Morton International has begun refreshing 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, packaging for the new line of specialty salts lacked visual cohesion, Thorne adds. “We did each product piecemeal. We weren’t overly sensitive to the implications of doing so.”
The company called on Kornick-Lindsay to spearhead a redesign effort. Among the initial moves was reviewing Morton’s visual identity. The team identified how “umbrella brands,” where the flagship brand dominates, solve branding issues.
A centerpiece of the new design strategy was leveraging the strong visual equity in the brand’s “umbrella girl” animated character. Kornick-Lindsay’s Joe Kornick recommended integrating the umbrella girl and the Morton name into a single visual element. This new “stamp” became the cornerstone of the refreshed design.
Morton determined that it needed to build the brand and individual product communication for its specialty salts around a visual hierarchy. The umbrella girl stamp is the predominant element, centered on each carton or container. A border rule frames each package front. The new design makes individual product names more prominent on each package, and the number of fonts has been significantly reduced to enhance visual continuity across the product family.
The package designs also introduce an illustration that reflects the end use for each product, such as popped kernels gracing the bottom portion of the label on containers of Popcorn Salt.
Each of these visual elements, combined with silk-screening and other printing processes in three to eight colors, raises Morton’s category profile with consumers. They give the high-end salt line a sense of quality that helps shoppers to justify the price-value relationship while providing enough design flexibility to allow each product’s brand “personality” to shine through, Thorne explains.
