One of Britain’s best loved baking brands, Stork, has boosted its century old heritage with a design refresh by Sun Branding
Stork has been a home baking staple since 1920 so when the brand turned to creative brand packaging agency Sun Branding, the design challenge was to respect visual legacy, connect with a new generation of home-bakers and at the same time, be reassuringly recognisable to loyal consumers.
In a competitive baking category where private labels are prominent, authentic heritage brands like Stork must convey confidence and a compelling reason to believe at the point of purchase.
“We brought much-needed love to the brand by refining the iconic Stork logo, promoting it to centre stage and giving it the space it deserves,” explained Si Inman, Sun Branding’s Creative Director.
“During our exploration of heritage messages, the phrase “100+ years of baking” emerged as the most appealing to consumers. While polka dots can bring to mind a sense of nostalgia and playfulness, they also run the risk of seeming outdated or childish in today’s modern design codes. As brand-blocking has become prevalent in the spreads aisle, with private label imitating the yellow and pink palette, we strategically developed a distinct and clean design, utilising Stork’s rich heritage colours to achieve maximum impact and standout.”
Ross Gray, Senior Designer at Sun Branding added: “Stork has long been recognised as a people’s brand, and we committed to evolve the brand while honouring its deep-rooted history, notably The Stork Cookery Service of the 1940s. This community initiative provided advice to households on how to provide meals despite rationing restrictions.”
Sun Branding’s creative team developed a simple and confident visual language, such as the pink-line-device, which evolved from the idea of “baking memories”, the shape inspired by a timeline of memorable moments created through generations of baking with Stork. They also created a complimentary recipe combining heritage with the Stork bakers of today, featuring real bakes made by star ‘Stork-ers’ on the side of packs, helping to connect with Stork’s growing insta community.
Today, it’s proud to be an ingredient for success, supplying small baking businesses and bringing ‘Stork-ers’ together to share their home-baking triumphs on instagram and #bakewithstork.
Julie Dang, Stork’s Junior Brand Manager, said the new refreshed design is “instantly recognisable” as Stork because it elevates the unique assets that make the brand so distinctive.
“I love how the tub and block play together, the range is more connected and considered, even down to the SRP tray, which the Sun team pro-actively added to the brief /suggested should be included in the brief., ensuring greater appeal in store. It’s new and modern in the right way, and we think long-term Stork-ers will agree.”
She added: “We kept the brief relatively open, to allow the designers creative freedom to solve our challenge. The Sun creative team responded with impressive initial concepts which challenged us in the right way, and enabled the Stork team to focus on what we wanted to achieve, Sun listened and developed the designs further to absolutely nail it. They were collaborative and a pleasure to work with. Their way of working made our lives so much easier and the refreshed Stork packaging speaks boldly for itself.’
Stork is part of Upfield, a global leader in plant-based foods, plant-based butters and spreads, creams, liquids and cheeses.
You can see Stork’s new look brand and packaging in store from next week.
