Athena Partners

Fierce competition

Challenged by gaining mind-share in the mature bottled water category and competing with large existing players like The Coca Cola Company, Athena Partners sought a partnership with GIRVIN’S design and marketing teams to successfully brand and launch this cause-related effort to fight cancers afflicting women. Our challenge was to make the packaging stand out in the store aisle—Athena wanted to look like part of the crowd, but be the strong frontrunner.

The warrior within

The positioning of Athena needed to speak about making healthy personal decisions, being strong, waging the war against the disease and coming out a winner. To match these strong, powerful sentiments, we developed the “Warrior” persona. For the packaging, we used vivid blues and strong teals, empowering the bottle to stand out on a store shelf, while integrating the pink ribbon reminds consumers of the important cause. We also developed the new, hopeful tagline “Victory Starts Here.” Supporting Founder and CEO Trish May’s vision, we built a brand premise and voice, wrote core elements of the positioning and messaging, and designed the brand from scratch. We created the product packaging, shelf set merchandising, and made key introductions to Whole Foods and Nordstrom in support of her efforts.