The famous Oxo cubes get a refresh
(AS SEEN IN PACKAGING EUROPE – MARCH 2015)
OXO can truly be called a British heritage brand with over 100 years of history and a place in the majority of kitchen cupboards in British households. It is the UK’s favourite stock brand with leading market share in dry stock. It is also loved in our culture with a wealth of wonderful advertising campaigns over the years that have warmed people’s hearts. The OXO family with the late actress Lynda Bellingham as Mum became an extension of British consumer’s own lives. The public became engaged in the family’s day-to-day activities much as it does with a soap opera.
New brand identity for Oxo Shake & Flavour
From a packaging point of view, the red OXO cube box is one of the most iconic graphics in UK grocery, ranking alongside Marmite and Coca-Cola as an instantly recognisable pack design. However, an icon can quickly become a historical relic unless it is kept up to date and is relevant to consumers at any given time.
‘Icons must be handled with care’
We were tasked by Premier Foods, the owners of OXO, to help them re-position and refresh the OXO brand and most importantly its iconic packaging to ensure that it maintained its relevance. Needless to say we were thrilled to be asked but we had a little trepidation, as icons need to be handled with great care.
The client team had already done a lot of strategic work to analyse and think about the future of OXO. The last iteration of the OXO packaging was launched in 2009 and at the time the brand proposition was: ‘OXO puts the heart into today’s home cooking’. The idea then was to reinforce OXO’s association as an ingredient in home cooking. However, acknowledging that times have changed, OXO was very much seen as a traditional addition to slow cook, hob-top meals and there was a desire to grow share and usage occasions by becoming part of more modern, everyday meals. This led to a new positioning of ‘Flavour Transformations’, which has a ‘foodie’ dynamic and inspiring attitude designed to appeal to a younger mindset and consumers with young families who know OXO but don’t include it into their repertoire – while striving not to alienate OXO’s core consumers who are older families and empty nesters.
In terms of the packaging redesign, our job was to stand out and appeal to younger consumers as an iconic yet modern brand that inspires them to make lots of different delicious meals. We had to reflect the new positioning, add in foodie and inspirational elements while retaining its iconic status and sense of heritage. In essence we had to breathe new life into the pack and we summed up our creative brief in three words – ‘Bold Flavour Transformation’.
This was good in theory but conceptual words often stay on paper and we had to translate those words into an iconic design solution. At this point we used our bespoke Visual Planning™ process, which culminated in collaborative and creative workshop with our clients to bring the brand idea to life visually. This step is incredibly important as we were handling a hugely respected heritage brand but also because as a brand design agency we have been learning a lot from neuroscience about the way consumers make decisions, mainly in System 1 thinking which is rapid response and intuitive and 90 per cent of the information that influences System 1 is visual. These decisions are then qualified and substantiated by System 2 thinking which is rational and logical.
Knowing this, we believe our brand strategy and input should be as visual as possible. Otherwise it is largely left to chance that designers will be able to encode System 1 cues into their design work from a purely written (System 2) brief.
The output of the workshop gave us what we call a ‘Visual Brand Essence’ to sit alongside the written brief that really started to map out a visual territory to bring to life the new OXO packaging. It was clear that we wanted the designs to be bold, vibrant, simple and with transformational cues to it … small and mighty.
At the same time we reviewed competitor packs – we didn’t want to be derivative. We decided against using standard photography or ingredient imagery as most of the competitor brands do and we wanted to be distinctive and true to what we are all about. We also analysed the existing packaging. Our feeling was that the existing designs were overly complicated and fussy with key lines, drop shadows, background patterns, symbols and too many different typefaces at play. The overall effect was a bit messy and old fashioned and the OXO logo was looking a bit cartoonish.
In line with the brief of ‘Bold Flavour Transformations’ and our Visual Brand Essence, we stripped all this away. We enlarged the OXO letters and bled them off the edges of the packs as they stand for so much and we wanted to reinstate a boldness and confidence along with great shelf impact. Stripping away unnecessary detail also had the effect of modernising the overall look and feel while being iconic. We used rich, vibrant and intense foodie colours. Adding to this we used the tops of the packs to engage consumers with foodie messaging punctuated with meal-time icons to add personality and deliver flavour transformation ideas. We wanted a tone of voice that reflects the brand’s personality: fun, inviting and inspiring. The array of different messages aim to encourage consumers to use the cubes in different ways, for example: ‘Liven up your Lasagne’, ‘Beef up your Bolognese’, ‘For pies packed with flavour’, ‘Sprinkle for spectacular stir fry’.
Having established this stronger look and feel, we were then able to translate this onto the ‘Shake & Flavour’ range making it more boldly OXO, more characterful with a rainbow of flavourful and vibrant colours. We created a new playful sub-brand logo that bolsters the brand identity, highlighting its creative personality. The new design utilises the inside of the peel labels, which give consumers inspiration for different recipes.
Overall the new designs reflect the aspirations for the brand to broaden its appeal to younger consumers and to encourage more versatile usage in modern meal making, while retaining the familiar iconic heritage that is loved.