Fantastic Foods Relaunch Adds an Exotic 'World' of Taste to Convenience Foods

Fantastic Foods virtually invented a category when it began creating a tasty, healthy line of convenient soups, side dishes, and mini-meals over 30 years ago. Homegrown Naturals, who acquired the brand in 2000, is now reintroducing the brand with 16 new chef-crafted soups, and they enlisted San Francisco's Deutsch Design Works (DDW) to design premium packaging for all their products.

The first thing loyal customers will notice is the addition of the word "world" to the new Fantastic World Foods packaging. With a complete new brand strategy, Homegrown Naturals is resolved to remain a leader in the category, aided by the cultural shift to meatless options. One way to expand the line's nutritional, all-natural, vegetarian, and simple sophistication appeal was to take it on the road, so to speak.

Discovery that is never ending

"We offered them many strategic concepts and ideas," says DDW's founder, Barry Deutsch. With the help of DDW, Fantastic World Foods now has a well-defined personality based on a theme of "Never-Ending Discovery." The brand hopes to convey authenticity in its worldly products that are inspired by regional and ethnic recipes. These new microwaveable soups were created by chefs and include the highest quality of ingredients such as Emmental cheese, jalapeno, cilantro, tagliatelle noodles, lemongrass, and flavorful leeks.

Kate Greene, senior designer at DDW, was the lead designer on the project, which included directing all phototgraphy. Each redesigned package now includes "destination" photography to help consumers more clearly identify with the exotic locations where each recipe originates, beautiful and sensuous shots of serving suggestions, as well as a travel story inside that brings these locations and travel experiences to life. The tone of these 40- to 50-word stories is personal, light, and fun to reinforce the discovery attitude of a seasoned world traveler more than a sightseeing tourist.

Erin Fray, brand manager for Fantastic World Foods, explains that the brand had never lost its core consumer credibility. However, Fray believed the time was right for a radical update to stay ahead of today's consumer expectations and discriminating palates. "We really had to leap-frog ourselves," Fray says. She sees the packages as creating intrigue in a psychographic, as opposed to demographic, environment. The typical consumer for this brand has a specific attitudinal mindset that is both healthy and adventurous, according to Fray.

DDW and Fray tried and tested many variations of the new Fantastic World Foods logo, but they never really considered wavering from the brand-identifying red of the previous logo. The new cartographic "star" may suggest long explorations or the far reaches of the compass to some, and the new logo treatment has a nostalgic quality, according to Deutsch. The logo is now always in the same off-center position and is always tilted, which reminds one of a passport stamp or an airport sticker on luggage of a previous era.

The Fantastic World Foods packaging has a checklist that indicates whether each product is all-natural or organic, and additional detailed information about whether specific products are vegan, kosher, gluten-free or yeast-free, low in fat, or a good source of fiber, iron, or other specific vitamins. The cup wraparound packaging also has two similar billboard facings, so the product can lie down on its side or stand up—hopefully standing its ground next to its prepared soup competitors on the shelf.

The previous Fantastic Foods logo was replaced as part of Homegrown Naturals' new packaging for the brand, tying into the Fantastic World Foods theme of "Never-Ending Discovery."

A consistent quality

All Fantastic World Foods packaging now has a strong format, system, and architecture where every element is always in the same place and the same size in relation to the rest of the package design elements. The "destination" shots that appear in the upper left corner are the result of an exhaustive and painstaking search through stock photo libraries. The goal was to find a compositionally rich picture that added interest to each recipe in an authentic and color-relevant way.

Every new product shot for the Fantastic World Foods brand relaunch is the work of Geoffrey Nilsen, a photographer who operates out of a converted church in Point Richmond, CA. Making each picture of 30-plus varieties have a different context and an ethnic, world-driven concept was not easy. "We were striving to come up with props close to what could represent an area," says Nilsen.

The stylists showed up with several hundred bowls and dozens of fabric swatches, in addition to the numerous props Nilsen has acquired over the years. Nilsen relates that DDW had very strict parameters about the positioning of the product in the shots. With such a tight composition, every item and every quarter-inch was considered and accounted for.

Nilsen created a nice short depth of field in the shots, considering all the shots were taken with a digital camera. "By the way that I work, I can make it look like film," Nilsen says. Using a large format, 4x5 view digital camera, he achieves a telephoto effect for intimate close-ups of the product. Nielsen was fortunate to have a long-time collaborator, food stylist Pouké, to construct the food and garnish with artistic flair. "She understands the product and how it should work," says Nilsen.

Research equities and matrixes

Sarah Bird, v.p. of marketing at Homegrown Naturals, approached the rebranding project by conducting both qualitative and quantitative research to define the brand's strengths. She found that the previous Fantastic Foods brand had deep roots and a reputation of quality, but consumers did not view the brand as innovative anymore.

Working with this knowledge, Bird and Homegrown Naturals decided to stress how the brand is both convenient and accessible. They summed up the new concept as the promise: "Fantastic World Foods makes it easy and for you to experience quality foods from around the world."

Steve Goldman, general manager and marketing director at DDW, explains the two phases of research that DDW employed in the Fantastic World Foods project. During exploration, they developed a visual positioning matrix on two axes to compare all related brands on the market. The vertical axis was "organic vs. conventional" and the horizontal axis was "mainstream vs. exotic." The goal was to position the new brand firmly in the organic and exotic quadrant, as revolutionary as possible without being too far out from the center.

After narrowing down about 20 design concepts to three, DDW used its qualitative Conceptual Workbench(tm) methodology to refine the final packaging. The firm enlisted San Francisco tourists to rank different design combinations against each other in a questionnaire format that gauges how the subjects might respond to the packages at retail. The research identified the final packaging as the one that created great appetite appeal, induced interest in adventure, and held a promise of high quality.