Concluding a yearlong study, U.S. food company John Wm. Macy’s has unveiled a new brand identity. With a new logo and redesigned retail packaging, the company will do business as John Wm. Macy’s Family Bakery.

“This year we’re celebrating the fortieth anniversary of the CheeseSticks recipe that launched our business,” said John Macy, founder and president, “but we thought we could do a much better job reaching consumers. We think our new branding and packaging will help us do that.”

In January 2016, John and Tim appointed Zunda Group, a branding and package design specialist based in South Norwalk, Connecticut, to rebrand the business and its packaging.

Zunda Group kicked off the process by hosting a brand-building workshop for John Wm. Macy’s family members, sales team and key marketing advisers for an exchange of ideas. Input from the workshop established initial branding priorities and led to the development of 18 preliminary design concepts. Subsequent dialogue between Zunda Group and its client refined the priorities and narrowed the field to four revised design concepts for presentation to focus groups.

“We had our own design favourites going into the focus group meetings,” said Tim Macy, “but feedback from consumers made it clear there was more to learn.” After six focus group sessions, two leading designs emerged.

Conducting additional quantitative research would have broken the project timetable, so the company says it developed and distributed an online survey to its 5,000-member consumer email-marketing list. The survey produced a clear favourite and set the stage for studio photography and final design work.

Zunda Group
www.zundagroup.com