Anna Lukanina, managing director & partner of Depot WPF branding agency, explains why it is very important to consider specific national aspects, including the mentality, customs and habits of the people, their life-style and heritage when working with global brands.
Anna Lukanina
Managing director Depot WPF, Moscow Russia
board member of european packaging design association
Has over 15 years of successful experience in the sphere of brand design.
In 2002 joined the team of Depot WPF – one of leading international branding agencies based in Russia.
In 2012-2013 Anna held the post of epda president.
In 2014 recieved Philip Kotler Award for branding in Russia.
Premium Diary Brand Vysoko-Vysoko (Sky-high) for Russian and Belorussian markets.
What are the main characteristics of the diary? Why consumers should buy your product? How to say a new word in design and force the consumers to chose the new brand?
If you look at the store shelf you will discover all kinds of consumer insights reflected in the packaging design. Naturalness delivered by green fields and happy cows, freshness depicted by clean label and usage of light colors. Nutrition, right diet, true product, directly from the farm and so on.
It was a real challenge for Depot WPF to create a new diary brand that will explode the market.
Nostalgia or referring to the past as an old good time is one of the trend-setting positioning territories of today’s food market in Russia.
People continue to be reassured by things from the past, when everything was better, the food was more natural and tasty, they were happier. Nostalgia reunites us with what we loved most, or think we loved most, about the past.
We decided to use this trend as a basis but gave it another meaning. Childhood.
Depot WPF has created the dairy brand bringing back to the childhood.
When working on this project, Depot WPF paid attention to a topical problem - at the moment in Russia almost all kinds of milk available in stores have extended storage period. As a result Russian consumers believe in supermarkets it’s impossible to buy genuine, true milk – with natural taste and without preservatives.
To highlight the naturalness of Vysoko-vysoko, the agency created a bright and emotional brand associating with childhood.
We show that the world in childhood is enormous, bright and fairy. And everything in it is simple and true. Reminding people that milk is a drink from childhood we recreate the image of a sincere, promising and true product.
Vysoko-Vysoko gives us the opportunity to look at the world with the child’s eyes. Its naming, water-colour graphics of illustrations styled as if they were drawn by a child, stories from our childhood – all these elements emphasize romantic, airy and tender brand character.
Vysoko-Vysoko range includes more than 50 SKU.
Bonduelle Russia
Working with global brands it is very important to take into consideration the country features, the mentality and habbits of the people, their life-style and heritage. Although the globalisation is a common trend nowadays the tastes and expectations of consumers in different countries are various.
For this reason we in Depot WPF launched the new consulting project to help our international clients to adjust their brands to the local market.
Bonduelle vegetables are sold almost in 80 countries and are adapted to each market. The French company Bonduelle became the leader on the Russian market by means of reputation and penetration of the brand and gaining a local customer loyalty.Although Bonduelle has the international brand positioning it was crusual to help our client to suit the specific requirements of geographic regions of Russia and former Soviet republics.
Depot WPF has created the brand architecture, subnames, packaging designs and promotional concepts for the range of canned vegetables under Bonduelle umbrella.
The naming and design of all lines «Bonduelle Classic», «Bonduelle Expert», «Bonduelle Fusion» and a new category of canned steam cooked vegetables were based on local needs and trends that are “consumed” in Russia.
The basic line of Classic includes single product contents intended for universal use (corn, peas, beans, etc.).
The Expert line combines a sophisticated mix of vegetables with various sauces, for use in salads, side dishes and as an independent dishes.
«From field to table» is very popular trend in Russa. The canned vegetables are mostly used in Russia for cooking purposes and not as a dish. The canned products has so called presumption of guilt. Bonduelle concentrates on promoting a healthy lifestyle and one of the key elements of the company’s philosophy is the concern for a balanced diet and nutritional qualities of the products. For Depot WPFit was important to underline and deliver the naturlness and freshness of the vegetables and to overcome the perception of canned vegetables as less natural.
The new premium Fusion line (“Legumes du soleil” range) includes such dishes as Tuscan squash and Provencal Ratatouille.
While creating the brand we based on the specific consumer needs. The target group is mostly women with middle plus or higher income, active, working, eating more at home but aren’t making more homemade dishes. They like to travel and go out, they like fine sophisticated food but do not have time and habit to cook it. The idea was to deliver the message that Bonduelle Fusion is a restaurant style meal.
The strenghth of the brand, clear targeting to the consumer needs combined with heavy investments in sales and marketing has enabled our client to outperform the Russian market.