Fred Meijer delighted in walking through his stores, meeting customers and handing out coupons for free ice cream at Meijer’s Purple Cow ice cream shops. Inspired by Fred’s genuine gesture of kindness, COHO created a brand strategy and design system for Purple Cow that expresses the youthful joy and delight of ice cream.
The refreshed brand identity centers on the heritage character of the “original” Purple Cow. COHO gave the cow a more engaging expression, communicating the brand’s playful, young-at-heart character and the evolved purpose, “Delightfully Good Dairy.”
The packaging design for the core brand lineup provides an intuitive versioning system for shoppers navigating Purple Cow’s traditional flavors. Detailed product photography plays against banner colors that do double duty as a holding device for the Purple Cow brandmark while cueing flavor. A joyful and festive background pattern adds to the playfulness of the design.
Together, the design elements work to create stopping power and encourage shoppers to take a closer look at the delightful brand behind the glass door of the freezer case. Joyful — but not overly embellished — the system works within Meijer’s overarching private label brand strategy that’s committed to being honest in its approach of offering quality, affordability, and value.
With the core packaging system established, COHO worked with Meijer to extend the brand into gourmet and limited edition seasonal flavors. In the gourmet design system, multiple type styles and hand-drawn illustrations burst against a white background to convey unexpected flavors and ingredient combinations.
Designs for limited edition flavors heighten the feeling of whimsy, with illustrations and typography that evoke familiar sights and scenes of seasons and locations.
The best thing about our redesign for Purple Cow? It’s boosting the brand and helping Meijer drive store traffic and win customer loyalty. Purple Cow saw a significant increase in sales in the first nine months after launch.
But wait, there’s more! The Purple Cow believes you should be able to experience joy in whatever frozen form you fancy. This robust design system easily extends to your favorite ice cream treat or frozen novelty too.
EXPERTISE APPLIED
