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Milk-Bone Rebrand Affirms That ‘Life’s More Fun with a Dog’

Leading dog treats brand Milk-Bone refreshes its look, wrangling 80 dogs in a photo shoot to capture the most tail-wagging, smile-inducing images for its iconic red packaging.

The new packaging is being used for 25 SKUs of the brand’s biscuits, chews, treats, and supplements.
The new packaging is being used for 25 SKUs of the brand’s biscuits, chews, treats, and supplements.

Pure doggie joy—that’s the emotion that comes through on new packaging for The JM Smucker Company’s Milk-Bone dog biscuit brand. The smile that crosses the consumer’s face upon spotting the new branding on the store shelf is the result of a partnership between the JM Smucker team and brand strategy and design agency CBX that involved work on research and insights, brand architecture, design strategy, identity design, package design, and a photo shoot with 80 dogs.

Born in  New York City 1908, Milk-Bone has been the category leader in dog treats for much of its 100-plus-year history, begging the question, why rebrand? “I think two reasons,” says Ryan Thomas, VP of Marketing, Pet Division, The JM Smucker Company. “One, Milk-Bone is a healthy brand. And a healthy business is one that is constantly looking back at itself and seeing what it can do better. As a brand team, as good brand stewards over the past two years, we had stared at the brand and said, we can do better on our packaging. Our brand deserves to be in the 21st century, to be blunt.

“The other driving force was that our country had changed. We knew that many millennial and Gen Z households were having their first fur babies to start their families. There was just a cultural shift in dog parents in general, and what those dog parents are expecting, and how they ‘treat’ that moment with their pet.”

The Milk-Bone packaging BEFORE (l.) and AFTER the redesign.The Milk-Bone packaging BEFORE (l.) and AFTER the redesign.As with most iconic brands, the challenge was to retain enough of the existing brand elements to ensure consumers still recognized the brand on-shelf, while providing a fresh, modern feel. “The biggest concern is we are a 113-year-old brand, and we have a household penetration that is the highest in the category—our awareness is really high,” says Thomas. “So, people know Milk-Bone, they know the box, our loyalty rates are some of the highest in the category. We also know from research that consumers shop by the image of the dog that’s on the front of our package. Disrupting the neurological habitual pathways that have been created is dangerous. If it takes them more than a quarter of a second more than it did last time to shop and find their favorite treat, that’s a problem. I think that was what kept me up at night.”

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