BirdsEye
BirdsEye
Bringing the Captain back to the table
Challenge
For over 60 years, BirdsEye has provided healthy frozen food and created family favourites loved by generations. However, shoppers had started to turn their backs on frozen, with the category in a small, but steady decline.
At the same time, when it came to marketing itself, Birdseye had focused on a masterbrand approach, but as a result, that was all consumers saw – they couldn’t find the product favourites that they were looking for. So, the team brought us in to reinvigorate the brand and deliver its new mantra of ‘real food, simply made’ across its frozen fish range.
Solution
Our insight told us that mums fondly remembered Captain BirdsEye at their dinner tables when they were kids, so we tapped into that powerful memory and brought him back to the table after a decade cast adrift at sea. He also acts as a shortcut to those real food values and simpler times when families weren’t distracted by digital devices.
To help people understand the roles of each of the products within the coated fish and fish finger ranges, we used colour coding in a graphic banner – red for battered, blue for breaded – and also the plate pattern to identify the fish variants within each of these pillars.
This allowed mums to find the products that best suited their weekly needs, whether they chose fish fingers as the safe bet the kids will love, the breaded products as a simple homely range for the family throughout the week, or the battered range for a fish ‘n’ chips Friday night treat.
The design heroes the products and evokes memories of happy times spent together as a family – round the family dining table and at the seaside for the breaded and battered ranges respectively.
The impact
The new design makes it easier to understand a complex product architecture when walking down the frozen aisle with only a few seconds to shop. As a result, we’ve not only transformed the fortunes of the BirdsEye frozen fish range but the wider category too.
And as part of an ambitious change in marketing strategy, in 2018 BirdsEye experienced its most successful growth in over 20 years.
+51% increase in battered sales in the six months following the rebrand
+27% increase in breaded sales in the six months following the rebrand
Brandon has been a fantastic partner from start to finish; they immediately understood our challenge and offered a solution that retains the nostalgia of our brand, which consumers know and love, while building each sub-brand’s individuality. We love the new designs and hope they will catch consumers’ eyes as much as they have ours.
Steve Chantry
Marketing Director, Birdseye UK
