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Morton seasons dowdy category's profile

Venerable salt marketer is moving its specialty salts into new packaging that leverages equities of the iconic ‘mother’ brand but also gives each new product its own personality.

Pw 9052 Morton Classic Cylinder 26oz

Can the owner of an iconic brand successfully give a newer line of products their own distinctive visual identities while also reflecting key visual equities of the “mother” brand?

Morton International thinks so, and it has begun refreshing the package designs for its stable of specialty salts, which have been on the market for several years. This is a tall order that the Chicago-based company—historically not one for frequent packaging changes—is pursuing carefully. Why? The company’s flagship Morton Salt is one of the nation’s most trusted brands. Its dark blue-labeled, cylindrical basic table salt package is a staple in many kitchen pantries, and Morton doesn’t want consumers to lose identity with the core brand.But specialty products seem to be where the growth is in household salt, a category where overall sales are flat.

“People are not cooking as much as they did. They’re eating out more often,” says Earl Thorne, director of brand development. “But products such as kosher salts and sea salts are growing in interest among the ‘foodies,’ the people who watch cooking programs on TV and who have dinner parties and are weekend chefs.”

Although Morton’s periodic introductions of new salts have stirred interest in a new clientele of younger consumers for the brand, they have also created marketing challenges, Thorne adds. “We did each product piecemeal. We weren’t overly sensitive to the implications of doing so. And we found that people were not aware of the newer products or, more disturbingly, were not aware the products were associated with Morton.”

Morton identified the packaging for these products as a culprit. Periodic product introductions meant that each new product was packaged in containers or cartons with a variety of different looks. The specialty salts lacked cohesion, and visual disparity makes the aisle’s generally small packages even more difficult to shop.

One of the Morton brand management team’s first steps in correcting these flaws was to take stock of Morton visual brand equities. The company called on Kornick-Lindsay (www.kornicklindsay.com), a design innovation and development firm in Chicago, to spearhead the effort.

Umbrella identity

Among the initial moves was reviewing Morton’s visual identity. The team identified how “umbrella brands,” where the flagship brand dominates, solve branding issues. “The challenge in developing an umbrella brand identity is determining what is the family’s identity vs. the individual product identities,” says Joe Kornick, principal at Kornick-Lindsay. “Getting that balance right is the trickiest part of design for this type of product.”

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