DETOXU

Creating a new wellness category: body purification

After Nestlé Health Science purchased a majority stake in Orgain, Dr. Andrew Abraham’s plant-based nutrition brand, he didn’t just rest on his laurels. Instead, he began developing his next wellness endeavor: DetoxU, an all-natural product designed to help people detox from environmental toxins, mold, and heavy metals.

There’s nothing more fun than building a brand from the ground up, so when the good people at wellness-focused brand studio, Herman Scheer, invited me to lead the strategy and verbal design work for the project, I jumped.

The first question I asked myself was: Who is this product for? The answer wasn’t straightforward because DetoxU planned to serve a wide spectrum of audiences: People struggling with chronic illness that traditional medicine wasn’t addressing. Those exposed to harmful toxins. Health enthusiasts with specific goals. General wellness seekers. Healthspan connoisseurs. The challenge was crafting a message that could resonate across these diverse groups, each with differing needs.

My approach began by defining the two most divergent personas—the Chronic Illness Sufferer and the Healthspan Connoisseur—trying to understand their core motivations. The Chronic Illness Sufferer was reactive, seeking practical healing from ailments traditional medicine wasn’t able to resolve. While the Healthspan Connoisseur was proactive in their striving to maintain whole body wellness and vitality. One had a need for physiological normalcy and the other a need Chronic for psychological safety. 

  • The Skeptic – Believes detox products are unnecessary scams, trusting that the body’s natural processes are sufficient. They’re loud online, but come from a place of theory.

  • The Believer – Has lived experience of tangible relief from detoxification, and passionately shares their personal success stories to help others also seeking relief.

  • The Undecided – Struggling with symptoms, this group sits on the fence. They’re drawn to The Believer’s first-hand testimonials but remain cautious, valuing The Skeptic’s logical counterpoints.

The question I posed was: What if all of them are right? The body is indeed designed to detoxify and detoxification products can enhance these natural processes, and with the right products, people can help their bodies help themselves.

What united these two seemingly opposite audiences was simple yet profound: a shared desire to feel as good as possible in their own bodies. This insight became the foundation of our messaging strategy—a message of empowerment and trust in the body’s potential for renewal.

To deepen this perspective, I dove into online forums and social spaces where detoxification was a hot topic, and three dominant voices emerged in the conversation:

This insight informed a subtle but powerful shift in messaging. Instead of heroing the product, as so many wellness brands do, I suggested we hero the body itself. By putting the body front and center, we could create a message that would resonate across the diverse audience spectrum we’d mapped out earlier, as it was their obvious common denominator. 

Another key pivot came in a strategic shift in the language of the category itself. The term detoxification can be polarizing, so I proposed creating an entirely new category: body purification.

Initially, the team pushed back, feeling like that language had the potential to skew religious, but I recommended embracing the shift. Much like a Jolie showerhead purifies water or a Molekule air purifier cleanses the air, DetoxU would purify the body. This reframe offered a fresh perspective that we could uniquely own.

Instead of a detox program, we built the notion of a personalized purification protocol, reflected in this 4-step customer journey:

  1. An at-home urine test to identify 100+ toxins.

  2. Lab results, informing a customized purification protocol

  3. A 6-month protocol, targeting specific toxins

  4. A re-test to track progress and validate outcomes


The messaging guided customers every step of the way, offering clarity and actionable solutions. Headlines like these brought the journey to life:

  • Get rid of the guesswork – Addressing internal health uncertainty, positioning our at-home test as the key to definitive answers

  • Turn feelings into facts – Empowering users with lab results that identify which toxins might be impacting their well-being

  • Transform insights into action – Providing a personalized purification protocol to target the specific toxins revealed in their labs

  • Move from symptoms to solutions – Supporting customers through their 6-month journey to better health

Ultimately, the promise of DetoxU is simple yet profound: to help people feel as good as they’re meant to feel. By crafting a body-first messaging strategy, we built a brand that goes beyond merely selling a product. It offers something far more valuable—a renewed sense of trust in their body’s innate ability to heal itself, and the reassurance that customers have an all-natural, science-backed tool to actually support that process.