The Pom bread brand dates back to the Klondike Gold Rush and the last term Sir John A. MacDonald, so it might be time for a bit of a face-lift.
For its 130th birthday, Bimbo Canada is making Pom its latest brand to get a masterbrand-focused redesign, along with a shopper marketing campaign to introduce Quebecers to the new look and provide the value they are looking for.
Shopper elements have a festive, celebratory feel of a birthday, featuring products from across Bimbo’s lines and promoting a contest giving away 130 prizes for each of Pom’s 130 years. Elements include liner racks, side carts, corrugate displays, shelf blades, danglers and shelf talkers. There will also be digital support, communicating the promotion on Facebook and also through IGA, Metro, Super C and Walmart banners in Quebec.
“If you go out and say ‘we are celebrating 130 years’, consumers don’t necessarily have a reason to get behind you,” says Tania Goecke, senior director of marketing at Bimbo Canada, hence incentivizing them with $20,000 worth of prizes in the form of grocery gift cards.
The campaign is also happening during the back-to-school season; at the time of planning, Goecke says the brand didn’t necessarily know what has typically been an important season for the brand would look like, but did know anything that provided extra value to consumers would be welcomed, due to ongoing economic concerns.
Bimbo Canada worked with Brandbourg, having previously worked with the packaging agency to breathe new life into Bon Matin and to add visual clarity to the premium Boulange des Campagnards line. Goecke says the Pom design reboot is the next natural step in Bimbo’s brand refresh efforts, which have also included a redesign of Dempster’s and which will soon move to Villaggio. She says the company is going through its major brands sequentially, looking at how each is positioned in the market and establishing a strong master brand tonality for a more coherent look.
The Pom update is a subtle one, making the brand’s signature “three bakers” slightly smaller and balancing the proportions of the Pom name for look that is more modern, without losing recognition.
“We tried to be playful with [the baker] on pack, and put them in different places and actually bring them to life more,” Goecke says, but it was met with resistance during test, showing that consumers weren’t interested in a big departure. Pom also has extremely high awareness, trial and penetration in Quebec, and maintaining decades of brand equity was a key part of the redesign.
Bimbo had also taken a more segment-first design with Pom’s packaging, says Goecke, but like with Bimbo’s previous redesigns, is trying to focus more on the masterbrand identity. As such, it no longer calls out specific segments like bagels or buns on-pack – it is all Pom.
“It made our family of products harder to link to the masterbrand,” she says of the previous approach. “Having the logo significantly increased on pack improves brand blocking and findability on shelf.” The only exception is a black design for its premium SKUs – mirroring an approach it has done with Dempster’s – and capitalizing on a demand for “restaurant quality” products, which has increased since the beginning of the pandemic.
