrations on ~Pourri’s packaging were inspired by vintage French perfume bottles, communicating luxury, value, and playfulness.

After one year of close collaboration with Playbook Studio, ~Pourri was reborn. Empowered by a cohesive image and engaging brand experience, it has since launched Pit~Pourri, Sole~Pourri, Home~Pourri, and more.

Suzy Batiz, Founder of ~Pourri, states, “Graceann was a great partner who came in and [helped] set up our brand and business for meaningful expansion and growth. She helped us get back to [the] true essence of our brand so we could authentically scale. She not only helped guide our brand, but she was my partner in getting clarity by creating a business dashboard and driving new systems and structures of accountability for my leadership team. Graceann’s contributions and playbook [are] still paying dividends today long after her year working intimately on and in our business.”

What business owners can learn from the transformation of Poo~Pourri

“You can’t scale if you don’t have an incredible product, but it has to be backed by meticulously crafted messaging that everyone in your company has access to,” Graceann advises. “That messaging, in turn, must be supported by extensive research into your ideal customers. When you have all of that, then you can create the right strategies for growing your brand and becoming the success story you have always dreamed of. It all starts with knowing exactly who you are and flows from there.”

About Playbook Studio:

Playbook Studio is an award-winning branding consultancy led by master brand strategist Graceann Bennett. Graceann has over 30 years of experience leading strategy for four global advertising agencies shaping some of the world’s most famous brands. 

Playbook Studio works with CEOs and CMOs to increase the value of their brand, support marketing efforts, and drive company culture and business decisions by helping them define and express their most powerful, authentic self. Its teams uplevel the way brands show up visually and verbally by delivering strategically sharp, beautifully executed Playbooks that keep client teams aligned, efficient, and effective when expressing their brand across all of their touch points.

For more information about Playbook Studio, please visit playbook.studio or contact:

Graceann Bennett

917-545-5491 

[email protected]