Relaunching A Beloved Brand

For over 30 years, Halo has distinguished itself by offering pet foods that rely on whole meat, and never including any “meat meal” in their products. In 2016, Halo extended it’s commitment to pets, people, and the planet by adopting a philosophy encompassing a holistic approach to ingredient sourcing, recipes, and nutritional value. Halo calls their new approach “OrigiNative”, and in order to communicate their expanded mission, they re-launched their brand with an updated logo, new packaging, and all new collateral materials.

To support the new branding, Halo needed a new website. Logic Branch had worked with some people at Halo on previous projects, and based on the success of those launches, they approached us for advice on their new website. After reviewing their existing online presence, we prepared several options for how they could move forward.

Freedom From Old Systems

Like many well-established companies we have worked with, Halo was trapped in complex juxtaposition of outdated systems that competed with each other more than they supported each other: multiple WordPress installations for different parts of the site, NetSuite for product information and ecommerce, and so on. The tight coupling, and overlapping concerns of these systems, made it impossible to deploy a comprehensive re-branding that also elevated the positioning of Halo’s valued retail partners.

In order to give Halo freedom over their content we built a new CMS for them using Drupal. The new platform gave them the ability to control every piece of content on the website without relying on developers to make changes. We also decoupled their ecommerce store from their product information, so that we could promote valued partners like Amazon, Chewy, and Petco. Finally, we added tight integration with their social media channels, so that different kinds of information could be sent to consumers through the most appropriate channel, but through syndication we could repurpose that information for maximum visibility across channels.

It is truly a privilege to be a part of your team, the same one that will pull back the curtain on this industry and make pet parents feel better about what they’re doing for their pets, farm animals, and the planet.

No small undertaking, and I know we will deliver and have fun doing so along the way.”

– Bob Lierle, Chief Marketing Officer

Design That Can Grow

In developing a website to support Halo’s re-launched brand, we were presented with a multifaceted challenge:

• Preserve elements of the previous branding that generated strong connection with consumers, such as their beautiful illustrations
• Present the new logo and packaging in a bold and memorable fashion
• Support Halo’s new advertising campaign featuring their new “Poopsie” character to explain the benefits of their nutritional formulations
• Incorporate Halo’s new spokespets, Manny the Frenchie and Lil BUB, into the website using their individual voices to support Halo’s mission

These goals had to be served across a diverse array of mediums (web, email, and social) and a full spectrum of platforms (desktop, tablet, and mobile). In order to meet these demands, we adopted the principles of Atomic Design and produced a modular design system. Design systems are often produced as standalone deliverables, and as such risk growing out of sync with the actual website as the project proceeds. In order to avoid that fate, we built our design system in Pattern Lab, and created a custom Drupal theme that integrated with it. What this gave us was a single source of truth: the style guide and the website itself are both generated using the same set of templates.

Plays Well With Others

One of our favorite things about working on projects like this one is the opportunity to collaborate with other agencies in order to create something greater than any of us could accomplish on our own. Halo’s relaunch was kick-started by brand consultancy Kaleidoscope, who helped Halo update their brand identity and packaging design. We built upon Kaleidoscope’s work to expand the design into something that could support all the various needs of the website. Then we worked with advertising agency RPA to connect our web work to the creative work they were doing for Halo’s national advertising campaign, including the introduction of the unforgettable Poopsie®: