Face lift for Kiwi classic

News release
Wednesday March 14, 2007

Face lift for Kiwi classic

Imagine you’re updating your image. How do you retain your loyal fans while attracting new admirers?

It’s a challenge faced by Dow Design when Goodman Fielder asked the Auckland-based company to revamp the packaging of the iconic Vogel’s bread brand.

While it remained a strong market leader in its category, with the rise in popularity of healthy grain breads Vogel’s was facing increasing competition in-store.

Enter Dow Design. The brief was to refresh the brand to strengthen its on-shelf presence so that it better reflected the special place it has in the hearts of New Zealand consumers, while also creating greater variant and range differentiation to assist consumers to navigate the range.

“Vogel’s is such a great brand,” says Dow Design’s Annie Dow, “but it needed a bit of a lift. The key we felt was to elevate the rare and precious yet down-to-earth nature of Vogel’s.”

The challenge was to achieve the new positioning without getting offside with Vogel’s loyalists.

“It’s far easier for a designer to create a new brand from scratch - you have a blank page). Evolving an icon takes a great deal of care and focus. First you need to intelligently sort through what you’ve got, keeping what you need and letting go the rest. Vogel’s has a rich history, but the brand was tied to the past so you have to dig deep to reveal its real heart and personality to consumers.”

“With the new designs we believe we have created a more precious, cared-for style, zooming in on key elements and carefully hand-crafting them in a Vogel’s raw, un-tampered way. It was tricky because we didn’t want to revert to old-fashioned but also wanted to avoid imagery that was too modern.”

The Dow team commissioned new wood-cut style illustrations and hand-crafted typeface to reflect the brand’s authenticity and de-cluttered the packs using warm earthy colours to highlight differences including playing up the familiar Vogel’s stripes.

“It just goes to show classics never die – it’s just that sometimes they do need a bit of a face lift to keep them fresh and attractive,” says Annie Dow.

Goodman Fielder senior brand manager Josephine Coles says evolving the pack design of such an iconic brand was a challenging task.

“From the start of the project Dow clearly understood the brief, and offered a fresh perspective on how to create a greater connection with consumers through the pack design.

“One of their key strengths was the use of the Brandmap tool, which gave us clear insight into design objectives, as well as clear direction throughout the creative process. The result was a dynamic and appealing design that embodied both the brand essence and product promise."

The new look Vogel’s range is on shelf now.

* Vogel’s owes its heritage to Swiss pioneer of natural health, Alfred Vogel. Vogel’s bread is the result of his life-long philosophy, passion and study into natural health – believing that living and eating in harmony with nature was the key to good health. Vogel’s original Swiss recipe was first baked in New Zealand in the early 1960s by Klissers Farmhouse Bakery.

ENDS

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