Spotlight: Food & Beverage Packaging
Unilever Breaks into New Market By Putting Its Low-Carb Products Into New High-Concept Packages

Unilever’s new low-carb initiative includes the Carb Smart and Carb Options umbrella brands for some of the company’s most popular food products.

Unilever’s entry into the booming low-carbohydrate category started with Carb Smart for Breyers and Klondike ice cream products. Carb Smart was the inspiration for the Carb Options package design. Carb Smart and Carb Options are two new umbrella brands for some of Unilever’s most venerable and popular food products.

The visual identity and architecture for the Carb initiatives needed to work across a range of existing package structures with different printing specifications: shrink wraps, paper labels, lithographic and flexographic printing, plastic jars, glass containers, snack bars, and frozen novelty wrappers. The Carb Options package graphics are identical to the graphics for Carb Smart, the low-carb ice cream line launched by Unilever last year. The Carb Smart package structures include Breyers packaged ice creams and Klondike frozen novelty box and wraps. So far, Unilever’s low carb initiative totals over 25 SKUs on shelf.

Consistency and reassurance
The design challenge was to adapt the Carb Smart/Carb Options brand identity and architecture to a range of existing package shapes and sizes while maintaining a consistent low-carb brand look. It also was important that the sub-brand names (Ragu, Lipton, Lawry’s, Wishbone, Skippy, Breyers, and Klondike) were leveraged. According to Unilever, a large part of the Carb Options/Carb Smart strategy is to reassure consumers that the new umbrella brands are inspired by many of the brands they already know and love. Thus it was essential that the sub-brand names be made visible on each package face panel.

Smith Design, a brand design firm with bases in Glen Ridge, N.J. and San Jose, Calif., created the identity and package design system for both low-carb initiatives. Following the design and launch of Carb Smart, the Smith team worked closely with Unilever’s Visual Branding Center, an in-house package design group, to adapt the same design to Carb Options in what Unilever calls “a very aggressive time frame.”

According to Unilever, the key visual elements of the Carb Options/Carb Smart brand architecture include an informal, active, hand-lettered logotype; a dark blue panel; a circle showing grams of net carbs; “appetite appeal” conveyed by photography or illustration; and a color band containing the product descriptor.
“Creating a new low-carb brand look for Unilever required a powerful, breakthrough brand architecture that is memorable, unique, and can communicate a range of messages,” says Martha Seidner Gelber, vice president for Smith Design. “The identity and package graphics really differentiate these lines on shelf, and puts them in the position of becoming the next low-carb mega brand.”

“What’s most compelling to low-carb consumers is the ‘total net carb’ information, and of course, appetite appeal,” adds James C. Smith, a partner at Smith Design. “We made those elements clearly visible on each package. With 50 million consumers eating low-carb, it was only a matter of time before a major player like Unilever entered the low-carb arena in a big way.”

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Whimsical Makeover Gives Mug Root Beer A New Leash on Life The old Mug Root Beer packaging (above) needed the bark of the brand’s mascot, Mugsy (pictured on packages below), to better appeal to the brand’s target audience of 12- to 15-year-old boys. Recently, Pepsi’s design group decided to punch up the packaging and brand personality of Mug Root Beer to better appeal to the beverage’s target market, 12- to 15-year-old boys. The redesign also had to be parent-friendly. Pepsi called in Deutsch Design Works, a San Francisco, Calif.-based graphic design firm specializing in packaging, corporate identity, and strategic branding. Deutsch began by prominently displaying the drink’s lovable advertising mascot, Mugsy the bulldog, on the package. Then, to convey the brand’s cold, thirst-quenching quality, Deutsch drenched the entire package in frothy foam, overflowing on a background of rich reds, browns, and gold. The result, according to Deutsch, is a dog that “has learned his first new trick—he’s leaping off grocery shelves and landing in shopping carts all over America.”

Organic Valley Farmers’ Cooperative Unifies and Repositions Its Branding With New, Evocative Package Design

As an agricultural cooperative, the Organic Valley Family of Farms sought input from stakeholders and customers in the redesign of its brand image.

Organic Valley Family of Farms of La Farge, Wisc., the only national organic brand 100 percent owned by farmers, is celebrating 16 years of unprecedented growth with a new, unified brand look for its colorful packaging, and a multifaceted media campaign designed to promote its mission to save America’s family farms by connecting farmers and consumers.

“Organic Valley is very excited about our new branding. It captures the essence of our roots and symbolizes the strength of like-minded individuals who come together with a passionate mission,” says George Siemon, the cooperative’s founder and “CEIEIO.”

The look of the new brand presents a contemporary curved, stacked “Organic Valley” above the familiar painted barn scene to evoke the cooperative’s rural origins. A scripted “Family of Farms” signature underneath provides a human touch.

New packaging for the milks, juices, butters, eggs, cultured, and cheese lines feature the tagline “Independent, organic and farmer owned since 1988.” The milk cartons convey stories written by Organic Valley farm children in each region. A new media campaign also features the new look and includes national consumer magazines, billboards, fleets of truck art, and the Organic Valley Web site, www.organicvalley.coop.

Cultivating stakeholder support
Organic Valley’s new branded look is a result of a two-year initiative led by Theresa Marquez, Chief Marketing Executive, and Carrie Branovan, Director of Creative Services. “Unifying our brand is an important step to continued growth,” says Marquez. “In true co-op style, we consulted each group of ‘stakeholders’ in each phase of the project, including our farmers, staff, industry partners and, most importantly, our consumers through online surveys, focus groups as well as one-on-one interviews.”

States Branovan, “Organic Valley’s goal is to offer consumers a unique taste experience that arises from nurturing a trusted relationship with the farmers who actually produce their food. By reaching out to consumers with their own stories and family portraits, Organic Valley’s farmers strive to convey the cooperative’s unshakeable commitment to farming organically in harmony with nature, and an understanding of the interdependency of all global life.”

Marquez and Branovan chose the international firm Webb-Scarlett de Vlam, with offices in London, Chicago, and Los Angeles, to facilitate the project. Marquez says, “Webb-Scarlett de Vlam has a diverse and impressive American and European client base, such as Oil of Olay, Proctor & Gamble, Chivas Regal, Wildcatch, Schweppes, and Samuel Adams, but of all the branding firms we interviewed, they seemed to have the most compassion for our unique grassroots.”

Ronald de Vlam, president of Webb-Scarlett de Vlam, says, “Organic Valley’s branded growth was similar to building additions onto a small cottage, with a new version of their original brand mark changing with each year of growth or each time they launched a new product.

“When we began, the cooperative was using at least 12 different brand marks. Our task was to unify the brands under one ‘new roof,’ ensuring Organic Valley loyalists that the philosophy remains the same, while simultaneously beckoning to health-minded consumers new to the category.

“Without dramatically changing a look that consumers have come to know, we have modernized, freshened, and restructured using new architectural elements, colors, and fonts designed to more effectively communicate Organic Valley’s values,” de Vlam states. “We are very proud of the results.”

Organized 16 years ago, the Organic Valley cooperative is made up of 633 organic farmers in 16 states. The cooperative says that in the last year alone, it achieved record success both in sales (up 25 percent to $156 million) and in farmer recruitment (up 23 percent to 633 farmers). It says that the increase in number of acres and cows brought into the organic system was equally strong (up to 95,000 acres and 20,500 cows). The cooperative also says that the Organic Valley brand is now the top-selling organic milk in both mainstream supermarkets and natural foods outlets along the entire Eastern seaboard.