How Gousto evolved its brand to be truly ‘inspirational’

For decades, brand and performance marketing have been uneasy bedfellows. But as most companies embrace the necessity to engage with both disciplines well, there is untapped potential in applying the principles of performance marketing to brand building. 

Here at Attest, we’ve (literally) written the book on how to bridge the divide between performance and brand marketing. In it, we unveil our handy framework, distilled into four stages, to building a true performance brand. We like to call it the ‘growth cycle’ – comprising the distinct areas of ‘learn’, ‘validate’, ‘reach’, and ‘measure’. 

The ‘validate’ stage of the growth cycle

The ‘validate’ stage is the 2nd stage in the growth cycle, following the ‘learn’ stage. Once you’ve gathered data about who you’re marketing to, and segmented them accordingly, it’s time to use that data to start validating your brand-building efforts. 

Whether it’s stress-testing your brand proposition, getting consumer feedback on creatives before a campaign goes live, or validating a hypothesis about some new messaging, the validate stage is all about wielding an experimental approach to stress test marketing work. 

So, how does the validate stage look in action? We asked marketing leaders across a range of industries and compiled their experience into our book – and we’ve pulled one case study for this blog post.

Want to get your hands on the complete book? Download it for free below…

How Gousto evolved its brand to be truly ‘inspirational’

Gousto, as a relatively young recipe box delivery brand, identified quickly that their customers associated the Gousto brand with ‘inspiration’. However, some aspects of the brand experience didn’t match up with that. When Matt Price joined the team, he began an evolution of the Gousto brand – opting to improve upon the things that people loved about Gousto rather than entirely reinventing it. 

Using the key ‘inspiration’ learning as the focus, Gousto began to evolve, experimenting and validating at every step. The aim was the make the brand synonymous with the inspirational edge that was instantly recognisable to their customers, but not yet the world at large. For Gousto, validation was all about bringing all of the elements of the brand together to create one cohesive, inspirational experience in their performance brand marketing. 

First up was packaging testing. For a recipe box delivery brand, the unboxing experience is a pretty crucial component of overall brand satisfaction – and customers weren’t digging it. The packaging was underwhelming and didn’t match up to the ‘inspirational’ label that customers expected from Gousto. So, as a first step in the brand’s evolution, the team overhauled the unboxing experience, validating every iteration, until it resonated exactly as they wanted it to.

But they didn’t stop there. They began to develop hypotheses for how their website, specifically the colour palettes and typefaces, could be improved for their target audience. They tested variations of new logos in different environments, with accessibility front-of-mind. And, in what became a pivotal move, they changed up their photography style to make it more personal and ‘rough and ready’, all in keeping with the theme of ‘inspiration’. 

The result? The Gousto brand saw an increase from 7% brand awareness in the recipe box delivery category, to 24% after just the initial stages of the brand evolution. And that’s the magic of validating as you go.

Gousto aren’t the only brand who’ve used speedy insights to drive business growth. You’ll find even more examples for each stage of the Growth Cycle in our book, The performance brand – get a free copy below…