The archive · Brand & Identity · Marketing decision · 2023–2024
Bettr answers greenwashed coffee with 'Screw Perfect, Make Impact'
Bettr, a Singapore social-impact coffee brand, stopped competing on flawless virtue and built its voice on imperfection: 'Screw Perfect, Make Impact.'
Bettr
What it had to solve
Bettr is a coffee brand devoted to social impact and ethical practices, but it was struggling to market itself in a market crowded with greenwashing and reputation-laundering, where every competitor claimed to be doing good.
How it works
Bettr is a coffee brand built on social impact and ethical practice, yet being genuinely good was not enough to be heard. Its category was crowded with greenwashing and reputation-laundering, where every label claimed virtue and consumers had learned to be sceptical of all of them.
The brand decision was to stop competing on perfection. Bettr embraced the normally taboo topics of honesty and imperfection and made them the basis of its positioning: 'SCREW PERFECT MAKE IMPACT', a line inspired by its own humble can-do beginnings rather than borrowed from an idealised image of sustainability.
Working with design practice Anak, Bettr turned that idea into a full rebrand. Retro typography, direct copy and a cast of deliberately flawed illustrated characters living on 'Planet Bettr' carried the message that doing good is messy, and that nobody — consumer or business — has to be 100% perfect all the time to take part.
The effect was a voice that could talk about impact without claiming sainthood, in a market where claims of purity had become noise. The work is preserved in D&AD's Writing for Design archive, which records no reach figures, so the case rests on the positioning itself.
Why it lands
- The idea inverted the category default: where other ethical brands claimed flawless virtue, Bettr's imperfection made it the credible outlier.
- It lowered the bar for participation: consumers no longer had to be perfect to support the brand, which made 'doing good' feel attainable instead of burdensome.
- The message was grounded in the brand's real origins, so the honest struggle was autobiography rather than a borrowed stance.
- For a B Corp, openly admitting imperfection read as truthfulness — a stronger ethical signal than polished green imagery in a greenwashed market.
What it did
The positioning let a genuinely ethical coffee brand be heard in a category full of flawless-sounding green claims, and freed 'doing good' from the burden of perfection for consumers too. The work is preserved in D&AD's Writing for Design archive, which records no reach figures.
What you can take
When a market is crowded with virtue claims, the honest flaw can be the differentiator: admitting imperfection makes a social-impact brand more believable, not less.
Since then
The positioning anchored a full brand relaunch in late 2023 and early 2024, applied across Bettr's packaging with illustrations, copy and a character world designed by Anak. The work is preserved in D&AD's Writing for Design archive, which records no sales or reach figures; the lasting idea is that an ethical brand can differentiate by owning its flaws instead of hiding them.
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