PLAY Nutrition: a brand for active days

PLAY Nutrition is the energy bar brand of Color of Vietnam. It is made for active days: training days, travel days, or simply days with a lot of moving about. The brand has one product line, the PLAY 2.0 energy bar, in three flavours and two box sizes. Its voice is short and clear, because the person eating usually has their hands full. This piece explains the occasions the brand was designed for, what the range contains, how it speaks, and a small trial we ran to check whether the occasion was really what we thought.

The occasion: when someone reaches for a PLAY bar

We started with the occasion, not the recipe. An energy bar earns its place when the next proper meal is still some way off and a person needs something compact, reasonably filling and free of decisions. Those moments tend to be:

• Before or after training, when a heavy meal is the last thing anyone wants.
• On a long journey, in a backpack or glove box, when stopping to eat is awkward.
• In the middle of a long working day, when lunch is far away and hunger has arrived early.
• In a parent's bag while waiting for a child to finish practice or an extra class.

What these moments share is that the eater is in the middle of something else. The bar has to open with one hand, be finished in a few minutes, leave no crumbs and need no water. Every product and packaging decision at PLAY Nutrition is checked against those four moments.

Three flavours, two box sizes

The PLAY 2.0 energy bar comes in fruit and oat, macadamia and peanut butter, and orange and cacao. The three map onto three moods: a bright one with the sweet and sour edge of fruit, a rich nutty one, and a darker one led by cacao. Most people settle on one flavour as a habit and switch now and then, so three is enough to rotate without confusion.

Each flavour comes in a box of 6 and a box of 12. The box of 6 is for someone trying the brand or packing for a trip. The box of 12 is for someone who already has the habit, keeps a box at home or at the office and takes one each morning. Two sizes let the brand talk to two kinds of buyer without changing the product.

The voice: say little, say it right

On pack and online, PLAY Nutrition speaks in short sentences. What the bar is for, what is inside, that it can be eaten anywhere. No long story about inspiration, no promises about health or body shape. We hold to that for two reasons. The eater is busy, so one sentence is enough. And any promise bigger than what is inside the wrapper gets found out at the first bite, which our value Taste First does not allow.

Our test for a line of pack copy is simple: read it aloud while tying a shoelace. If the lace is tied before the sentence ends, the sentence is too long.

A week of carrying bars around

We used to assume the main occasion for PLAY was before training. To check, the whole team ran a small trial for one week. Everyone took a few macadamia and peanut butter bars and a few fruit and oat bars, dropped them into their usual bag, and noted three things each time they ate one: the time, where they were, and why then.

The result surprised us. Most bars were eaten mid-morning or early afternoon, on the way to a meeting or at the desk, not at the gym. Fruit and oat was picked more often in the morning, the nutty flavour more often in the afternoon. Everyone said the bar opened easily, but some noted that a box of 12 takes up too much space if you carry the whole box.

The trial changed no recipe. It changed how we describe the brand: from a brand for workouts to a brand for active days, meaning any day spent between one thing and the next. It also gave packaging a concrete job: the box of 6 has to be the box that slips into a bag.

PLAY Nutrition among our four brands

Inside Color of Vietnam, PLAY Nutrition sits beside PLAY Protein Bar, Natural & Healthy and Let's PLAY. Two brands share the word PLAY, but PLAY Nutrition talks about the occasion while PLAY Protein Bar talks about one specific thing, protein. Natural & Healthy lets the ingredients speak, and Let's PLAY is about eating together. Keeping each voice distinct is the daily work of marketing here, and the hardest part of it when the team is only a handful of people.

If you would like to take this brand on and make it sharper still, the Marketing Leader role in Hanoi is open on our Careers page. If you are a distributor who wants to try the three PLAY 2.0 flavours, get in touch and we will send samples together with a short note on the occasions they are made for.