The ice cream aisle is often a place people go for familiar favourites. But for the Chapman family, which has been serving its ice cream brand for 50 years, it’s also now a place to give people a scoop of nostalgia along with a premium feel.

The Chapman family home now features prominently in a new package design for its core line of two litre ice cream bricks, rebranded to show hometown pride under a new name: Markdale Creamery.

The new look, which continues to feature the familiar Chapman’s logo and cartoon kids, also now features a more premium reflection on the brand’s past, taking the form of the factory where the products were originally made in 1973. That building no longer stands today – it was lost in a fire in 2009 –  but the brand rebounded, built a new factory, and continues to thrive.

The new design was the end result of a five-year process, says Ashley Chapman, the company’s COO. It’s also only the third time that the brand has changed the design for its core line of two litre bricks since it launched and the decision – made without the input of any focus groups or consumer testing – was an important one not only for the business, but for the family that owns it.

“It has been a long time coming. But every single thing that we looked at – every design and concept – to be frank, we absolutely hated it,” he notes. “We were playing around with some ideas and then my wife, who is our marketing manager, had a quick mock-up made by her department with the old creamery in the background.”

“The worst thing that you can do with any kind of rebranding or relaunch of packaging is confuse the consumer,” Chapman says. The designs it originally looked at were all somewhat similar to the previous packaging with that fact in mind. “But when we saw this design, it really stuck out and grabbed our attention, so we thought it didn’t have to be so similar to previous packaging because it jumps off of the shelf,” Chapman elaborates.

The packaging now has a more premium look, relative to the prior one (pictured, left) – also a consideration for an ice cream line that could be considered an “economy” one, with 10% butterfat.

“These days, the consumer has to contend with a lot of other things in the ice cream aisle,” Chapman concedes, citing frozen desserts made from vegetable fat.

“We believe our ice cream is superior to anything in the frozen dessert category, but it [frozen dessert] happens to be put next to ice cream in the ice cream cabinet and a lot of people don’t even realize it isn’t ice cream,” Chapman explains. “We thought a more premium look would help people realize that our ice cream is not the same as frozen dessert.”

The new Markdale Creamery line has already begun its national rollout, and to promote the refresh, Chapman’s is pushing a heavy shopper-side campaign including coupons and contests, as well as “multiple promotions at pretty much every retailer in the country,” Chapman says.