Laboratoire Suisse, a Quebec natural health products manufacturer, has unveiled a new brand identity and platform to better help differentiate its product selection in a competitive category.

The brand has been in market for more than 25 years, but new products have always been launched with individual identities, making it hard to build a recognizable brand, says François Leblond, marketing director at Laboratoire Suisse.

Faced with a competitive market that includes players like Jamieson Labs, Nature’s Bounty, Webber Naturals and Quebec’s Adrien Gagnon, the company felt it was time to evolve from being a house of brands to more of a masterbrand approach, Leblond says. Lack of consistency between products had led to having a “brand architecture [that] was very confusing.”

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Working with Montreal agency Bob, Laboratoire Suisse developed a new identity revolving around the theme of Switzerland, which ties back to the brand name (“Suisse” being French for “Swiss” or “Switzerland”). Leblond says the country evokes notions of quality, engineering, precision and cleanliness, brand attributes it’s looking to emphasize in its communications.

As many brands utilize green and white colours in the branding, Laboratoire Suisse opted for turtoique – a calming and reassuring colour, Leblond says – and a pale brown not currently being used by competitors. It has dropped its previous tagline, which in English translated to “pharmaceutical quality at affordable prices,” believing that “affordable prices” was giving customers the impression its products were “cheap,” adds Leblond.

The new tagline, “Penser santé, c’est naturel” (or “It’s natural to think healthy”), is meant to place greater emphasis on the quality of the products and the fact that they are natural.

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To support the rebrand, the company worked with Bob on a series of spots that first launched in November, with a second phase starting in December. Last week, it launched a spot for a new articular pain medication inspired by “flossing,” an online dance craze. Another spot positions the company’s travel-format probiotic capsule as the “Swiss army knife” of preventative medicines for vacation travel.

Leblond says the campaign targets customers, particularly adults over the age of 45, who want to take care of their health through a “holistic” and preventative approach. To drive awareness and impact among that older customer, ads are running on TV until April, with additional 10-second digital spots on YouTube and Facebook (a channel on which the most active people are now Boomers, according to Leblond.

Havas Media led a media buy that includes around 75% percent spend on TV and 25% on online channels.