YERBA MADRE (FKA YEBRA MATE) BRAND LAUNCH

Yerba Madre Brand Relaunch

Agency: Wild Card Creative Group
Client: Yerba Madre (formerly Guayakí Yerba Mate)
Role: Senior Strategist — New Business & Creative Briefing
Timing: Agency Win → Creative Kickoff Phase

The Brief

Following Wild Card’s successful win of Yerba Madre’s brand relaunch, the agency needed to rapidly translate ambition into direction. The challenge wasn’t just renaming Guayakí—it was redefining what Yerba Madre stood for in a crowded, hyper-self-aware beverage category while honoring a deeply loyal existing community.

My role was to help shape the strategic foundation that would guide the creative launch: grounding the team in audience truth, category tension, and real community behavior before creative development began.

Strategic Challenge

Yerba Madre sits at an intersection few brands manage cleanly:

  • Functional energy vs. spiritual ritual

  • Mass-market growth vs. grassroots authenticity

  • New name, same soul

The risk was obvious: a surface-level rebrand that looked good but alienated the brand’s most devoted advocates—its Ambacebador community—while failing to attract new drinkers.

The opportunity was deeper: use the relaunch as a cultural reframing, not just a visual one.

What I Did

I led and supported strategic discovery across three critical layers, feeding directly into the creative kickoff:

  1. Audience & Category Research
    Conducted audience mapping and category analysis to understand how Yerba Madre lives in relation to energy drinks, wellness beverages, and ritual-based consumption. Identified whitespace between “hustle energy” brands and overly precious wellness positioning.

  2. SWOT & Competitive Framing
    Built a clear-eyed SWOT that surfaced both the brand’s cultural equity and its friction points—particularly how legacy perceptions could limit future growth if left unexamined.

  3. Community Intelligence (Undercover Insight Work)
    Went undercover inside Yerba Madre’s Ambacebador community app to observe unfiltered language, behaviors, motivations, and tensions. Rather than relying on brand-safe summaries, I analyzed how real advocates talk to each other when the brand isn’t in the room.

This surfaced insights around:

  • Identity signaling vs. genuine ritual

  • Why Ambacebadors felt chosen by the brand

  • Where pride could easily turn into gatekeeping

Creative Briefing & Kickoff Support
Synthesized findings into briefing materials and live kickoff input, helping creative teams anchor early thinking in real cultural truth—ensuring the relaunch narrative felt earned, not imposed.

Strategic Insight

Yerba Madre’s power doesn’t come from caffeine—it comes from belonging.
The brand isn’t consumed for productivity; it’s consumed as a quiet rebellion against it.

The relaunch needed to protect that ethos while translating it for a broader audience who might never call themselves “Ambacebadors,” but still crave meaning in what they consume.

Impact

  • Helped establish a culturally grounded strategic foundation for the Yerba Madre relaunch

  • Ensured creative development was informed by real community behavior, not assumptions

  • Supported Wild Card’s transition from agency win to confident creative kickoff

  • Protected brand authenticity while enabling future-facing growth

Why It Matters

Brand relaunches often fail not because the creative is weak—but because the strategy doesn’t listen closely enough. This work ensured Yerba Madre’s new identity emerged from its community rather than replacing it.