Cheryl Hunter (shelflife at marklives.com)’s weekly pick of recent product, packaging, design and food launches:
- New-look Stafford Bros & Draeger
- A love story — Takealot and Kalahari
- Blackberry launches the Leap
Packaging the brand value
What with so many, often conflicting, messages aimed at consumers today, there is a desire for simplicity and clarity, as well as quick brand recognition on highly competitive supermarket shelves, making packaging more relevant than ever and creating the basis for Stafford Bros & Draeger’s new look.
With the intention of keeping true to the brand’s classic origins, the new design has refreshed the packaging with product shots, colour coding and usage information to widen brand recognition and to extend the message of quality across all Stafford Bros & Draeger products.
Chris Lewis-Enright, Stafford Bros & Draeger managing director, told MarkLives that the new packaging makes both the brand and the product instantly recognisable to consumers, providing a clear and consistent brand identity across the full range.
Although the advent of DStv and programmes such as Master Chef, says Lewis-Enright, has helped educate people in the uses of products, there is still a large number of consumers who require some guidance and assistance when cooking: “We try and always give useful tips, as well as tried-and-tested recipes to help the consumer deliver the best-quality dish.”
He says packaging forms the basis of its brand value: “As an independent brand, we focus most of our efforts in-store. We do not have huge marketing-spend to push the values of the brand through above-the-line or print advertising. We need to capture the essence of the brand on the shelf, and try and depict the quality in a very short timeframe.
“Over the years, our customers have learnt to trust our brand for its quality and dependability. We wanted to keep our existing customers loyal while extending the brand to new users.”
The new packaging icon is strategically placed on every Stafford Bros & Draeger product as a symbol of its quality guarantee, meant to ensure that it makes the best use of the few seconds it has in the supermarket aisles to attract and hold consumers’ attention.
And packaging remains highly relevant in the online shopping age, too: “We need to be cognisant of how the trends are shifting within retail. We tried to cater for all shopper channels when deciding on our new design. We felt that the ‘new label’ would carry across different spectrums and appeal to a broad target market, whether online or in the store itself,” explains Lewis-Enright.
“We needed the brand to convey exclusivity, quality and still have a punchy fresh approach that caters to an online customer who is looking for consistency.”
Looking for e-love
South Africa’s two largest e-commerce players, takealot.com and Kalahari.com, have celebrated their recent merger with a tongue-in-cheek TVC that headlines a clever ad campaign, taking elements from both etailers.
Comments M&C Saatchi Abel ECD, Gordon Ray, “Mergers are normally not things you make ads about, but when two of the country’s best-loved etailers join forces to create Africa’s biggest online shopping destination, we saw an opportunity to engage both takealot and Kalahari consumers by turning a merger into the love story of the year.”
What follows is a commercial that portrays the recently made, popular Kalahari.com character, Karl-Ahari in a lonely state, searching for love on a dating app.
Follow Karl-Ahari’s journey to find love online: Facebook | Twitter | Instagram
Leaping ahead with Blackberry
BlackBerry is synonymous with security and privacy, and the new five-inch all-touch BlackBerry Leap smartphone is meant to be no different: Built for consumers and companies who value security and privacy, it’s added some attractive new features.
The BlackBerry Leap has been designed to protect user’s privacy. Equipped with support for encryption, plus built-in malware protection and backup, wipe and restore, all these functions are intended to give users control and the power to avoid falling victim to the next embarrassing, and potentially costly, cyberattack.
Launched this month in SA, the BlackBerry Leap features the latest 10.3.1 operating system, a five-inch HD display and more than a full day’s battery power.
Top features include: up to 25 hours of battery life with an 2800 mAh battery; a touchscreen keyboard that learns how you write with error correction, multi-language support, customised adaption and flow, helping to reduce mistakes; and the 10.3.1 operating system offering updated icons and an instant action bar so that users’ most commonly accessed functions are in the center of their screen.
BlackBerry Blend brings messaging and content from your BlackBerry smartphone to your computer and tablet, and BlackBerry Assistant is BlackBerry’s first digital assistant that may be used with voice and text commands to help users manage work and personal email, contacts, calendar and other applications. For more, go to BlackBerry.com/Leap.
Shelf Life is MarkLives.com’s weekly column covering new product, packaging, design and food launches. Notify us of yours at shelflife at marklives dot com. Want to sponsor Shelf Life? Contact us here.
Cheryl Hunter (@cherylhunter) has written for the South African media, marketing and advertising industries for more than 15 years. A former editor of M&M in Independent Newspapers and contributor to Bizcommunity, AdFocus, AdReview and the Ad Annual, she has also produced for various television networks and currently consults on communication strategy and media liaison.
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