Tomi: the ketchup with attitude
25 June 2009 | By Popsop Team
In 2005 the Romanian branding agency Brand Tailors Romania redesigned the range of ketchups Tomi produced by the national company Orkla Foods.
Situation
The Romanian ketchup market was made up of entirely local producers, Orkla Foods Romania being the detached leader of the category by means of its Tomi and LaMinut portfolio brands. At the time, the government introduced a new fiscal policy regarding food product imports that created a tremendous opportunity for international producers to enter the Romanian ketchup market.
Orkla Foods Romania anticipated this market threat and decided to get a head start and enforce Tomi’ s brand equity in order to be able to withstand a potential attack from any international new comers.
Challenge
Orkla Foods Romania appointed BrandTailors to revisit Tomi’s brand platform in order to preserve the existing strong brand associations and to create new relevant ones in order to generate loyal behavior among existing consumers.
BrandTailors faced the challenge of anticipating a potentially complex transformation of consumers’ motivation and needs with regards to ketchup that might be induced in the following years by the international brands.
Solution
Following an in depth qualitative research to explore all possible consumer motivations and needs connected with ketchup and an extensive quantitative research conducted in order to measure their importance and potential, BrandTailors saw the opportunity of Tomi’s migration into the “vitality” positioning territory while preserving its “pleasure of taste” and “fun-making” brand associations.
Thus Tomi was transformed into a self-confident, full of attitude character, who has the power to make fun of itself. The new “think up side down” positioning proposition was illustrated into a more dynamic logo design and a new package concept.
Based on the importance of showing the product origin on the label, the brand symbol – “funny tomato” – was given a distinctive personality in line with each of the SKU’s flavor character by a spirited mixture of ketchup ingredients. So Tomi became “sweet like an angel” – classic flavor, “angry like a torro” – hot flavor, “rebellious like a punker” – garlic flavor.
The tomatoes: the rebel, the sweet angel, the angry bull and the italian chef
Results
The new package design generated an instant 35% growth in volumes within the first couple of months from its introduction onto the market unassisted by other brand communication support. Tomi not only preserved its detached leadership position in the category, but also recruited new users from the competition.
Popsop.com
Tags: food
