Run your eye along the dairy shelves at any supermarket… and try to distinguish one milk brand from another.
Boxer & Co also noticed the problem when it was given the brief to redesign Western Australian dairy brand Brownes’white milk packaging. So the design company set about solving it. Colour was identified as the key component.
“In the design solution for Brownes White Milk, provenance and purity both took a leading role. The design solution focuses on colourful Western Australian sunsets, which flood the Tetra packs with variant colour, making navigating the range incredibly simple. Dairy cows are silhouetted in front of the setting sun, demonstrating the straight-from-the-farm nature of the product, but taking a step away from the typical green grass, blue sky, black and white cow that’s so formulaic on milk packaging,” said Natalie Sarich-Dayton, Brownes marketing director.
Brownes already held a 30% market share in the white milk category, but its old packaging was extremely rational and one dimensional.
“WA consumers have a real affection towards the brand that has been supplying them with local, quality milk since 1886, but the packaging didn’t reflect this relationship and made no emotional connection with the consumer. It also looked dated and lacked shelf shout,” Boxer & Co managing director, Gwen Blake, remarked.
With the increasing market share that private label was achieving, Brownes knew it needed to set its brand on a higher pedestal and emphasise the brand’s credentials.
Mark Haygarth, creative director, Boxer & Co, explained, “It was important that we kept Brownes focused on their number one position, creating a pack that really connects with consumers by reminding them of the Brownes they have grown up with, but doing so with a fresh, modern approach.”
The hand-crafted typography on the front of pack is a nod towards Brownes’ heritage, and is also executed to cue modernity and provide a strong on-shelf legibility. The design wraps around the pack, forming a Western Australian landscape which is unique to each pack, and also tessellates on-shelf across variants. In the specialty range, people are added to the horizon, playing out scenes that are relevant to each variant – on the Junior Milk, a child is flying a kite, for example.
Sarich-Dayton commented, “We knew we needed to invest in refreshing the pack design of our entire milk portfolio. Our new packaging needed to achieve real impact on shelf and also tell the Brownes story, of an innovative, contemporary company with a deep passion and heritage in WA Dairy. We invested a lot in strategic research and wanted a specialist packaging design agency that had the capability to translate the insights and understanding into something really creative and engaging. Boxer & Co. really hit the mark; their creative portfolio coupled with their proprietary strategic approach proved to us that they could deliver.”
“We knew, too, that we were working with experts from day one – Boxer & Co. clearly digested our brief, challenged us where appropriate, presented a thoughtful and in-depth strategic piece and delivered seamlessly at the back end of this large project. We are thrilled with the results for our Brownes White Milk range and can’t wait to see it on shelf.”
