Who hasn’t delighted at the sight of a Pepperidge Farm cookie bag? The Milanos, Genevas, Chessmen, and the tempting variety of oversized, chock-full-of-chocolate chip cookies. What is it about the sight of these wonderful little bags that elicits a visceral response from people of all ages? If I told you it was the color white, would you believe me? Is white even a color? Actually, what sets these cookies apart from all the other choices in the cookie aisle is the white bags. These are Pepperidge Farm’s power branding signals, the points of touch or interactions with a brand that have the greatest impact on how we think about and remember the brand. Power branding signals are the things in which smart brands make the greatest investment. Pepperidge Farm is a smart brand and understands its power signals and how to keep them as fresh as its products.
I spoke to Julia Beardwood, who worked with me at Landor on an assignment we had a while back to help Pepperidge Farm revitalize its branding. We talked about the process it went through to ensure the power of its signals remained strong.
AA: Pepperidge Farm is a genuine homegrown company. It started out in a family kitchen in Connecticut.
JB: That’s right. It was back in the 1930’s. Margaret Rudkin, a housewife and mother, discovered that one of her sons had an allergy to the commercial breads that contained preservatives and artificial ingredients. She began baking her own preservative-free bread and at the suggestion of her friends and family, began selling the bread through local grocers. Pepperidge Farm was the name of the family farm.
AA: The position the company established from the start was based on the idea that its products were freshly baked.
JB: Yes, and that’s what led to the packaging it adopted early on. When the products were first sold in the local grocery stores, customers took them home in the simple, white bags used by these shop owners. As it grew, Pepperidge Farm didn’t want to lose the association between the little white bags and fresh-baked goodness. It’s a compelling message that differentiates the brand.
AA: And the Pepperidge Farm logo also reinforced this fresh baked idea – right?
JB: Yes, the Pepperidge Farm name implies there was a real Pepperidge Farm somewhere, which there was. So the company had a logo with a snow-covered farmhouse. People sparked to the associations it evoked, even though they knew, rationally, it was kind of make-believe. “Oh, I know it’s not actually where all these cookies come from, but I like to think it is,” sort of thing.
AA: The reason we were asked to work with Pepperidge Farm is because it realized the packaging and the farmhouse logo, itself, could use a little revitalization.
JB: The packaging had begun to look dated, even the wonderful cookie bags. And it was a time when Pepperidge Farm was adding tons more products to its lines, with multiple brand managers doing their own thing, creating individual packaging for each new product. There was nothing to guide them on what Pepperidge should look like, and consequently the brand’s identity was all over the place. The company understood that this brand is driven by its in-store presence and that a consistent identity would help the brand get the most impact out of its expansion.
We started out by talking to both Pepperidge Farm lovers and occasional users, and discovered that both could wax eloquently on the wonderful white bags, which was very good. The idea of the farmhouse was important, but no one could really remember what the logo looked like and were pretty horrified when we showed it to them. One of them called it “the Bates Motel of farmhouses.” This was a critical piece of information. We didn’t want Pepperidge Farm to lose the sense of place that was so essential to how people thought about the brand.
AA: That house had a lot of equity. If I remember, we needed to make it more relevant. We had to “Martha” the house.
JB: That’s right. We redesigned it as if Martha Stewart had undertaken a beautiful renovation of an charming old New England farmhouse. We made it look warm and inviting. We even added more snow to the scene so it blended seamlessly with the white of the bag. The color white is a very powerful signal for them and we wanted to ensure we kept everything that was working, just pump it up a bit.
AA: The other power signal that’s both on the cookie bags and in the cookie bags seems like a small thing, but it’s actually a very big thing – the little paper cups that hold the cookies. They’re subtle, but powerful.
JB: Those paper cups emotionally elevate the experience of a Pepperidge Farm cookie from something ordinary to something extraordinary. The promise of the brand is that no matter when you eat a Pepperidge Farm cookie it’s bound to feel more special. In fact, simply picturing these individual paper cups that held the cookie on the outside of the packaging really communicated the brand’s “something extraordinary” positioning.
AA: What lessons did you take away from our experience with Pepperidge Farm that you could apply to other branding assignments?
JB: First, you have to know what the brand owns – strategically and visually. We talked to a lot of consumers at the outset and used various techniques to understand what the brand was all about.
AA: The brand was already well loved, so you wanted to preserve what was working and make it more relevant.
JB: That’s right. Then you need consistency across product lines. Pepperidge Farm has hundreds of products. The brand identity system we created for them linked the ideas of authenticity, sense of place, and home-baked goodness to everything it produced. The brand has enormous equity in its packaging. It’s a very strong power-branding signal. We wanted to ensure we took full advantage of this equity, but made it relevant to a new generation of customers. Third, you need to make sure everyone involved with creating brand materials understands the visual equities and how to use them effectively through guidelines.
AA: The color white is a power signal for Pepperidge Farm, as are the shape of the packaging and the cozy house, not to mention the quality of the products inside all this packaging.
JB: Yes. The primary means of communicating the Pepperidge Farm brand idea is the packaging. The proof of the promise is what’s inside.
AA: I can vouch for that.
