Metro has revealed a new look for its flagship private label brand, Irresistible, to better align with consumer expectations and to stand out.

“Although it is already highly successful, the Irresistible brand holds considerable additional growth potential,” says Annie St-Laurent, senior director of private labels at Metro. The repositioning provides the grocer with an opportunity to strengthen itself in the market, St-Laurent adds. She says the major transformation aligns with consumer expectations and needs, better reflecting the quality of approximately 1,335 Irrésistible products while improving the overall shopping experience.

St-Laurent tells strategy that Metro wanted to make the brand more visible and easier to find on shelves, in flyers and online, to break through to a consumer that typically spends an average of three seconds choosing a product from the shelf. “With that in mind, we focused on four key elements in our approach: visibility, attractiveness, desirability and ease of use. Our goal is to encourage consumers not just to choose our products but also to prefer our brand,” she says.

Metro modernized the brand while keeping its equity and deliberately enlarged the Irrésistible logo on the packaging to make it easier for consumers to spot the products both in-store, in flyers and within the digital space.

When developing a packaging platform, the biggest mistake is failing to evaluate the platform concepts within the sales and communication environment, whether on store shelves, in refrigerators and freezers, in digital and social media, in a thumbnail format or in whatever medium the brand is expressed, St-Laurent explains.

“We live in an era of visual reading, where recognition is a crucial part of strategic and creative solutions to enhance visual impact and strengthen brand awareness,” she says. “We compete with well-established national brands that benefit from strong recognition and substantial marketing budgets. Building brand awareness is strategically important to enhance brand consideration and preference for our banners.”

Work was carried out with agency partner Pigeon. Several iterations and variations were evaluated, both through consumer research and in-store testing, to optimize the various elements of the brand and packaging design and the communication hierarchy. Metro developed an in-store holiday communication program to launch the new image, featuring hero products as well as seasonal ones. A holiday mass-media campaign, created by Cossette, is currently airing and features the Irrésistible brand for the first time.

Although hundreds of SKUs in key categories have launched to ensure visibility in store, the roll out will be staggered for the overall portfolio.

Each year, approximately 100 new Irresistible products are launched. Last year, Metro’s private label team reviewed 240 categories, resulting in 350 new products.

Metro offers approximately 4,500 private-label products, sold under the Irresistible, Selection, Life Smart, and Personnelle brands.

According to Caddle insights, about three quarters of Canadians report having purchased private label products in the last 12 months.