Want to improve your brand’s appeal to the fast-growing Hispanic market? Strive for simplicity and clarity, and consider injecting warm colors such as red-orange into your package design.

So says Marivi Chong, a bilingual communications expert and one of the leading package designers for the U.S. Hispanic market, at R. Bird & Co., New York. Hispanic by birth and heritage, Chong also says that brand managers should offer both smaller-size and “family-size” containers; the latter appeal to Latinos and Hispanics who prepare large family meals.

Chong points to MiCasa as a product whose packaging holds strong appeal for Hispanics. MiCasa, a private-label brand distributed by Foodhold USA, Landover, MD, was launched in 2003 in 80 of the 350 Stop & Shop grocery stores in the Northeast.

The label’s four strongest design points, in Chong’s view: The logo, MiCasa, is in Spanish. The package’s tone is bilingual–variant name, net weight, nutrition facts, and ingredients. Colors on the label connote warmth. Finally, the package creates a “homey” feel. A mother, illustrated on the label, is embracing a pot.

“MiCasa packaging has taken into account the cultural part that the mother is the giver, and it presents her in portrait as the main icon, together with the logo,” Chong says.

MiCasa comprises 57 products across seven categories, from rice to dry beans to soda.

With packaging that appeals to the “Caribbean Hispanic,” the brand has driven incremental sales and profits in every category it competes in, and has helped drive sales of the grocer’s entire range of ethnic products, notes Stop & Shop’s Rob Keane.

By Rick Lingle, Technical Editor