Welch's Rolls Out New Look and Label Design

New Look Emphasizes Heritage, Brand Name and Natural Goodness of Products

Concord, MA, June 1, 1997

Welch's has unveiled a new, more contemporary look and packaging label designed to increase brand name visibility, as well as emphasize Welch's heritage and the natural goodness of its products. The new Welch's product packaging, which replaces a 12 year-old design, begins its national roll-out this month.

The cornerstone of this new design is a dynamic brandmark for Welch's, set in a new ribbon style banner above the words "SINCE 1869".

"Last year, Welch's conducted a major brand equity study. The results of this research have guided us in developing new product packaging, advertising and promotional programs," said Dan Dillon, president and chief executive officer of Welch's. "The study underlined Welch's strengths as a high quality, heritage brand that is positively associated with childhood and family, indelibly linked to the high impact taste of Concord grapes."

The Welch's packaging re-design was handled by The Coleman Group of New York, a strategic brand image consultancy whose research-based approach has made it a leading designer of national brands.

"Our design objectives included better communication of Welch's product benefits. Interestingly, we found that purple is a key equity element for Welch's core grape packaging, even though our current labeling is blue. One simple yet critical change was the use of a 'signature' purple color to reinforce the unique high impact taste of Welch's Concord Grapes," said Dillon.

The new look is designed to imbed core equity elements into the Welch's brandmark to enhance shelf impact. A key criteria was the development of a packaging architecture that could be implemented across the entire 160-plus SKU Welch's line, and could accommodate planned new product introductions.

"Since there is such a wealth of applications, we wanted to build as much brand equity into the mark as possible while creating an element that would lend consistency across all product lines," stated Dillon.

Follow-up research has shown that the packaging design changes have significantly increased the branding and retail shelf impact of Welch's juice products. "The key changes for all packages is a slightly modified version of Welch's current logo set in a more dimensional ribbon panel," he said. "For the core grape packages, the cluster of grapes visual was repositioned to the lower right corner and rendered in a large, more realistic and appetizing manner."

Welch's, headquartered in Concord, Massachusetts, is the world's leading marketer of Concord and Niagara grape-based product, including grape juice and jelly. The Company also produces a variety of other fruit-based products including blended fruit juices and cocktails, fruit juices in both the frozen concentrate and shelf-stable concentrate form (JuiceMakers), and an assortment of jams, jellies and preserves under both the Welch's and BAMA brand names.

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