Traditional Medicinals

After almost 50 years of building a founder-led company and pioneering meaningful impact work, Traditional Medicinals was undergoing a leadership transition and sought to collaboratively codify its culture to empower the next company’s next chapter. This included a new brand purpose, positioning, and values and a formal charter that defined a guiding governance plan and its commitments to all stakeholders. The objective was to reorient the brand’s powerful heritage toward the future in a way that drove sustained growth and created a meaningful difference in the lives of all its stakeholders.

We First defined the brand’s purpose – “to inspire active connection to plant wisdom in service of people and planet” – as well as the communications that flowed from it including its vision, manifesto, and key messaging. At the same time, we worked in close collaboration with the outgoing and incoming leadership teams to ensure the brand’s integrity of intent was embedded into its brand foundation and governance, while codifying purposeful impact and ESG commitments to guide the brand moving forward. This was supported by company-wide training and a rollout plan to steer the future trajectory of the company.

On the strength of the brand purpose refresh, Traditional Medicinals sought to deepen relationships with its evolving consumer audience and has maintained a steady pulse check of its purpose work. We First conducted research that helped the organization understand changing wellness motivations for tea drinkers. It continues to be a category leader in botanical wellness and has 17% growth in the last year alone. At the same time, the company’s foundation is continuing to evolve its source community investment strategy to deliver more resilience, security, and prosperity for the next generation of wild harvesters and farmers throughout its value chain.