Communication strategy: «UNusual» yogurt
Table of Contents
- Communication Theory in Design - Presentation for a General Audience - Presentation for a Professional Audience - How Communication Theory Informed the Project - References
Communication Theory in Design
Communication theory is a discipline that systematizes and conceptualizes the processes we use on a daily basis. The classification and naming of these processes make it possible to acknowledge their existence, describe the mechanisms of their operation, and ensure the appropriate use of verbal and non-verbal signals in interpersonal communication, digital environments, and visual contexts. It is also connected to the construction of narratives, and even to the philosophy of ideas, that is, to the development of what can be described as a theory of abstract understanding of communication processes. A particularly important role is played by alignment with the values of the target audience or with current social media trends, which enables a product to gain mass appeal and become a cultural phenomenon.
Thus, design is revealed from a fundamentally new perspective that is often overlooked: it becomes not only a visual and aesthetic construct, but also a means of communication with the audience. Through narrative, color, form, and concept, specific meanings are transmitted. Even details that may seem insignificant at first glance can function as part of the design task through framing, as viewers interpret them through their own experience, values, and cultural background. The logic of sociocultural and semiotic communication can explain this.
LOGO
In addition, within the framework of the course, the importance of a slogan and an overall advertising strategy becomes evident. This is especially relevant when brands collaborate with the most relevant influencers whose values align with those of the brand and who are capable of effectively presenting the product to their audience. This approach corresponds to the Liking principle — «people prefer to agree with those they like.»
The development of a multichannel presence, ranging from a brand blog on YouTube to active engagement on TikTok, aligns with the orientation of digital rhetoric toward continuous, everyday interaction with the audience. It is particularly important to provide a substantial amount of information about the brand so that the viewer becomes emotionally involved, encouraging the audience to engage in the central route of information processing, thus making communication meaningful, well-argued, and personalized.
Finally, the creation of online communities ensures not one-way broadcasting, but genuine two-way communication and sustained public discussion. This contributes to the formation of an active, loyal, and consistently committed brand audience. Brands need to remain accessible, positive, open, and sincere — these are key conditions for building effective strategic public relations and long-term relationships with the public.
Presentation for a General Audience
About the Brand
The fermented dairy brand «UNusual yogurt» is created for the whole family. It is made from natural ingredients, enriched with beneficial vitamins, and suitable for consumption at any time of day — light, yet nourishing.
Yogurt product
Target Audience
As a result of an interpretive analysis, we identified three key audience groups: latent, aware, and active audiences.
Latent Audience - Children do not consciously think about their diet, but constantly need snacks during the school day. Their attention is drawn to unusual flavors and bright, dynamic communication.
Aware Audience - Students experience difficulties in forming stable eating habits due to academic workload and irregular daily schedules.
Active Audience - Healthy lifestyle (HLS) enthusiasts — the most valuable audience for functional and healthy yogurts. They systematically research the market, look for higher-quality alternatives, actively share their findings, and shape consumer demand. - Working mothers — they care about the health of the entire family and choose balanced, safe, and time-efficient products. They are responsible for household purchases, monitor the market, and are also inclined to share recommendations.
Understanding the audience structure allows us to build communication strategies that resonate with the values of each segment and foster long-term brand loyalty.
Audience: Children / Students
Audience: Healthy lifestyle enthusiasts / Working mothers
Brand Values - Natural ingredients and clean composition - Care for the health of the whole family - Honesty and transparency in production - Support for local farmers - Consistent quality and taste
By applying sociocultural theory, we select brand values that align with the priorities of our target audience and reflect their expectations regarding nutrition and food choices.
Yogurt’s vitamins
Presentation for a professional audience
Brand platform
Positioning: A family-oriented yogurt brand based on natural ingredients, enriched with vitamins, light yet nutritious.
Local Mission: To provide fresh, high-quality, and beneficial fermented yogurt produce for the whole family, while supporting local producers and fostering a culture of conscious nutrition within the country.
Global Mission: To promote the concept of healthy eating and a natural lifestyle, making nutritious products accessible to people of all ages and dietary habits worldwide.
Brand Character: Friendly, sincere, modern, playful
Visual communication
Applying semiotic tradition from Craig’s model, our design communicates through a systematic use of signs and symbols.
We use pink color palette, which conveys two messages to customers: - Unusualness Our team conducted a competitor research, which revealed that some of the most popular colors of fermented milk products are green, white, and blue, which is why pink makes a visual departure from other brands. - Purity, tenderness and care This positive emotions create a series of associations in the minds of buyers.
Color palette
Сharacters are also the basis of the brand’s visuals, they create a coherent story that sets us apart from our competitors. The «Male yogurt maker & Cat» pair is created to replace worn-out «farm» imagery. It aims to boost credibility, add depth to the narrative of brand, ensure unique appeal, and encourage two-way dialogue.
The Man’s visual round forms are semiotically interpreted as conveying comfort, a non-aggressive nature, and softness. The Cat creates a feeling domestic warmth. Together this duo creates a narrative tension and completeness: the Man produces yogurt, while the Cat gives silent approval of the produce. It conveys two messages to customers: - a cat (comfort) is a direct visualization of our consumers and the emotional benefit they get: «A sense of trust and warmth from the brand» - a man (creator) serves as a visual metaphor for our promise: «What you see is what you get»
Posters example
Our approach involves creating tailored persuasive messages for different audiences by using - ethos (to build trust): laboratory testing of products in the public domain - pathos (to connect emotionally): the «Man & Cat» — a pair of mascots, around which a coherent story is built, encouraging consumers to connect with the brand - logos (to present factual arguments): 100% consistency of composition and ingredients of our produce, always fresh ingredients
Persuasion strategy
The mission of Unusual Yogurt is to redefine perceptions of balanced nutrition. We aim to persuade consumers that when faced with a choice between a cinnamon roll and our yogurt, they will opt for the yogurt because it is demonstrably more beneficial and nourishing. This, of course, is only possible through a high-quality composition and abundant beneficial micronutrients, both of which our product provides.
We use the Elaboration Likelihood Model by targeting both thoughtful analysis (central route) and quick cues (peripheral route) to encourage people to purchase our product.
(1) Peripheral Route: We intend to build communication with our brand’s audience based on trust and honesty. Therefore, peripheral route shortcuts such as Scarcity («Quick, before they’re all gone!») and Social Proof («Everybody’s doing it!») are unsuitable.
Instead, we can leverage the active engagement of family influencers on social media. This will create a direct association between our yogurt and the influencer’s lifestyle. By aspiring to emulate the influencer, the consumer will then choose our product.
(2) Central Route: The compelling narrative underpinning Unusual Yogurt allows us to gradually establish strong relationships between our audience and our brand.
Using digital rhetoric, we actively promote the Unusual Yogurt brand across various media and social platforms. This ensures everyone can access and engage with our message through the format most natural to them.
Through social media, we engage various communication modes, adapting them to the unique characteristics of each platform. This strategic approach allows us to convey a singular brand story to our audience in a non-trivial and impactful way.
On TikTok, our content primarily utilizes pathos (emotional persuasion) through humor and an entertaining format. The communication style here is fast-paced, dynamic, and designed to engage audiences via trending topics and challenges.
Example of brand’s content from TikTok
For Instagram (an extremist organization, banned in Russia), our content shifts towards logos (rational persuasion) and ethos (brand authority), delivered through more serious, high-quality material. The presentation style is highly visual, aesthetically pleasing, and focused on building loyalty.
Our brand also maintains a dedicated website, which serves as the focal point for logos and practical utility. The messaging here is informational, beneficial, and aimed at deepening customer relationships. The website functions as a primary resource for reliable information. In addition to current updates on brand innovations, the site also features a page with various recipes using our yogurts, as well as nutritional advice specifically tailored for families.
How Communication Theory Informed the Project
USE OF CRAIG’S TRADITIONS
Cybernetics — Creating bright, memorable advertising images, mascots. Usage of storytelling in advertising. Working out the strategies of social networks adjusted to each company.
Socio-psychological — The main theory that we used. Tracking people’s reaction to our brand and advertising, perception of us as a brand. Systematization, identification of the key audience.
Sociocultural— the context in which our Brand exists. Public opinion about our brand, comparison with other competing brands, and sources of similar emotions.
Critical — building your own brand ideology. Transmitting a message that benefits the brand and subsequently influences people.
Semiotic — building communication with the public through mascots and images.
Our task as a group was to develop a successful brand based on the communication theory from the course.
Following the multiple examples from the lecture about how anything can be sold, we chose a simple and straightforward product for our brand.
«UNusual» yogurt
Research stage The first stage of developing a brand. We determine WHAT we sell and WHO we sell to?
In this research we used the interpretive theory of information collection. This is a qualitative methodology of collecting information aimed at understanding the views of all the respondents. Such research helps to know the audience and its needs exactly, and also creates an opportunity for future two-way interaction between the company and the audience.
The result of the research, context: In modern world there’s an ideology being build around nutrition and heath food. Brands strive for a pure components and the use of farm-fresh ingredients. However, there are people, who feel stressed around the food cult and they don’t have the opportunity to build proper eating habits. Yogurt is considered a children’s food or a quick snack. As a product, it does not attract enough attention from customers. For a long time, yogurt brands have lacked a vibrant and memorable image. Our goal was to use theory to change people’s perception of yogurt by creating a brand identity.
Shelves with products
(1) The product must meet the needs of the market, ensure accessibility, and break down barriers for the hesitant part of the audience. The product must align with people’s perceptions and expectations.
Application in the brand: Our yogurt is still positioned as a snack or an addition to a full meal, but it is more nutritious, diverse, and unique. This aligns with customers' expectations while capturing their attention.
To ensure modern context, our yogurt uses only natural, farm-fresh ingredients. Our product is being sold in stores and supermarkets, as well as market places and delivery services. Providing an opportunity to buy a large amount of yogurt in a favorable set.
(2)In order to maintain sales, a community must be built around the brand. The brand must convey its own ideology that benefits them, thereby changing people’s perception in a favorable way.
Application in the brand: «Unusual Yogurt» conveys the idea that yogurt is more than just a snack. To demonstrate this clearly, our brand has opened a coffee shop with various types of desserts, where yogurt is the main ingredient. This approach attracts the attention of the target audience, as it appeals to children, families, and students who often meet over coffee.
Customer loyalty is built on the feeling of participation. The brand ensures the preservation of uniqueness through a large selection of flavors, that update with a stable frequency, and also the possibility of customization.
«UNusual» cafe and products there
(3)Using the Theory of Excellence. Using two-way symmetrical communication. Being open to dialogue and ready to make changes as a brand, and being able to admit and correct your own mistakes.
Application in the brand: The brand monitors feedback from the public. We provide 24/7 assistance through online chat and phone calls. Also we maintain active online, managing various social media platforms, monitoring comments, mentions, and similar information sources. .
(4) Narrative paradigm of perception. Using Storytelling.
Application in the brand: A magical story was built around the brand, representing the characters who became the brand’s mascots. This affects the non-verbal part of communication. Fantasy triggers group thinking and creates a shared reality between the brand and the audience.
Brand merch
Mascots in brand space
(5) Using peripheral reduction.
Application in the brand: People see a large amount of information without paying attention to it. Only a small part will be remembered or interesting.
To overcome this barrier, «Unusual Yogurt» uses contrast. The consumer is immersed in the problems of building a healthy diet, the need to spend time preparing food, and then receives the easiest, fastest, and simplest solution in the form of our brand’s yogurt.
It also involves attracting family-oriented and successful influencers who are associated with health, success, and happiness. This technique helps to associate the image of a popular influencer with our brand and reinforce similar characteristics.
(6) Digital and media communications. The use of social networks. Adapting strategies to the paradigm of applications and users.
Application in the brand: Building communication strategies through social networks requires an understanding of the platform’s operation, as well as it’s users.
For example, the «Unusual yogurt» account on the social network TikTok is aimed at a younger audience, such as school and university students. It features funny videos and animations. On Rutube, we also post cooking videos with recipes of dishes or desserts that can be made with our products, which will appeal to a more mature audience of moms and healthy lifestyle enthusiasts.
The cooking recipes are also duplicated on our website to encourage repeat visits and accommodate those who prefer written recipes.
The website is designed with a three-click approach, ensuring that users can find any needed information in three clicks. This is achieved through a clear hierarchy.
In the creation of content we use agenda-setting, framing. The brand highlights profitable topics, uses a framed presentation, and emphasizes the importance of the content.
All content is united by the preservation and use of our brand colors, creating bright accents and loud statements. The information fits into the viewer’s environment, avoiding any conflict between design, brand, and our statements.
«UNusual» social network
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