Arctic Gardens is being given a more streamlined look to better reflect the origins of its frozen vegetables.

According to Nicolas Joy, marketing director at parent company Aliments Nortera, the brand has been able to stay the course since being founded in the 1980s with its innovations and its approach to inspire occasions to consume vegetables in different meals.

However, to continue to affirm its relevance, it needed to modernize its brand image in a way that better promoted its values and product benefits to resonate more with young families, in addition to loyalists.

Nortera tasked agency Pigeon with the responsibility of relaunching its Arctic Gardens brand with strong equity, as it was facing increasingly stiff competition in the frozen space, particularly from Green Giant and private label brands.

According to Pigeon, the strategic mandate was expressed through a new positioning, brand territory, brand ecosystem, book and a new packaging platform.

In order to no longer limit it to the practical or cooked aspect of frozen vegetables, and to give it more elasticity, it is positioning Arctic Gardens as a local brand, part of what inspired the new essence and positioning “Nordic freshness” (“Fraicheur Nordique”).

Arctic Gardens adopted a unique brand color, Nordic blue. This rich blue is intended to accentuate this perception of freshness of products picked fresh and to better evoke its more local origins, with “made in Canada” being a very prominent on-pack callout. Made in Canada is an important callout because many consumers incorrectly assume that most frozen products come from Asia or the United States.

According to Olivier Chevillot, ECD at Pigeon, it was a strategic move away from the color codes of green or white that is associated with the competition.

“The secondary colors and the craft look, combined with the careful photography of the vegetables, communicate the naturalness, simplicity and healthy and nutritious character of the vegetables,” Chevillot says, adding that a graphic pattern allows it to evoke cultivated fields, and the logo has been redesigned to meet modernization objectives and to make it easier to read in a digital communication context.

The product portfolio has been organized into four main segments and navigation has been optimized with the addition of a color band that makes it easy to identify the recipe, style or flavor sought. The block effect created and the visual power of attraction generated force consumers to pay attention to Arctic Gardens and, thus, lead them to navigate and discover its diversified vegetable offering.

The first expression of the new platform, the updated packaging, has been introduced in stores throughout the fall.

Nortera itself was the recent subject of a rebrand. The company was very recently known as Bonduelle Americas, but was rebranded to better reflect the geographical region – North America – where its products are harvested and grown. LG2 gave Nortera a visual identity made up of chopped and ready-to-cook vegetables.