What do kosher food brand Manischewitz and plant-based pioneer Impossible Foods share in common? Beyond filling specific grocery aisle niches, each marketers recently turned to independent creative agency Jones Knowles Ritchie (JKR) to reinvent themselves to win over wider swaths of consumers.
These refreshes are the latest in a surge coming from the consumer packaged goods category, which is navigating a difficult post-pandemic environment and under pressure to draw cohorts like Gen Z. JKR, which has offices in London, New York and Shanghai and a full-time worker count of 333 as of the end of last 12 months, has aided in overhauls for iconic labels reminiscent of Kraft Heinz, Velveeta, Coca-Cola’s Minute Maid and Mars’ M&M’s. The design-led shop experienced double-digit growth in 2023, though it doesn’t publicly share specific revenue figures.
JKR’s work often focuses on revamped packaging, logos and other points of visual identity — branding elements which are increasingly necessary beyond store shelves as marketers look to weave a cohesive narrative across channels, including through tactics like collaborations.
“A rebrand alone, especially one which’s going to sit down there for the next five to 10 years, will need to return with other brand behaviors,” said Hayley Burnham, group strategy director at JKR. “Rebranding must be thought of holistically, and if it’s not, then you definitely’re probably not going to achieve success.”
Hayley Burnham, group strategy director at JKR
Permission granted by Jones Knowles Ritchie
For some clients, rebranding is about greater than a straightforward aesthetic makeover. Manischewitz, which is over 130 years old, is attempting to expand its appeal to non-Jewish consumers with more colourful packaging that features phonetic spellings of Yiddish terms, reminiscent of “Luck-shen” for egg noodles. At the same time, the shakeup timed to Passover is angling for younger Jewish shoppers who’ve gravitated away from the brand. Impossible Foods is embracing a more carnivorous aesthetic, with deep-red packaging emphasizing the “craveability of meat.” The shift comes as the plant-based category tries to interrupt out of a sales slump.
Marketing Dive spoke with JKR’s Burnham about what’s driving the rebranding craze amongst CPGs — and what marketers mulling a pivot should avoid.
This interview has been edited for clarity and brevity.
MARKETING DIVE: It’s interesting that a culturally specific brand like Manischewitz is attempting to break out into the mainstream. How did that relationship form?
HAYLEY BURNHAM: Manischewitz got here to us with a business opportunity. They’re a brand that’s beloved by many consumers who’ve eaten their products their whole lives, their family has done the same for generations. But the audience was very specifically individuals who desired to solely eat kosher foods. The culture around that was changing. There are many individuals outside of that specific community who’re also fascinated about eating Jewish food. The opportunity was never about moving away from the core audience, but bringing in a broader consumer and in addition future-proofing [Manischewitz] for the next 20, 30, 50 years ahead.
They were fascinated about [JKR] for a couple of things: One was us having reverence for evolving brands in a way that feels modern, but in addition respectful of what has made that brand distinctive. And then I believe they were fascinated about the proven fact that we’re experts in packaging but in addition can think outside of packaging and create a complete latest world for the brand.
There’s been a wave of legacy CPGs having a look in the mirror and wanting a latest look or vibe. Have you noticed an uptick in client demand from the category?
BURNHAM: One hundred percent. Kraft Heinz is one of our biggest clients, 2020 was the 12 months of the rebrand for Kraft Heinz. That was partly them restructuring as a business and interested by creating brands, not only products. We’re working with the likes of Coca-Cola, AB InBev and Diageo, loads of these CPG brands with a mass audience.
In some ways, it’s about modernizing and sometimes that’s the transient. Almost more so, it’s about the way you maximize iconicity, maximize relevance and longevity and perceptions of brand quality and brand love. The reason for that shift is actually because private label is recovering than ever. Direct-to-consumer brands are shifting the expectations of what consumers think in terms of quality, in terms of health and in terms of modernity.
With Manischewitz, it’s more colourful, it’s busier versus than some of the rebrands happening a decade ago. What are other themes you see recurring with brands wanting to reclaim icon status now?
BURNHAM: We discuss “blanding” or the millennial aesthetic. When those first DTC brands got here out, it was the antithesis of these in-your-face, often unhealthy brands. It felt very intentional and secure. That was nice and needed and positive until everyone began doing it, after which it felt prefer it was meaningless. In some ways, you would say there’s a maximalist thing happening. But I believe, not less than at JKR, we talk less a couple of blanket approach that isn’t “blanding” and more about trying to seek out what’s distinctive a couple of brand. We get to the heart of what’s most interesting, most original and most relevant after which define that through what we call a brand behavior idea. Then you bring that to life across every thing the brand does. That is, partially, understanding what assets are distinctive and evolving those while making the most of them.
How have changing media consumption habits informed the work you do?
BURNHAM: We consider a brand’s packaging as one touchpoint along a whole consumer journey. What drives preference or loyalty is consumers experiencing your brand in a cohesive way, in every way they arrive into contact together with your brand. That doesn’t mean that every one of that should say exactly the same thing or that there’s no room for flexibility. That can be boring. Thinking about your brand in a holistic way, there’s more evidence of that being what drives effectiveness greater than just comms alone. So you’re seeing budgets come out of communications and coming more into branding, and also you’re also seeing agencies collaborate more.
We did the Velveeta rebrand a couple of years ago and that was such a collaboration between the promoting, branding and insight agencies. It was us inspiring one another. When the brand got here out into the world, what you were seeing online, in a TV ad and in packaging felt like one brand that had reintroduced itself, all in the same way.
Another recent JKR initiative is Impossible Foods. We’ve spoken about legacy firms, but that could be a disruptor that appears like it’s still attempting to determine its positioning.
BURNHAM: The business problem presented to us and what we were trying to resolve through the work was that Impossible is a mission-driven company. The founder [Patrick O. Brown] had an ambition to displace animal agriculture and play a meaningful role in making a sustainable planet. The idea of that has been there from the starting. They had a mission to alter meat lovers into plant-based meat lovers, that they had this amazing product and, performance-wise, they were doing higher than the rest of the category. But they weren’t doing in addition to they might.
Peter McGuinness joined the company as CEO because he could see all of those amazing facts, but the way the brand was showing up would never inform you that. I remember reading about this being the first plant-based burger for meat lovers years ago, but every thing else the brand was doing was never saying that. The work for that wasn’t just a couple of latest identity, our work was to assist them determine what their purpose was and the right way to articulate it. If you tell those who you’re there to avoid wasting the planet and displace the animal agriculture industry, nobody’s going to be fascinated about buying. We did loads of work to grasp what really matters to meat lovers and the culture and the way deeply tied it’s to people’s identity.
It appears like a risk as well. It’s somewhat bit of playing to either side of the aisle: vegetarians and meat lovers who’ve, in some cases, rejected plant-based trends.
BURNHAM: We did testing with loads of benchmarks, with purchase intent as part of that. We landed on an option that had a rigor of testing behind it with each vegetarians and flexitarians and meat eaters. We kept certain parts of their identity similar, like the logo and its positioning. In terms of seeing that on shelf, that won’t change. Things on packaging like health-focused statistics and claims, we made them really distinguished.
Rather a lot of these firms need to modernize, but the chase to leap on what’s latest doesn’t at all times pan out. Is there anything you recommend clients against doing?
BURNHAM: Rebranding to modernize or to follow trends as a substitute of rebranding to maximise your distinctiveness. If you’re ranging from that and also you’re not constructing into the process the opportunity to reflect to the world what your consumers want and what makes you special, then the likelihood is that you’re going to find yourself being one other bland brand. People discuss the Tropicana example all of the time.
Especially with regards to CPG, rebranding is telling a unique message and it’s also helping people navigate the shelf. They’re two things that should be thought of concurrently but almost individually. When you concentrate on the navigation, what are the parts of your packaging that individuals recognize? If you’re not understanding that, it’s easy to rebrand and folks cannot find you.
Often, a rebrand doesn’t necessarily mean that an organization is completely shifting its strategy. It might just mean that an organization has a method that they imagine in, but that strategy isn’t reflected in how the brand is showing up. When you rebrand, you’re telling consumers something latest. There’s a latest promise.
Any other advice you’d share?
BURNHAM: One other piece of advice is how you concentrate on testing. Testing, when done well, might be a tremendous strength. It allows you to get clear on what consumers want. How you interpret results becomes so necessary. You often see brave and exciting work wander away at the moment of testing because persons are expecting latest designs to be more successful than is realistic. They hear one bad comment or take the learnings of testing too literally when really it’s about digging beneath that and constructing and refining.
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