Drawing on B&B Studio’s transformative work with Yeo Valley Organic, Lisa Desforges examines how strategic design can help F&B businesses unlock growth and realise their ambitions
Stepping outside of a sector that your brand is synonymous with is a bold move for any marketeer. While innovation continues to drive our industry, many remain within the confines of their category, experimenting perhaps with flavour or format, but rarely looking to other, less familiar, aisles. And with good reason: from retail buyers to supermarket shoppers, people like to pigeonhole; and any investment into a new product launch needs to feel worth the risk.
So, we were unsurprised to see recent headlines questioning Yeo Valley’s move into meat. “Is this as crazy as it sounds?” asked The Grocer. Well, not if you understand the story behind the Yeo Valley Organic brand. Known in the UK as organic dairy farmers, the family behind Yeo Valley have also been pioneers of the regenerative farming movement, an approach that integrates livestock, diverse crops and herbal leys to keep soil continually healthy. As a result, Yeo Valley’s British herds are able to roam freely on organic pastures that are free from artificial fertilisers and chemical pesticides, ensuring a resource of naturally sustainable and organic grass-fed meat.
Strategic storytelling
But while the magic of regenerative farming can simply link yogurt with burgers down on the farm, it’s a harder story to tell under the strip lights of the supermarket. Indeed, just a year or so ago, Yeo Valley Organic was struggling to communicate the roles of its different ranges within yogurt, let alone launch innovations into new and competitive categories.
So, what changed? For Yeo Valley Organic, it was the recognition that its packaging design system was holding the brand back. It wasn’t broken – consumers loved the look and feel and could recognise the brand on shelf – but it didn’t possess the depth and flexibility required to empower Yeo Valley’s growth. Simply put, it wasn’t strategic enough.
Over the past couple of years, we’ve worked with Yeo Valley Organic on a strategic and creative revamp of the brand’s visual identity and product range architecture, taking a holistic view of both the existing portfolio and blue sky plans for innovation and growth. Together, we’ve crafted a more meaningful architecture and system that has enabled the brand to effectively manage change and boost its growth across a set of fast-moving categories, from yoghurt and dairy, to soups and beyond.
Innovating in yogurt
The yogurt fixture – Yeo Valley’s heartland – has witnessed unprecedented change over the past few years with innovations across both health and indulgence creating whole new sectors on-shelf. While Yeo Valley had great products in place to meet these new consumer needs, the rigid consistency of its existing design system was failing to effectively differentiate them. By creating a design architecture built around consumer need and occasion, we were able to define where changes needed to be made without disrupting the brand overall.
For example, on the brand’s core range of natural and flavoured yogurts, and across its dairy staples of milk and butter, only subtle design changes and messaging improvements were necessary. However, on more innovative products, including the brand’s range of Kefirs and Greek Recipe lines, a more dramatic overhaul was necessary, including renaming, re-messaging and revolutionary new designs. For Greek Recipe – the new name for the brand’s existing Super Thick Yogurt – a Greek-inspired pattern brings a new twist to Yeo’s love of illustration and highlights the brand’s quirky sense of humour.
On Kefir, illustration is used in a more abstract style to express the heightened health benefits associated with the product, without falling into the gut-friendly clichés of other brands on the shelf.
Moving beyond dairy
Empowering these products to stretch the rules of brand design in this way has allowed Yeo Valley to futureproof its portfolio, and create a platform for exciting innovations across fast-evolving categories like gut health – such as the brand’s recent launch into Gut Boost drinks.
And the impact has been impressive – Greek Recipe, relaunched in March 2024, has experienced a 60 percent uplift YoY. Similarly, both Yeo Valley Organic’s potted Kefir (+30% YoY) and Drinking Kefir (+90% YoY) are experiencing huge growth, with potted Kefir becoming the UK’s #1 brand.
And such successes have a snowball effect, changing perceptions of the brand – not just among consumers who are spending more, but among retail buyers who see the brand’s potential, and internal teams, who feel enthused and empowered to make bolder, braver moves. And Yeo Valley’s move into meat is the first proof of this new mindset – this is a brand that understands its own story, and has the confidence to invite the rest of us into that world. The new beef burger packaging makes that journey effortless. By leaning into the brand’s recognised green colour, while emphasising the regenerative farming and grass-fed stories, there’s a whole lot of reassurance going on as the brand enters this new category. Crucially, Yeo Valley’s new design system heroes a strong and recognisable brand mark, newly refreshed as part of the original project. The iconic heart shape and hand-drawn typography has been softened yet strengthened for greater standout, while a more sympathetic green brings naturalness into the name and organic call-out. As Yeo Valley continues to innovate into sectors beyond dairy, this heart will no doubt become a recognised icon of quality organic food.
The power of strategic design
While we all understand the importance of branded packaging in delivering shelf standout and communicating key benefits, design that is considered in line with a brand’s commercial ambitions can have a far greater impact. As brands grow, consistency must give way to flexibility, delivering the breathing room design systems need to develop alongside brand growth. Yeo Valley Organic is a terrific example of a business that has embraced strategic design to help empower its future, harnessing the structure of a strong range architecture to make design decisions that feel more interesting, yet still intuitive. Combined with a clear brand purpose and a consistent brand identity, this thoughtful approach delivers the winning combination of standout and flex.
About B&B
B&B studio is an award-winning brand design agency committed to building the brands that matter. Led by co-founders Shaun Bowen and Kerry Bolt, B&B works with the innovators and idealists who believe in a brighter, fairer and braver future.
Lisa Desforges is Head of Strategy at B&B Studio
