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Hubertus von Kolkow
+49 731 140 36 – 10
h.vkolkow@agentur-halma.de
Food brand relaunch without alienating loyal customers
When it comes to a food brand relaunch, it’s decided early on whether your regular customers will come along or jump ship. HALMA handles such transformations for dairies, delicatessen and convenience manufacturers, as well as for suppliers in the foodservice industry. We reposition a brand without discarding the recognition that has grown over years.
A strong food brand isn’t created by chance.
A redesign involves more material than most people have in mind. Logo, color scheme, font, assortment logic, sales documents, and trade fair presence are all connected to it.
If you’re only concerned with the shell, a packaging relaunch with a new design on the same brand basis is sufficient. As soon as attitude, language, and sales arguments are also redefined, we speak of a food brand relaunch.
Before the first draft is created, we clarify what needs to remain. A color, a design language, or a pictorial mark often carries more recognition than the wordmark itself. Without this inventory, a brand relaunch throws away trust that won’t come back. Only with this foundation does the food brand relaunch move into design.
Your regular customers will recognize you even after the change
For recognition, a few key elements matter, not the complete appearance. Usually, it’s the color, variety logic, and the silhouette of the packaging that your customers have learned in the warehouse and kitchen. We consciously retain these anchors during a food brand relaunch and renew everything around them. If no one explains the change, it will cost you orders from customers who suddenly can’t find your products anymore.
The foodservice orders differently than the consumer. A kitchen manager orders by item number and out of habit, often without looking closely at the carton. To ensure this doesn’t go wrong, we plan every food brand relaunch together with sales and internal sales instead of just with marketing. Master data, EAN codes, and product images require their own timeline because wholesalers usually only update their data sheets on fixed dates. Our Food Branding provides the common thread for attitude, visual language, and tone, keeping all channels together when rebranding a food brand.
Think about the transition phase early. Old and new goods will be in storage in parallel for a few months, while catalogs and price lists are still running in the old layout. A cleanly planned brand relaunch determines in advance which materials change first and which follow.
When is your food brand ready for a brand relaunch?
Not every tired packaging needs a new brand identity. However, three signals clearly indicate that it does:
- Product range grown: The brand now carries products it was never built for.
- Target audience shifted: You’re now supplying kitchens and caterers instead of retailers.
- Appearance frayed: Labels, catalog, and website show three different brands.
If none of these apply, a food brand relaunch is rarely the right investment. In that case, a sharpened positioning, like the one our food brand development provides, is more helpful. We tell you this openly before budget flows into a redesign that your market doesn’t even demand.
A brand relaunch also rarely happens on a single deadline. Realistically, it takes 4 to 8 months from analysis to the first converted batch, depending on the product range and print lead time. Packaging data, labeling, and sales documents are technically linked, so we determine the order before the first draft. If the name or recipe changes, the LMIV (Food Information Regulation) also applies, whose mandatory information must be included on every new label from the start. Ultimately, the stock of old packaging dictates the pace. A food brand relaunch more often fails due to full warehouses than a lack of ideas.
Salomon FoodWorld renewed its corporate design with us
We renewed Salomon FoodWorld’s corporate design and, at the same time, redesigned the snack packaging. This ensured that the brand’s appearance and products were consistent, which can quickly diverge in separately awarded projects. The snack line then appeared with the same look as the catalog, website, and trade fair stand. A food brand relaunch only works when communication and product speak the same language.
Since our work on sauce labels and packaging design, Trentino Feinkost has presented a clearer brand image across its entire product range. We have also rebranded outside the food industry, for example, with the corporate design relaunch of Radio 7. That project involved a complete station appearance, while Trentino focused on a product range with many varieties. In both cases, the same question arose at the beginning: how much of the past should remain visible? From such projects, we know the typical sticking points during a redesign: approval loops, remaining stock, and retailers who need new product images.
References don’t replace an analysis of your brand. However, they prove that we think through a food brand relaunch all the way to production, not just to the mood board.
Personalized consulting for every strong brand
and those that want to become one.
Hubertus von Kolkow
+49 731 140 36 – 10 | h.vkolkow@agentur-halma.de | » To the appointment calendar
Ready for your brand relaunch in foodservice
In foodservice, your brand runs through field sales, catalogs, and the kitchen, less often through the supermarket shelf. That’s exactly where the food brand relaunch must first take hold, on packaging photos, data sheets, and sample cartons. Our foodservice marketing provides the right arguments for purchasing and kitchen management. Analysis, design, and the management of the transition come together with us as a brand relaunch agency with a food focus, instead of being spread across three service providers. This keeps the transition on track when labels, catalogs, and website change one after another. We sort out which carriers go to print first, which remaining stock can run out, and when the field sales team receives the new documents.
Do you want to know how much substance your brand still carries today? First, get a sober evaluation of your appearance and send us packaging, catalog, and a few sentences about your product range. HALMA will then check which elements remain, what needs to be new, and in what order the food brand relaunch will cause the least friction for you.
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Here's everything we can do for you!
Radiance for Brands
One team – one idea – one strategy. Our goal: the lasting success of your brand. With strategic communication, we holistically strengthen your brand identity and make you visible. With strong namings, concise slogans, creative logos, and individual design, we give you the right corporate design in addition to the right strategy.
Focus through Print
Emotional and valuable: Print touches and has a lasting effect. With more than just a very good eye for typography, image editing and illustration, we design your brochures, magazines, catalogs, books, advertisements, posters, flyers, mailings and everything else that can be printed and refined.
Magic with Technology
Long live individuality – especially when we make it responsively experienceable! Whether it's web development, content management, shop systems, digital publishing, newsletters, or individual applications – we don't offer pre-made websites or modular solutions. With us, your wishes define the result and the experience.
Movement in the game
We teach your message how to run: Lights, camera, action! From the first storyboard, to emotional sounds and cool effects, all the way to the final cut, we handle everything that satisfies your users' need for information and entertainment. The result: films and animations that are not only moving, but also moving.
Relevance for everyone
Inform, advise, entertain: Whether it's a comprehensive content strategy, storytelling, or individual content for print and online media – we offer your target group crucial informative added value and place it in the right context.
Form with function
Functionality, haptics, emotionality: convincing factors when it comes to your product's packaging, an unusual idea for your product launch, or a creative mailing. We create packaging in all possible shapes and with unusual techniques. Because everyone knows: the first impression is what counts!
Lights out, spotlight on
Your perfect appearance is important to us, which is why we put you and your event in the right light. From a complete exhibition stand or an all-round package for your event to LED hoardings, digital steles, displays, tailor-made guidance and orientation systems, or even individual event materials.
Likes, likes & liiiikes
Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and co.: taking into account their individual strengths, we'll make your social media channels glow with the right strategy, a crisp message, or a cool animation.
