Pevery Dairy Co.'s shift from a production to a marketing orientation has dramatically improved the awareness and image of the company's products in the two years since new brand image and packaging changes were implemented.


"Our brand image had become stagnant," says Jay Ritzen, director of brand marketing and general sales manager at Pevely.

"We also needed to update our packaging and make it more consistent. When you looked at our products on the grocery shelf, it was a real mishmash. Our logo had been pulled and stretched. The products needed a face-lift."

Before and after

Pevely implemented the changes in response to increased product competition on the grocery shelf, along with the company's desire to broaden its geographic distribution and attract more younger users. By developing a positioning statement - "The Good Taste of Good Health" - and unifying the contemporary new packaging image among all the company's brands, Pevely enhanced its niche in the overcrowded dairy market.

For 101 years, the family-owned, fully-lined St. Louis-based dairy company has been providing area residents with products such as milk, cottage cheese, yogurt, ice milk and ice cream. In recent years, it also started producing several other products such as Calcium 100, a calcium-fortified milk; Fruit-N-Cottage, a fruit and cottage cheese product much like yogurt and fruit; and an ice cream line packaged in a square, resealable container called Country Classic. Besides Missouri, all Pevely products are now also available in parts of Illinois, Kentucky, Arkansas and Tennessee.

Brand evolution

Pevely commissioned Overlock Howe Consulting Group, Inc., a brand and corporate image development firm in St. Louis, to conduct pertinent research which achieved product image and packaging improvements. Richard Overlock Howe, president of Overlock Howe, asserts that Pevely products have undergone a brand evolution.

"It's more than a design change, it's a brand evolution because packaging on a product is constantly changing," says Howe. "While the visual image is part of the brand evolutionary process, it also takes into consideration a product's positioning and brand name. Until these elements are united, marketers may not fully realize a product's prospects for success."

Howe explained his company's system for "synergizing" the three key factors - visual image, positioning and brand name that make up a brand. Before implementing expensive promotional campaigns, he advises consumer product marketers and advertising agencies to "carefully look at the brand itself."

"Brands are absolutely the most valuable assets a company owns," says Howe. "A brand identifies and positions a product, setting it apart from similar offerings in crowded markets. Brand positioning is the foundation for all product promotions, advertising and other marketing strategies. But many companies implement ad campaigns before thoroughly understanding their brand's positioning attributes and this is one of the major reasons why 80% of all new products fail."

Advice to marketers

Howe's advice to marketers is to evaluate brand positioning options, execute brand refinements, then gauge consumer reactions to tested options before implementing costly advertising or promotional campaigns. Otherwise, advertising or promotional campaigns may be off target.

"Brand positioning - strategic marketing focus - is established after studying all attributes of the brand itself, then evaluating these attributes and developing options for brand refinement," notes Howe. "The options should be tested and brand refinement prototypes should be created, then evaluated, before the final brand image is developed.

"All elements of the brand positioning mix - including logotypes, product nomenclature, packaging, copy statements, and other key elements - must work together for the product to enjoy a strong identity. The entire marketing, advertising and promotional process should be based on strategic brand positioning," says Howe.

"The visible result of brand positioning - a brand package - is the final strategic message and the very embodiment of the product being offered for sale to consumers."

According to Howe, "A well-conceived package is the product because it incorporates the positive elements of the brand's positioning as determined through research before the brand hits retail shelves and advertising and promotional support begins.

"The Pevely study shows the importance of utilizing packaging to support a brand's broad marketing strategy, but only after brand positioning alternatives have been thoroughly researched to weed out inappropriate concepts."

Focus groups

For the Pevely study, three focus groups were conducted in the St. Louis area; Pevely product users, nonusers, local residents and out-of-towners were tested. Overlock Howe researchers probed consumer reactions to eight positioning options developed for Pevely products, including "contemporary," "healthful," "old-fashioned," "taste-appeal," and "premium quality." Each was depicted in brand prototypes with different visual images.

"Consumers were not told that these were 'brand positionings,' or why the package images looked different," says Howe. "Rather, consumer reactions to what they actually saw in the prototypes were evaluated. We used these reactions to interpret which images would be most promising for the new brand positioning.

“We learned that 'taste appeal' and 'healthful' were the most important messages the Pevely brand could offer consumers. To successfully communicate these messages, we developed a positioning statement: ‘The Good Taste of Good Health.’” This was linked to a fresh, clean and uncluttered packaging image of a tranquil, but modern stylized farm scene.

The farm scene appealed to both old and new Pevely customers, combining their product interests to promote broad customer appeal, says Howe. "By broadening this image to extend across all Pevely product lines, we were able to establish a new company image for successfully launching new and existing company brands."

The Pevely name was also modified into a "controlled shape," says Howe. The "look" proved very satisfying to new customers and current users alike.

No radical changes

Ritzen says the company learned two important lessons from the focus groups: Don't make radical changes to the logo or mix drastic color combinations.

"Radical changes to the logo would have caused a loss of persona for the consumers," says Ritzen. "That's because consumers have a fixed image in their mind of what the logo should look like. We found we shouldn't stray too much from the traditional or get too wild or bizarre."

Consumers felt the Pevely logo looked best in red, even though the researchers felt the color was too warm, too harsh and too over-used on dairy product packaging. Nevertheless, that's the color of the logo on all of the products. In general, consumers who were tested favored conservative color combinations such as white, red and blue. "We found these to be the most popular," says Ritzen. Pastel colors were tested on prototypes but popular opinion on these was thumbs down.

Not even Pevely's dairy trucks got by without a makeover. The old cream and red colors were replaced by a white back ground with the stylized farm scene.

Sales soared

When the revamped products hit the grocery shelves in mid-1987, most customers liked what they saw, says Ritzen. Sales took a temporary dip for traditional Pevely products among long-time Pevely customers, but specialty product sales soared among younger consumers. For example, the Pevely Lite 1% fat milk product - appealing to the active, healthy lifestyle by showing women playing tennis - has been extremely successful among Pevely's traditionally weakest market, women aged 2540. A similar contemporary look was also created for the ice milk product, says Ritzen, incorporating the new logo and brand system. As a result, this product has also achieved dramatic sales increases. Proof of Pevely's success in its brand evolution is well documented at grocers' check out lanes: Both consumers and retailers have received the new changes favorably. Overlock Howe's study results are evidence that Pevely, a long-established and well-respected company, will continue to offer the"cream of the dairy crop" for years to come.