• by Les Luchter , November 24, 2024

WishGarden Herbs, which began marketing its liquid herbal tinctures to the then-counterculture 45 years ago, has launched its largest marketing campaign ever: inviting female “zennials” to “Meet the Moment.”

Wishgarden defines “zennials” as a combination of Gen Z and millennials, although the brand’s target audience chops off the lower end of the age spectrum and adds some years at the top to arrive at a target of 25- to 50-year-olds, Tracy Van Hoven, who recently joined the company as its first-ever chief marketing officer, tells Marketing Daily. “We’ve got a number one-selling menopause tincture,” she explains.

Primarily, though, Wishgarden products are aimed at “women of child-bearing age,” a continuing byproduct of the brand’s founding in 1979 by midwife and “back to the land” advocate Catherine Hunziker.

The founder was then in the Ozarks; along the way, she and the brand moved to their current home in Colorado, all without straying far from the original  hippie-ish vibe. But now says Van Hoven,  the new campaign is “teasing it forward” as a result of zennials embracing “the countercultural ideas of the ‘60s and ‘70s.”

Their values, she says, include natural healthcare, DIY’ing their own wellness needs where they can with natural remedies, "doing it in a way that is healthy, natural, also sustainable from a an environmental perspective, and wanting to buy from brands who have high integrity business practices and responsible sourcing.”

“Meet the Moment” is running across earned, owned and social media, with paid advertising bought by Inflow also in play: both in digital media and in Naturally, Danny Seo, a 10-year-old quarterly print magazine from Seo, a green living personality.

The campaign’s creative, done in-house, centers around slice-of-life scenes. A recent visit to Wishgarden’s home page, whose videos are being integrated into the digital ads, features a mom whose two kids are waking her up (“going into the holidays, sleep is pretty important,” Van Hoven says, with this video supporting Sleepy Nights tincture) as well as one with a mom and her kids promoting Deep Stress tincture (“for some folks, it’s obviously a stressful time with the election outcome and going into the holidays.")

Another new feature of the home page is an Herb of the Month feature (Yerba Mansa for November), plus there are links for special offers.

The campaign will continue into 2025, with other elements including videos from the brand’s medical director; holiday-themed content focused on its Party Prep tincture “to ease the morning after,” other tinctures that can add an “extra boost” to mocktails and cocktails; gifting bundles including a new Mocktail Essentials Kit”; and “extensive in-store support through displays, shopper marketing, sampling and more.”

Wishgarden is sold primarily through an established network of natural food retailers, including Whole Foods, and also through its website and Amazon.

The campaign is aimed at both existing and new customers, with Van Hoven citing the latter as particularly significant, since “so much of our growth in the past has been fueled by word-of-mouth when we have not invested as much into marketing.”

Wishgarden is the top-selling liquid herbal tincture brand out of some 10 companies in the category, per retail research firm SPINS. Its top-seller is Kick-Ass, an immunity blend containing nine different herbs.