Case Study

Star / The universe recreated in a brand

Visual identity Package design Packaging concept

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Context
With a ten years history, Star was one of the most popular and long lasting Romania brands of salted snacks.
Star Popcorn, Star Snacks and Star Naturals were the three brand extensions Star was making use so to activate
on different salted snacks market subcategories, namely popcorn, flavored snacks or nuts & seeds.

With year, Star’s image turned incoherent due to the successive brand extensions development with no vision of
package harmonization, which led to poor shelf impact and brand coherence.

Given the circumstances, at the end of 2009, PepsiCo’s managerial team decided to bring Star to a unitary and
full of impact visual expression.

Challenge
The brand and salted snacks market audit conducted by BrandTailors consultans revealed the fact that
popcorn, flavored snacks and nuts & seeds subcategories were fundamentally different from one another.
Furthermore, there was no other producer using an umbrella brand for all these categories, so Star was very
vulnerable in front of lots of competing strong monobrands.

Moreover, noticing that Star rather activated as a monobrand on each of the three subcategories by means of
its brand extension, rather than behaving likle an umbrella brand, was the most challenging issue to be
addressed by the re-branding process.

So, the most important and critical task BrandTailors was given was to ensure brand coherency across etire
portfolio while protecting its relevance and distinctiveness on each of the subcategories Star was marketed.

www.brandtailors.com
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 We have realized at an early stage that the key for developing an
effective re-branding solution for Star would be maintaining a
proper balance between the coherence of the brand umbrella and
Andreea Florea
the relevance of each line extension. Brand Consultant

Solution
The brand solution created for Star came from the idea of “having fun”. Star became encouraging with respect
to interaction between friends and family members, as salted snacks were being a very „playful” sort of food.
But the most full of fun thing about Star products was the diversity of shapes, textures, tastes and flavors. This
was the starting point in building the brand slogan: ”Star - Great taste for fun.”

The “infinity” symbol displayed by the new logo was used with a purpose to portray the multitude of choices
that one can make from the wide range of Star product portfolio. Benefiting from a “clean” word mark and
striking chromatic contrast, the new visual identity ensured the brand shelf impact and differentiation against
competition.

The large extent of heterogeneity among all three subcategories characteristics, addressability and associations
facilitated the development of clear brand architecture, further brought to life by the package design solution.
Star became a „universe of planets”, on each of those living different people: popcorn fans living on “Movie
Planet”, flavored snacks fans on “Fun Planet” and nuts & seeds fans on “Nature Planet.

The image of the planets, becoming a strong brand association for

Star, along with the visual territories developed according to the
specifics of each subcategory, ensures both coherence and
relevance, and furthermore, gives the brand the needed flexibility
to accommodate new brand extensions in other salted snacks
Janos Kurko
subcategories. Creative Partner

Next steps
Subsequent to BrandTailors solution being implemented on the three subcategories, the consultancy team had
the opportunity to prove new brand platform’s versatility and to develop a new line extension. So, by launching
two new potato slices SKUs, a “Joy Planet” was born.

Contribution
Brand audit - Andreea Florea, Janos Kurko
Brand strategy - Beatrice Daniș, Andreea Florea
Creative concept and package design - Janos Kurko
Image retouching and printing pre-production - Mihai Părpălea
Project management - Ilinca Apetrei, Anca Andronescu

Project implementation started in July 2010.

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