Tea Grguric, Produkty Pitania Vice-President for Marketing
— 2005-12-06 —

FOOD: Mrs. Grguric, in your opinion, what is the role of packaging as a marketing tool?

It is an essential promotion element these days. In addition to preserving goods and providing consumer information, packaging is an excellent way to market a particular brand to its target audience. Package design creates a visual image for the consumer, adding value to the product.  Attractive packages are more likely to get the consumer’s attention during that brief moment when the product catches his or her eye.

FOOD:  Recently your company redesigned its Zolotoy Petushok trademark. What prompted you to take that step?

Produkty Pitania designed its Zolotoy Petushok logo and packaging in 1998 when the company began emerging as a major player in the Russian frozen convenience foods market. Since that time, both consumer preference and the competitive environment in Russia have changed. Whereas sales and distribution were once our primary marketing priorities, we are now entering the next stage of promotion. Today we are focused on communicating the Zolotoy Petushok brand message to the Russian consumer; so we need strong branding that is both prominent and distinct. To achieve that goal, we have designed the brand’s packaging to better position its trademark.

 FOOD: What were your design objectives?

Mainly, we wanted to create an easy-to-remember brand that caught the consumer’s eye.  That’s why we redesigned the package to stand out in the grocery case. But we also had to keep our existing customers in mind. So we retained some of the package’s graphic elements, while updating others. In the end the changes amounted to only about 20% of the overall package design. 

FOOD: What practical steps were taken to address the objectives?

As I said before, we changed certain graphic elements of our logo - the font and shape - and reworked the colors to make the logo more open and friendly.  We used red and yellow to evoke a sense of vivacity and optimism. They also stand out more in the grocery case.  And we retained the logo’s circle as a symbol of friendship, and kept the same font style, with added volume for clarity. 

We then tackled the package design.  Having been tasked with developing a general package concept for the Zolotoy Petushok product line, we decided to re-work the shape of our packages.  That meant doing away with the old rounded shape by sharpening the corners to add vitality and perspective.  In the center of the package we provided a “window” so that consumers can actually see the product before buying it. On the back of the package, we added recipes for combining the product with various sauces and garnishes. And because consumer convenience is a big concern for us, we have also provided detailed consumer information in the same place on every package.

We offer three types of packages - bags, boxes, and trays, which are color-coded by product type.  For example, red is for ready-to-cook convenience foods with meat; orange, for ready to eat courses; green, for vegetable products; and yellow, for hot snacks. Each package contains the Zolotoy Petushok logo in the upper right corner with a red-checked ribbon and the always familiar red-checkered tablecloth.

FOOD: What do you hope to achieve with the redesign?

We want to convey a stronger and more recognizable brand identity that evokes emotion, while also communicating important information in a way that’s easier to read. But the redesign is only one of many ways we plan to reach out to our consumers.