Billy Bee featured in Grocery Business magazine

We are very pleased to see our work on McCormick’s Billy Bee brand featured in the pages of Grocery Business magazine! The award winning bee bottle design is one of our favourites and we are so happy to have been part of helping McCormick create such a “buzz” with this new design. (sorry about the buzz thing – we couldn’t resist!)

Grocerybusiness.ca

The joy and toil of innovation

PAC members, along with our vice president Brian Hircock, reflect on the state of Canadian packaging innovation. Please click the link to read the full article.

PAC 26-33

Big rebrandings in 2012

There are some interesting recent and soon-to-be redesigns of prominent brands. Some highlights? Jaguar shifts to a fuller, chrome-like logo and font, stressing industrial innovation. USA Basketball takes its familiar “USA” wordmark and embeds it into emblem form. The Associated Press updates its look to underscore the stencil-styled “AP” with a thick red underline that evokes the news organization’s stern commitment to accuracy. Windows 8 goes minimal, and the American Red Cross channels the help-out enthusiasm of wearing lapel pins.

Canadians don’t “like” brands?

A report in the Financial Post about a new survey of over 70,000 consumers worldwide suggests that Canadians are slow to interact with brands on Facebook, Twitter, and the like. According to the report, 54% of Canadians surveyed prefer not to engage with brands online.

Canadians also seem hesitant about online commerce in general:

Many consumers are willing to research various brands, but only a small fraction (13%) are willing to make a purchase on their mobile phones. East Asian consumers, who are the leading online shoppers, are three times more likely than Canadians to conduct their shopping via a mobile phone.

However, 46% of Canadians reported a willingness to engage more significantly under the right circumstances. The onus, then, is on brands to figure out what those circumstances are and to provide them.

Food Label Trickery

Some interesting information and advice in this Healthy Living article about little not-so-white lies food packages often display. For example, “zero grams of trans fat” might not be the case. Anything below 0.5% is rounded down to zero in the nutrition facts label. Eat a ton of 0.4%-trans-fat food, and you’re getting quite a lot more trans fat than none.

Another example, “sugar free,” can be dishonest. Sugar is sometimes labeled as smaller, lesser known sugars. If you’re avoiding sugar, also avoid brown rice syrup, barley malt, caramel, fructose, fruit juice concentrate, and anything involving corn syrup.

Canada and the European Union take a positive step for organic foods

Canada and the European Union have reached a trade agreement that will standardize the certification of organic products such that what’s deemed organic here will automatically qualify as organic in Europe and vice versa. With one less certification step, the agreement makes it easier for producers of Canadian organic foods to sell their products in Europe, and for European organic products to be sold here.

More markets for our producers, more options at the grocery store? Sounds like win-win!

May Family Farms: Maple Lodge Farms sub-brand launch

Maple Lodge Farms is excited to have recently launched an extensive media campaign to introduce its new sub-brand, May Family Farms, which we’re proud to have designed. The campaign involves outdoor billboards at major city intersections; TV sponsorship ads on HGTV, The Food Network, and Slice TV (see below); ads in magazines such as Canadian Living, Today’s Parent, and Moi & La Cuisine; and Maple Lodge Farms’ first-ever social media campaign, in the form of a May Family Farms Facebook page.

Maple Lodge wanted a sub-brand that would draw on the company’s heritage and values. May Family Farms is named after the May family that started the original Maple Lodge chicken farm. A proud rooster sets the tone for the logo, whose colours evoke the traditional characteristics of a farm: brown for earth, green for grass, blue for sky.

The first product to carry the May Family Farms branding is the recently released line of gluten-free deli meats. Maple Lodge wanted to further highlight its heritage with the image of “Bompy”, the very first Maple Lodge farmer and the company’s patriarch, to complement the new branding. The rollout included over 25 SKUs with flavours ranging from the classics (Smoked, Original, etc.) to the more exotic (Thaï, Mediterranean, etc.), with many Zabiha Halal options, in full-roast and half-roast format. Packaging includes a QR code (featured in our trends for 2011) that sends your phone’s browser to the May Family Farms site. The meats are available at grocery stores and your local deli.

Watch the HGTV ad here, the SliceTV ad here, and The Food Network ad here.

We live in the future!

Or, at least, South Korea does. Virtual stores have been set up in South Korean subway stations. Commuters identify products they want to purchase simply by using their phones to scan the appropriate QR codes (which appeared in our trends for 2011). The products are then delivered to commuters shortly after they arrive at home. Neat!

Stricter allergen labelling… except for beer

Health Canada has amended the rules for food allergen labelling. The new regulations are the product of Health Canada’s consultation with industry leaders about proposed amendments.

By August 2012, food manufacturers will be required to clearly identify any allergens, gluten, and sulfites contained in their products. The new regulations also require more common and specific names for substances. For example, instead of “hydrolyzed plant protein” a label should state “hydrolyzed soy protein”, and instead of “shellfish” a label should name the particular shellfish.

For now, though, beer and the like (ale, malt liquor, etc.) are getting a free pass. The beer industry argued that such labelling is unnecessary because it’s obvious that beer contains barley and rye (and therefore gluten), and also that for smaller brewers who print directly on glass bottles instead of paper labels the labelling change would be too expensive. It’s unknown how long this exemption will last.

Otherwise, this move is an excellent step that will allow people with allergies or celiac disease to make better food purchasing decisions.

Virtual Choir

Okay, so it’s not packaging or branding. But Eric Whitacre’s Virtual Choir is a very interesting and impressive work of art that anyone with a penchant for the creative can appreciate.