Testing new pack designs with a food brand’s longtime buyers

The question

Buyers had picked up this food pack for years, and a new design would have to look new without losing the people who reach for it out of habit.

Before choosing among its agency’s designs, the brand team wanted to know which elements buyers still looked for and which could change to signal something new. It also wanted to know how the brand names on the pack should sit together, and whether each design made the food look appetizing.

Our approach

Each conversation began with people’s earliest memories of the product, so we knew what the pack meant to them before asking what could change.

The current pack went into the line-up beside the new designs, each printed as a label on a real pack, so every design was judged against what buyers already knew and could hold in the hand.

Younger and older buyers met in separate small groups, so the brand could see whether a design that kept one generation’s loyalty would also work for the other.

What the team came away with

The brand team had an element-by-element assessment of each new design and the current pack, with direction for the redesign.

It covered how the brand names sat together, the food photography, the copy and the way each variety is told apart, heard from younger and older buyers alike.

Choosing and refining a design could start from what buyers still looked for and what the brand was free to change. Every element had been judged on a real pack, beside the one buyers already knew, by the people the redesign had to keep.