Bonduelle – National Cuisines

Derrick Lin

Global

Design: BBDO Branding
Location: Russia
Project Type: Concept
Packaging Contents: Street food

New vegetable mixes left shelves almost twice as fast as had been planned at the start of sales.

Goal:
In 2019 Bonduelle took one more step towards diversifying its’ business in Russia by launching the production of plant frozen foods. Thus, the brand greatly expanded its portfolio despite that the name ‘Bonduelle’ was often associated with the canned food among consumers.

Now Bonduelle’s assortment has two lines of frozen vegetables: a farm one for those who mainly use frozen vegetables as one of the ingredients and the second type is multi-component mixes for young and active people.

The company paid special attention to the promotion of these mixes.

Execution:
Based on audience analysis the brand decided to execute the product line within the concept of ‘National Cuisines’. Moreover, Bonduelle presents dishes in their most striking and interesting manifestation called street food: ‘Wok’, ‘Sabji’, ‘Fasulye’ and some others.

Deciding the main idea of the mixes line, Bonduelle held a creative tender for developing its’ visual concept. BBDO Branding’s proposal was outstanding among other category solutions and conveyed the idea of rich ethnic tastes in the most inspiring manner.

The main thing is that BBDO’s specialists managed to find a specific detail of the packaging design which helped the Bonduelle line to become even more outstanding among other competitors. They made heroes not only of local dishes but of the people who cook them as well. Their presence is indicated with the image of hands offering the dish. They create dynamics and a special intonation of addressing the viewer who sees the packaging.

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‘Thanks to the ‘bread and salt’ technique, where hands hold affectionately prepared dishes, we managed to achieve the right feeling of authenticity in such a ‘cold’ category as frozen vegetables. Thanks to the fine design – the morally took a lot of time to dress up and be prepared before shooting. The whole line, in a good sense, ‘tears the shelve’. Such bright colors and emotions in this category aren’t a standard yet’.

It is noteworthy that work on the project simultaneously began with lockdown time. That is why the agency’s team faced not only travel and public events restrictions but also the fact that no one had time to adapt to the online way of life. – Alexander Zagorsky, BBDO Branding Creative Director

‘It seemed impossible to conduct a couple of shooting days remotely. But you need to move somehow. We decided to conduct all the works online and already at the first stages of working with BBDO Branding and Boris Bendikov we were pleasantly surprised how it is easy to find mutual understanding even remotely. The process went on even faster than offline, everybody was focused only on work goals and within the planned timeframe we filmed excellent material that later became the packaging of our key launch.

Even now we can speak about a successful beginning: the results of the first shipments are twice as high as our expectations. We receive positive feedback from retailers and buyers’. – Svetlana Shulga, Bonduelle Brand Manager

Results
Bonduelle started shipments at the end of October. At the start of sales, the brand didn’t take advertising support. That is why the key role in promoting specialties was given to the design.

According to Nielsen, buyers first of all chose Bonduelle’s new products from the entire category: already at the first month of sales, their velocity was higher than the goals and main competitors.

Sales in the first three months almost doubled the plan that in any case was very ambitious. Already in the second month of sales, ‘Wok’ became the number one among Bonduelle frozen vegetables. Thus, a special visual concept helped remarkably exceeds the planned sales rate and more importantly, to overtake at this measure the relevant products of all the key competitors.