Health & Wellness: 3 Ways to Stand Out in Retail
Recently, I went to Target to purchase vitamin D as a girlie who struggles with a vitamin D deficiency. But when I entered the health & wellness section, I was overwhelmed by the large selection. I was contemplating a number of options. Do I go with the classics, Nature Made or Nature’s Bounty? Or the newer, colorful brands like OLLY?
Such a hard choice to make, which got me thinking: How do consumers decide which health & wellness brands to purchase in a retail environment? Bringing me to the topic of this article, where I introduce three important brand identity components health & wellness brands should incorporate to boost purchase intention among consumers in retail stores.
1. Create a Visual Identity that Stands Out
If you look at the shelves in any retail store, you’ll find that a lot of the packaging for health & wellness brands starts to overlap. Some of the color palettes you’ll see are soft neutrals or earthy, nature-inspired tones, while others use a neutral background with a bright, saturated color to draw attention to the product. Many classic brands, like NOW Foods and Life Extension, continue to follow a clean, minimalist approach that creates a calming, clinical aesthetic.
For typography, companies tend to use traditional sans serif typefaces to keep things easy to read and clean while fitting in all the necessary information. But when brands stick to what their competitors are doing, they end up playing it safe, which can make their products feel generic. When everything starts to look the same, the only thing that really stands out is the brand name.
As the market continues to grow, with the global wellness economy expected to reach $9.8 trillion by 2029, brands that are new to the market or have been around for years should remain proactive. In retail, one of the best ways to stand out is to go beyond the standard colors that best fit your brand, challenge traditional typography, and make information easy to digest. By doing so, you can create a visual identity that stands out on the shelf while remaining clear and recognizable to consumers.
2. Back Every Promise With Proof
In recent years, there has been a boom in demand for transparency in health & wellness products when it comes to making claims about detoxing/cleansing your body, preventing bloating, minimizing cravings, and much more. According to a 2025 survey conducted by NielsenIQ, around 62% of Americans found marketing & advertising for dietary supplements to be “skeptical.”
As consumer attitudes have become more careful around what they put into their bodies, brands should show proof through clinical or third-party testing to build trust in these B2C relationships. Incorporating badges on packaging next to marketing claims will show credibility rather than sending a false marketing message.
Making these changes will create better brand awareness, ROI, and stronger relationships, especially when studies show that 85% of consumers are influenced by such claims when purchasing, and over ⅔ of people consider third-party verification a necessary part of supporting a product’s validation. Therefore, backing every promise with proof can be one of the leading factors in being selected over other brands.
3. Sell the Feeling, Not Just the Benefits
The majority of health & wellness brands tend to put the name of the product and brand as the largest text, while everything else goes into small copy. However, by doing so, many of these brands that offer strikingly similar products start to all look identical. As each brand markets using nearly identical claims, it becomes harder to notice what exactly the point of difference (POD) is between competitors.
Therefore, health & wellness brands should stray away from the most common, generic benefits like a boost in energy, promoting calm and mental clarity, detoxing, and more, and shift toward what makes this product truly unique by selling the emotion or experience gained from the product versus the straightforward functional health benefits. In order to achieve a solid POD and stand out on the shelves, change your messaging and sell the feeling, not just the benefits.
Whether you’re launching a health & wellness brand or working toward strengthening relationships with consumers in the retail landscape, be sure to incorporate these three things: (1) create a visual identity that stands out, (2) back every promise with proof, and (3) sell the feeling, not just the benefits.
BRIGADE has been building stand out health and wellness brands that connect emotionally for decades. Check out some of our latest work Root Labs.
