The Call
With more than 125 years of expertise, Purina Mills, a division of Land O’Lakes, is the leader in animal nutrition and innovation, keeping giant populations of livestock and lifestyle animals healthy and strong. But with 87 sub-brands and 340+ products, managing the brand consistently had its challenges—an underutilized brandmark and fragmented packaging system helped foster consumer confusion.
We crafted a portfolio architecture to optimize and unify the product portfolio under a more powerful Masterbrand with enough flexibility to work across all species, reducing 87 independent, confusing offerings into 16 strategic sub-brands.
What we did
Portfolio Architecture
Design Strategy
Brand Voice
Packaging Design
The Work
The architecture construct grew directly from the masterbrand vision, “Feed Greatness.” We organized the portfolio by species and across two variables: life stage, to nurture and support animal growth; and 3, to help animals achieve their full potential.
The newly organized framework helped us create a fixed and flexible packaging design system to clearly communicate what’s inside. Fixed elements communicate masterbrand principles and tie the portfolio together: iconic red and white colors signal “Purina,” a brandmark block anchors the same spot on every pack, and the animals are always front and center. Flexible elements are used only to communicate product: species, lifestage, and solutions.
The Impact
The communication hierarchy makes it much easier for people to shop and find what they need—so much so, that in a research study, nearly two-thirds of non-users said they were more likely to consider feeding Purina to their animals based on the new design.
I really appreciated the diversity of talent they have at CBX and how they utilized a cross-functional approach during the creation of our Purina brand architecture and subsequent package design. They took a holistic business approach to solving the entire brand problem.
Steve Vekich, Purina Mills, Director of E-Commerce & Channel Marketing
