We’ve all been there. You’re in the supermarket aisle, weighing the pros and cons of buying the name brand product you set out to buy or its slightly less expensive store brand counterpart. Reynolds Wrap knows you face this dilemma when you are considering which box of foil to purchase—you perceive Reynolds Wrap to be stronger, more versatile, and more durable. Is it worth the saved cents to buy the store brand, possibly risking the known quality you would get from Reynolds?
Reynolds turned to CBX, a strategic branding company based in New York City, who has worked with Reynolds on several initiatives over the past decade, to help rebrand its line of foils. “To reinforce Reynolds’ leadership position, justify its price, and communicate the differences among its products, we introduced a value system,” explains Rick Barrack, chief creative officer at CBX. “A ‘good-better-best’ system added value, allowed room for product extensions, and reinforced customer loyalty, all while maintaining brand equity.”
Simple core values
Heritage, trust, and strength come into play when competing against the growing success of private labels. Reynolds Wrap is a brand that consumers have known all there lives. “They know it’s stronger and more durable and therefore they know they can trust it,” explains Barrack. “The design is a strong, more masculine design playing to Reynolds strength.”
Because Reynolds is so established, the trust aspect was really important to give consumers a rationale to purchase Reynolds over the private label brands. A new ribbon under the logo was developed that reads: “Trusted since 1947.”
Consumers can instantly recognize the Reynolds Wrap package. Therefore, much of the original design remains, such as the large logo on left of package, blue background, and silver tri-arches at the pack’s end. These elements take up more than half of the package.
“We really played to the heritage of Reynolds Wrap. It’s a brand that’s been around for a long time. Women remember their mothers using it, and now they can rely on it,” says Barrack. “The package stays true to its traditional look and leverages the equities, such as the large Reynolds logo and blue background, elements that make the package stand out in the consumer’s mind.”
Because this is a functional product, the graphics were simplified to be clean, bold, simple and clearly defined. Barrack adds: “We referenced other brands in the marketplace that have been around for a long time but are now visually less complicated. Simplicity is the key.”
Reynolds’ core product maintains the salmon color that many consumers recall as part of the brand. For the “better” item, Heavy Strength, the “heavy duty” aspect of it was played up a bit more, using a stronger font and maintaining the silver end. The “best” item, Super Strength, uses a gold color on the text and on the end for differentiation. The item that was formerly called Release was redesigned to fit more snugly with the core line leveraging the Reynolds equities. It was renamed Non-Stick to immediately communicate the benefit to consumers, and the text is yellow with a yellow end.
Alongside all of this redesign, a new product was launched called Reynolds Pro-Grille: a superior quality product with non-stick, heavy strength, and extra width features. Illustrations of barbecue tools and a red end corridor establish the new Reynolds Pro-Grille foil as a necessary tool for outdoor grilling. With this new position and packaging, Reynolds gained distribution through a new channel and is selling Pro-Grille exclusively at Lowe’s in the grilling products section.
Easier on the environment
Reynolds took this redesign opportunity to move to a smaller core package. The same amount of square footage of foil is included in each package, but the spool that the foil wraps around was shrunk, therefore also making the box smaller, using less material and taking up less space in shipping, on shelves, and in kitchen drawers. The printing inks are water-based and the box is made of 100% recycled paperboard. Because of the decreased size of the package, there is less vertical height to make an impact on store shelves. “Because of this, straigh forward, impactful elements were used to communicate what the consumer needed to know,” Barrack says. The design philosophy is to “communicate what the consumer needs to know at shelf and provide stopping power as opposed to inundating with too many messages.”
“We refer to Reynolds as our friendly kitchen helper,” says Barrack. “It’s the brand I know and trust. So while we have simplified the design to make it more contemporary, we’ve also taken into consideration the fact that Reynolds has always been there for Mom in the kitchen. That approachability factor needed to be maintained.”