Messaging & Brand Strategy
for B2B and D2C Brands
FEATURED CASE STUDY
Fresh Meets
Memorable
$100K+ in monthly sales
for two consecutive months
How do you make mints interesting?
Especially to promotional products distributors who've seen just about every kind before?
You probably don't.
At least, not by talking about mints.
We already tried talking about mints.
It didn't work. Here's why.
Mixie is a wellness-focused promotional products supplier. It sells products to distributors, who, in turn, recommend them to businesses that can add their logos for events, giveaways, customer interactions and other marketing uses.
Mints were one category among many, and they had become increasingly difficult to sell. Previous campaigns had leaned heavily on product features, but the results hadn't followed. Even emails featuring new mint products had failed to generate meaningful sales.
At the rate it was going, the category was at serious risk of being discontinued.
And that wasn’t even the only problem...
The obvious benefit wasn't actually so easy to sell.
What does a mint do?
It freshens your breath.
Simple enough, right?
Except telling someone they need fresh breath can very quickly sound like you're telling them they have bad breath, something Mixie had already learned the hard way in previous messaging. I didn't want this campaign to leave the same impression.
So, with that in mind, another email about peppermint flavour, natural ingredients, sugar-free appeal, and container designs wasn't going to move the needle. I needed to look beyond the mint itself.
I asked myself, when do people actually reach for a mint?
Before a meeting.
Before an introduction.
Before a networking event.
Before a conversation where someone is going to be standing just a little closer than usual.
That was the part I'd been missing.
Mint
Fresh
breath
Confidence
up close
Better
interactions
A memorable impression
Fresh breath wasn't really the end benefit. People care about fresh breath because they care about how they come across to other people. Add a client’s logo to the container, and the brand becomes part of that small act of getting ready for the interaction too.
Now I had the one thought that could carry the campaign:
A branded mint shows up at an interesting time. People often reach for one before or during face-to-face interactions, putting the client's brand right there when personal impressions are being formed.
So I led with the angle, not the product.
While Mixie’s new basketball-shaped mint container gave me an obvious product hook, building the campaign around it would have narrowed the story to one SKU. The opportunity I saw was much bigger: give distributors a new reason to look at mints as a category.
So the inbox led with a very different angle.
Subject: Make A Fresh Impression
Preview: Branded mints for face-to-face moments
The subject connected freshness with making a good impression. The preview was more direct about what that meant: branded mints for face-to-face moments, when personal impressions carried more weight.
The hero put the angle into three words.
Fresh Meets Memorable
Those three words had one job: connect what the product does with why a branded version might matter.
Fresh was the immediate product benefit.
Meets was the bridge, bringing fresh breath and the client's brand together in the same face-to-face moment.
Memorable was the broader promotional benefit, with the client’s brand becoming part of an interaction worth remembering.
The design didn’t need a stock image of executives shaking hands to make the point. The products stayed at the centre. Peppermint-inspired graphics cued freshness, while the brighter treatment stayed true to Mixie’s established visual identity.
Once the copy had given distributors a different way to think about mints, the three selling points that followed could stay practical.
1) Satisfy a sweet craving without the added sugar
This was mainly an end-user benefit, giving people another reason to reach for a mint beyond fresh breath.
2) Natural peppermint ingredients for a cool, minty taste
This one was about the product experience itself: familiar, refreshing and easy to understand.
3) 24-hr rush service available on large quantity orders
This one mattered to the distributor. Clients often need orders on short notice, so fast turnaround gave distributors something practical to sell.
Then each product had something different to offer.
The four featured products were:
NEW! Basketball Mint Container
BESTSELLER Sliding Mint Tin
HOT IN ECO Wheat Straw Box With Mints
TRENDING Small Heart Shaped Mint Tin
The basketball container still had its moment. More importantly, the other three products weren't left sitting there like identical tins on a shelf. A distributor could scan the grid and immediately see what made one worth considering over another.
They didn't need another lengthy explanation of what mints were. They already knew. The campaign’s job was simply to make mints worth another look, this time with fresh eyes.
And look again they did.
The campaign generated:
$100,000+ in sales per month
for two consecutive months.
Sales substantially exceeded those from previous mint-focused campaigns and surprised senior leadership.
Six months later, the campaign was sent again. It generated another:
$90,000+ in sales
The same basic structure was later adopted for other Mixie products as well.
And the problem wasn't really unique to mints.
A lot of promotional products are simple, familiar things. Distributors already know what they are and what they do. There are only so many new features, materials and shapes you can talk about before the story starts to feel predictable.
So then how do you get someone to reconsider a promotional product they already understand?
You look past the obvious function and think about why people care about it in the first place, and what it means when a brand is attached to that experience.
That’s how the campaign repositioned Mixie’s mints.
The category hadn't changed. The angle had.
Hi, I’m Anna.
I’m a copy-focused brand marketer with 4+ years leading concept development and copywriting across B2B and consumer-facing brands.
I'm a little obsessed with getting to the heart of what makes a product relevant, then articulating that value precisely through tight copy, framing and flow.
Much of my work starts with the same question:
What would make someone care about this in the first place?
Need a strategic copywriter? Let's talk!
