kellogg's goes old-school for a fresh, new look - SGK

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sketches into Adobe Illustrator files for the older images to provide a flatter look, and Photoshop for the more recent
Inspire, Create, Communicate

JAN/FEB 2014

Vintage Fresh

Kellogg’s goes old-school for a fresh, new look

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MODERN, VINTAGE, Retro packaging provides a fun peek at cereal characters’ past. By Dianna Borsi O’Brien

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reating vintage-inspired designs that stood out and provided a bridge between moms and kids was easy—all the package design team had to do was look to Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle and Pop. Kellogg’s and Anthem wanted a special design for a promotion for Target. Inspiration for the project stemmed from the 50th birthday of Toucan Sam of Froot Loops. It grew to include other Kellogg’s characters, Tony the Tiger of Frosted Flakes, and the adorable trio Snap, Crackle and Pop, who tout Rice Krispies and Cocoa Rice Krispies. Going with a vintage look was natural given the trend of nostalgia packaging, with consumers longing for the warmth and simplicity of the past, explains Rachel Johnson, director, account and strategy of the Anthem,

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Kellogg’s creative agency. It also made sense for an exclusive promotion for Target, known as a design-savvy retailer with a perchance for retro styling. Yet, the design team wanted to avoid a literal throw-back design, says Johnson, which can lead consumers to think old packaging means old product. No one wants 50-year-old cereal. That’s why the packaging harkens more to hipster than retro. “It’s taking something old and making it new,” says Johnson. The push also came from the shopper marketing insight, notes Rick Simington, Kellogg’s director of team sales for Target. “Moms really have fond breakfast memories from when they were young and they want to share those experiences with their kids.” That insight lead to a complete takeover design with amazing, flashy back panels filled with nostalgia-inducing

activities and facts for parents to share with their children. The limited-time campaign, with its offer for other vintage items such as T-shirts, has come and gone, but it remains a great study in leveraging the emotive qualities of vintage packaging with a fresh direction.

Counting on characters The design centered on the brand’s strong heritage characters and taglines. “We wanted to leverage those slogans and characters,” says Johnson. “No matter how old you are, those slogans, ‘Follow your nose,’ for Froot Loops, ‘Snap, Crackle and Pop,’ and ‘They’re great,’ resonate with you.” The redesign team began by diving into Kellogg’s treasure trove of images of the characters from throughout the decades. They literally lined up the images and choose some from each

decade starting in the 1940s. But in some ways, the project started from scratch, with new illustrations and new photography. “We didn’t just want to do old packaging that people may or may not recognize. We wanted to show how Kellogg’s does nostalgia… and help consumers remember why they love these brands,” explains Jeanne Figo Comar, director, Kellogg North America, Package Design. Simington adds, “We wanted to stay true to those brands, not stray from the strong images of Toucan Sam, Tony the Tiger and Snap, Crackle and Pop, with something kids can relate to today, ‘That’s my Tony,’ and yet something Mom could recognize from her past,” explains Simington. Once they had the looks chosen for the cereals, it was time to call in their go-to illustrator, Stephen Bailey.

“Moms really have fond breakfast memories from when they were young and they want to share those experiences with their kids.” —Rick Simington, director of team sales at Kellogg Company Powerful back panels Bailey was a natural for the project. With more than 20 years of experience in character and food illustrations especially with Kellogg’s, he also works the old fashioned way—starting with pencil and paper. To get started, he was given refer-

ence images and he worked closely with Ken Nottloli, design director at Anthem, As the project evolved, he translated the team’s vision and goals into images. “It was a real challenge, some (of the examples) were really old and created by hand on paper with paint,” says Bailey. Translating those images into the poses and shapes he needed for the various activities or facts highlighting four different decades wasn’t easy. “It was like a puzzle,” says Bailey. Each decade on the back panel image required a different vintage look for the character and the background. He transferred his initial pencil sketches into Adobe Illustrator files for the older images to provide a flatter look, and Photoshop for the more recent looks. He also created vintage-looking patterns for the backgrounds and faded the colors to visually indicate the more PACKAGEDESIGNMAG.COM

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Back panel extravaganza: Here consumers find a plethora of activities designed to reinvigorate parents’ memories and to share with their children. The art includes a beguiling feature: historic images of the characters hold cereal boxes from that era, essentially showing the characters holding pictures of themselves.

This pencil sketch by illustrator Stephen Bailey shows the vintage-inspired patterns he created for the background for each time period’s spotlight, giving them a nostalgic feel.

historic portions. In addition, each cereal’s back panel includes the vintage characters from each time period holding that era’s cereal box, so Tony the Tiger, Toucan Sam and the Snap, Crackle and Pop are holding pictures of themselves from the past.

True to type Yet, some elements remained the same; the package is still a bag and box package, the colors are unchanged—Froot

For more information, visit Anthem, www.anthemww.com Stephen Bailey, www.sbaileyillustration.com Graphic Packaging, www.graphicpkg.com Hollis Conway, www.conwayphotography.net Schawk, www.schawk.com

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Loop red, Frosted Flake blue, and the Rice Krispies lighter blue—and the taglines stayed the same. Yet, those phrases got a new look, not through the type, which was kept simple to keep the look uncluttered. Instead, the tagline on the front is huge, in fact larger than the cereal name. “We thought about Mad Men and those ad lines created way back when and we still use them and wanted that to be a part of the packaging. They are a big part of the brands and their history, so we made a big deal out of them on the package,” explains Johnson.

Fresh vintage photos But the point of the redesign was to remind consumers how much they loved the cereal—not just the package. “We wanted and hoped people would collect the packages and keep them, but we also wanted them to buy the cereals and eat them. We wanted the packages to remind them of how delicious the cereals are,” explains Johnson. To make sure the cereal images looked good, new photos were commis-

sioned. But to create a vintage feel, the cereal was photographed in a more contained way in the bowl, with less explosive splashes of milk, says Figo Comar. “Our food imagery is very important to us and we wanted to capture the food in a way that felt vintage and still represented the cereal they’d like to buy.”

Real estate results Consumers and Target liked the packages. Simington says the promotion did very well compared to a typical promotion. At Target, the cereals received additional time and space on the shelf and space on end caps and by the registers in some stores as well as a spot in its digital circular as well as a spotlight on Target.com. So now the vintage-inspired designs are just history or are other vintage looks in the works? “It’s very possible,” says Figo Comar. “There’s so much design can do, make consumers feel differently, think in a different way.” PD For articles on similar topics, visit the Food channel on PackageDesignMag.com.