"We needed to refresh the brand without losing what everyone loved about it," explains Nicky Steel, Yellowwood General Manager. "We had to dust it off to make it relevant to today's consumer, and at the same time equip the business with the tools to focus on the strongest opportunities for growth."
DairyBelle knew they had to become more consumer-led, so Yellowwood started by gathering robust insight into consumers - their lives, occasions, dairy and juice products consumed and brands bought.
Equipped with this depth of insight into what drives consumers, the team first tackled the portfolio strategy to help bring some focus and to simplify a portfolio that had become quite complex - with a proliferation of sub-brands that were potentially detracting from the motherbrand.
"Once we had gained clarity on what and where to focus, the next question was how the different products should be branded," says Steel.
This was answered by defining the Brand Architecture strategy. The team wanted to be able to build the focus on and strengthen the DairyBelle motherbrand. However, DairyBelle includes sub-brands like Fruits of the Forest and Fiesta, which have great equity that Yellowwood didn't want to lose. The resultant strategy rationalised and clearly defined which products in the portfolio fit under the motherbrand umbrella, and where it is appropriate to have or create a sub-brand. The new Brand Architecture also determined the ideal relationship in size and prominence between the sub-brands and motherbrand. These guidelines will make future branding decisions for new product development a lot simpler and aid consumer navigation.
The final piece of the strategy was defining what the brand should stand for - its positioning, including its personality and its values. These would be used to guide all brand communication, activation, new product development, packaging and even the employer brand and recruitment.
"Our focused strategic work provided DairyBelle with a strong platform from which to start refreshing the brand identity and new packaging,"adds Steel.
The talented Yellowwood Design Team, headed up by Creative Director Richard Stone, started by transforming the primary identity (logo) to ensure that it reflected the new brand positioning and personality. Then, using the blossom from the DairyBelle's cow as inspiration, the team gave the DairyBelle range and its sub-brands a stunning face lift.
The long-life milk is already causing quite a stir on the shelf. In the chiller, look out for the fresh milk, cheese and butter. With plenty more to follow, you can expect DairyBelle to be bringing some brightness to the dairy category in the very near future...
