Hap!!

Hap!! is the latest brand added to the Mandy Foods Grup portfolio developed by Firestarter, Romania.

Mandy Foods Grup is one of the leading companies in the Romanian food industry, entering the market in 2000 with the Mandy Foods brand, and being shortly followed by Spring Sauce. After Firestarter won the pitch at the end of 2009, the auditing of the company and its’ brand portfolio started. One of the main objectives was to develop a new brand for Mandy Foods Grup (MFG), so that the product portfolio would have a clearer stand on the market. Hap!! is the new brand through which MFG targets the consumers with medium wages, while providing the well established quality standards of Mandy Foods. The products marketed under the Hap!! name consist of three types of pâté and traditional bean stew, and they have entered the supermarkets in September 2010.

Throughout the course of 2010 Firestarter has developed an ample rebranding process of the Mandy Foods Grup company out of which the brand and communication strategy resulted. The first outcome of this partnership was the brand Hap!! which was developed between December 2009 and march 2010. The concept behind the name and product design is backed up by the slogan “Retete cu zambete” (eng. “Recipes with smiles”) and addresses the customers a simple and straightforward message: “The Hap!! products are inspired by an active lifestyle when having lunch is the best time to joke with your friends. Along with the natural ingredients and our quality care, we added to the recipe those smiles that make each day count. Who says lunch can’t be fun?”

The name Hap!! is the interjection used to express the fast swallowing of a delicious food. The distinctive sound of the name makes it easy to remember and to associate with the range of products it represents.

The packaging design was done extremely different from the choice of other competing brands, using both simple visual elements and unique photographic techniques. The label consist of photographs of handcrafted slices of bread covered with pâté shaped into a pig, a chicken or a leaf, in accordance with each type of pâté.

”The visual identity chosen to represent the Hap!! brand revolve around the idea of cheerfulness, and the added details send us to our teenage years, when we used to doodle on pictures from magazines and newspapers. Adding these personal notes to the images is basically what supports the Hap!! slogan – “Retete cu zambete”.

– Razvan Patrascu, Creative Director – Firestarter.

The Hap!! project is part of the Mandy Foods Grup company rebranding process which will constantly bring new communication elements resulting from the new developed strategy on the market.