How Halo Top’s strategy scooped them a cool $1 Billion
How Halo Top’s strategy scooped them a cool $1 Billion
Brand success is about winning across the four Ps of marketing: Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. Halo Top Creamery's stunning rise from selling 100,000 pints to 25 million in just one year is a textbook example of how a smart, strategic redesign can revolutionize a brand's fortunes. Want to know how they did it? Let’s dive in
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Fluent Innovation
System1’s founder John Kearon has spent three decades traveling the world, sharing the importance of "fluent innovation"—finding the right balance between familiarity and novelty. Halo Top's redesign achieved exactly that. The new packaging was instantly recognizable as a luxury ice cream brand, while also delivering a fresh twist: indulgence without the calories.
This enabled consumers to immediately understand the product offering—luxury ice cream that doesn’t break the calorie bank. This balance of the familiar and the new helped make Halo Top an easy and appealing choice for health-conscious ice cream lovers.
Keep It Simple, Stupid
We know from Daniel Kahenman’s seminal book ‘Thinking Fast & Slow that humans have two types of thinking, system1 (fast, emotional) and system2 (slow, rational). Further, he goes to show the former is the more common and effective thinking to appeal too.
Halo Top’s redesign managed to appeal to this side of the brain by simplifying its messaging. Previously, they had a cluttered design with too many competing messages. They boiled it down from 10 different claims to just four, focusing on what really mattered: great taste, low calories, and guilt-free indulgence.
This simplicity made the decision-making process effortless for shoppers. They didn't need to overthink whether Halo Top was a good choice; the packaging spoke clearly and directly to their needs. The result was a faster, easier decision at the shelf and more pints in shoppers' carts.
Simplifying Consumption
One of Halo Top’s key innovations was their shift from complex calorie-per-serving labeling to a much simpler "240 calories per pint." This subtle change encouraged customers to eat the entire pint guilt-free, reinforcing Halo Top as a treat that could be consumed regularly without remorse.
This hack not only made customers feel good about their choice but also encouraged repeat purchases. With guilt-free indulgence baked into the product experience, Halo Top’s sales velocity increased as customers bought more tubs sooner than they otherwise might have.
Reciprocity – Give and You Shall Receive
Once the packaging was doing the heavy lifting in attracting customers, Halo Top could invest in another powerful tool: free samples. By giving away product samples, they activated the principle of reciprocity—when you give something for free, people feel compelled to give back. In this case, that "give-back" was purchasing the product and spreading the word.
Word-of-mouth and sampling campaigns, like the ones Halo Top employed, are often behind some of the biggest brand transformations. Just look at the meteoric rise of Aperol following its aggressive free-sample strategy.
Summary
Halo Top’s clever redesign didn’t just sell more ice cream—it transformed their entire business. They ultimately sold the brand for a rumored $1 billion, marking one of the most successful brand turnarounds in recent history.