Blue Marlin refreshes Yeo Valley dairy range

Blue Marlin, the independent global brand consultancy, has carried out a major redesign project for Yeo Valley Organic, the grocery market's biggest organic dairy brand.

The revamp, designed to appeal to a mass-market organic audience, includes packaging for Yeo Valley's entire dairy portfolio, including adult and children's yogurts, cheese, butter, cream, creme fraiche products and premium dessert ranges.

Blue Marlin, which won the redesign task in May 2007 after a competitive three-way pitch, has worked with Yeo Valley Organic since the brand's launch in 1993 and was responsible for a previous redesign in 2002.

It was briefed to communicate through packaging the Yeo Valley Organic brand's new proposition, 'Created with principles you can taste'.

The Yeo Valley Organic brand has achieved phenomenal success since its launch in 1993 and is now worth GBP88m at retail, growing by 30 per cent year on year.

However, it wanted to modernise its packaging to stay ahead of a fast-moving marketplace and to firmly establish itself as the 'first choice' in organic dairy.

The brand's objective is to make its products mainstream and accessible to all, including so-called 'organic dabblers', whom it wants to convert to regular users, as well as slightly younger consumers in their mid-20s.

The new look is designed to be approachable, rather than worthy, and to appeal to a mass-market audience.

Using bold, flat colours, it gives a contemporary, modern twist to the brand's established 'valley' design, with two rolling hills overlapping at the front of the pack.

On every pack a tiny silhouette of cows now appears on the left hill, underlining the brand's farming history, heritage and bringing depth to the hills.

As well as reinforcing the fact that Yeo Valley is an actual place in the West of England, the stylised 'valley' device also acts as a 'flexible architecture', with the 'hills' colour-coded to differentiate between product categories: for example, whole milk products feature green hills, fat-free products, blue, and premium desserts, cream.

Bold, beautiful natural photography of fruit and flowers, representing generosity, bounty and abundance, is also a key feature of the new design.

Blue Marlin Creative Director Chris Hart said: "Yeo Valley Organic has a reputation for great tasting products made with real quality ingredients; however, the current packaging was starting to look dated and disparate.

"The new design uses contemporary brand architecture to unite the whole YVO range from core yogurts through to compotes.

"The strong graphic hills, fresh colours and mouth-watering photography create strong shelf blocking and sign posting".

Ben Cull, Yeo Valley Organic Marketing Director, said: "Both the revised identity and the packaging will reflect our brand values: Blue Marlin achieved this through a contemporary new look design that has strong shelf impact.

"The use of coloured hills and large fruit photography will help customers differentiate between products and flavours".

Products will be on shelf from January 2008 at Sainsbury's, Tesco, Asda, Waitrose and Budgens.

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