Stormbrands has partnered with Pets at Home to bring clarity, convenience and visual appeal to the burgeoning pets health sector. The brand, design and communications agency created a new health and wellbeing own label range for the retailer, changing the way people shop for their pets to support their health and happiness.

A new generation of ‘pet parents’ are prioritising the health and wellness of their pets more than ever before, caring for them in the same way we care for ourselves. Rather than just reacting to ailments, they are looking to support pets’ general wellbeing and happiness, both inside and out, minimising those expensive trips to the vet. Consumer demand is driving more products and choices, which can be tricky to navigate and trust. Pets at Home set out to create a one-stop wellness hub within its stores that makes it easier for pet parents to navigate health and wellness and empower them with decision-making confidence.

Stormbrands has created a Health and Wellbeing family identity that brings together diverse consumer need-states across a broad product range and three price tiers. With categories such as joint care, calming, skin and coat and grooming, Stormbrands created a need-state-informed architectural design system that simplifies the shopper journey and borrows cues and codes from other categories to help navigation.

Category-led colour coding, functional reasons to believe and a helpful and trusted tone of voice were all important parts of the system, while happy and healthy art-directed pet imagery was employed to pull on the heartstrings and dial up the emotional benefit of proactively looking after your pet. The system was also designed to tier through good, better, best, with principles that allowed for colour flex, additional and helpful information, iconography and substrates and finishes that dialled up higher prices points.

“Knowing how important pet health and happiness is for owners these days, our design approach delivers an experience that’s immediately less clinical and more accessible than visiting the vet. The in-depth design principles we put in place have given Pets at Home the structure and guidance it needed to rollout across multiple categories, tiers and formats ultimately ensuring that it could provide absolute clarity and maximum convenience to its customers,” said Zoe Phillipson, Creative Director of Stormbrands.

“Our customers want to feel empowered to make the right choices to protect their pet’s health and wellbeing,” said Clair Tapson, Brand Creative Manager, Pets at Home, “but with too much choice and not enough knowledge, it can be overwhelming. Stormbrands has helped us simplify and demystify what can be a complex category to navigate and improve our customers’ experience. As our agency partner, the team has helped us create a Health and Wellbeing identity that our customers can trust to support their pets’ health and happiness throughout their lifetime.”