Sunflower Farmers Market, a chain of “farm market” style natural grocery stores, selected Vertis Communication (www.vertisinc.com) for rebranding of its private label products.
Vertis helped Sunflower Farmers Market develop a fresh, unified brand that embodies the essence of the Sunflower experience for its 600 new private label products. Through qualitative research, competitive analysis and its own proprietary Customer Focus Research, Vertis captured consumer preferences and develop packaging concepts that tailor colors, imagery and designs that convey the brand’s natural attributes to its health-conscious customers looking for products that offer both quality and value.
Food and Beverage Packaging learned the quick version of the design story from Steve Beckman, VP of creative services for Vertis Communications. Regarding the changes, he says,
“Simply put, we created a new brand. Here’s the quick story- Old brand: value brand. New brand: focuses on quality, appetite appeal, and engaging graphics/copy that draw the consumer in, creating an affinity that wasn’t there before.”
Along with a design change, the company added Quick Response codes to its packages. The QR codes link consumers to background information on Sunflower’s products, including sourcing, recipes, healthy tips, etc. The strategy is to partner with a consumer that is in a transition towards a healthier lifestyle and become their brand of choice by providing education, fun, approachable store destinations, and great products.
Beckman went on further to describe the design makeover, “the brand emblem went from “Serious Food, Silly Prices” to “Sunflower Farmers Market”. The store’s logo, newly redesigned, was augmented with a distressed, woodcut look reminiscent of a country sign and became the brand flag. Photography and illustration, as well as back panel elements, are now used to tie the products to their ingredients, engineering every part of the package to target what we call the “transitionary shopper,” someone who grew up on big brands, but has become aware of the need for healthier choices, and isn’t ready for the experience of more prominent natural stores.”
