Rebooting a Brand Through Purpose

Liberation Foods is the UK’s only fair trade, farmer-owned nut company. Established in 2007, the company trades directly with smallholder farmer cooperatives in Bolivia, Nicaragua, Burkina Faso, Malawi and India. 

The diverse Liberation team are fiercely aligned around their passion to ensure that smallholder farming can be a way of life that enables producer communities to thrive. Their majority shareholder – the International Nut Cooperative (INC) – has recently increased its stake in Liberation Foods, giving farmers an even more powerful voice in shaping the direction of the company.

The Challenge

Liberation Foods is at a critical juncture in its existence. “Born good” in 2007, the world has been catching up to where Liberation started – high-quality, nutritious foods that offer a decent living for the communities that grow them are in demand like never before.

Liberation has unique credibility because of its origins and ongoing commitment to those values, but they felt it was time to reboot the brand with a fresh look, greater clarity of purpose and a wider range of consumer-facing products to increase its profile and encourage growth.

They engaged Junxion to help them clarify their purpose, vision and mission and to craft their brand manifesto.

How We Helped

Junxion started by getting to know Liberation Foods. After conducting interviews with the Board, staff and customers, we shared what we learned in an initial insights presentation. 

This laid the groundwork for our TrustBrand process – Junxion’s branding architecture service. We delivered three collaborative workshops to explore the company’s purpose, vision and mission, and value proposition. Our process is carefully designed to ensure that voices across the organization are heard.

We helped them articulate their role by developing and expanding on their mission “to connect consumers with smallholder farming communities through delicious food and drinks”.

Our final deliverable was a brand framework that articulated its purpose, vision and mission, clarified its unique position in the marketplace and included an engaging brand manifesto. It also made suggestions for the next steps including how to develop their value proposition for new products.

Measuring Success

Liberation Foods are happy with the new manifesto. They feel that Junxion has really understood the business, captured their spirit and articulated their purpose in a way that resonated with the team.

The visual identity of the business is currently in development. It will be based on the branding work we carried out and will inform the rest of the brand refresh and development of new products.