How we cracked the nut industry

Listen

Nuts are big busi­ness. With the UK mar­ket val­ued at £317m and con­sumers buy­ing into pro­tein pow­er, Sun Val­ley had an oppor­tu­ni­ty to play to their strengths. We con­duct­ed desk­top research to under­stand their wide and var­ied audi­ence, from food buy­ers in the hotel, retail and leisure indus­tries to consumers.

A fac­to­ry tour also gave our team a unique insight into the man­u­fac­tur­ing process. Our con­ver­sa­tions helped us to start defin­ing strat­e­gy and devel­op­ing a brand hier­ar­chy for their mul­ti-faceted business.

Plan

We began by devel­op­ing a propo­si­tion. It had to appeal to two audi­ences: those who buy nuts and those who con­sume them. Four ter­ri­to­ries were iden­ti­fied that Sun Val­ley could own: Expe­ri­ence (Estab­lished in 1949); Craft (finest nat­ur­al ingre­di­ents); Pas­sion (com­mit­ted and dri­ven staff); and Charm (fam­i­ly-run, not a face­less corporation).

We set about explor­ing these brand pil­lars, refin­ing and test­ing them. The result was ​‘Seri­ous­ly Nuts’ – a brand posi­tion­ing that could be dialled up or down, depend­ing on their tar­get audi­ence. For instance, cor­po­rate lit­er­a­ture would have a more seri­ous tone, where­as a con­sumer ad might have a more play­ful, ​‘nut­ty’ feel.

Deliver

We refreshed Sun Valley’s pack­ag­ing with a new type­face and design, which was imple­ment­ed across their entire range, from 50g pack­ets to 1kg cater­ing bags. The prod­uct names remained the same, but the descrip­tions changed, as we tried to inject some of our new ​‘Seri­ous­ly Nuts’ posi­tion­ing into the brand.

The new look was launched at the Food Ingre­di­ents Europe Show 2017 in Frank­furt, where we designed a dynam­ic exhi­bi­tion stand, fea­tur­ing a world map made entire­ly of nuts, com­ple­ment­ed by brand­ed give­aways and leaflets.

Work is ongo­ing and we’re look­ing for­ward to help­ing bring some excit­ing new co-brand­ed prod­ucts to mar­ket as Sun Val­ley con­tin­ues to be inno­va­tors in the snack food industry.