Elmwood’s fun new Dolmio branding captures the joy of Italian cooking
Elmwood’s fun new Dolmio branding captures joy of Italian cooking.
Global brand and design consultancy Elmwood has today unveiled its bold new identity for Dolmio, which aims to attract a younger audience and celebrate generous spirit of Italian cuisine.
More likely than not, shoppers in UK will be familiar with Dolmio. The Italian-med jars of sauces have become go-to choice for shoppers looking to whip up a spaghetti bolognese or cook a delicious creamy linguine. And thanks to help of an accompanying puppet family, brand has effectively managed to maintain its place in nation’s heart.
No good brand stands still for long, though, including Dolmio. And for its latest rebrand, company wanted to strengn its foundations and reach out to new demographics who may not have given its sauces a go, namely younger millennial and Generation Z customers.
To do this, Dolmio teamed up with Elmwood to create a full visual identity refresh. It included development of new graphics, messaging, photography and voice, which will give Dolmio tools to be more flexible and exciting, crucially allowing it to better engage with customers online. After all, that’s where young audiences y hope to reach spend most of ir time.
The development of this new identity involved some surprising market research from Elmwood, which found that customers love Dolmio brand but feel that way y cook with its sauces has changed. Whereas before, most people just poured it on and stirred it an – as label directs – now shoppers were more likely to be experimental and not stick rigidly to traditional Italian flavours.
With se findings in mind, Elmwood wanted its new Dolmio brand design to tap into a desire for freedom and fun. “While new brand identity includes flashes of Italian heritage – for example, red, white and green colouring on packs – this has been done in a completely modern way, shifting focus from provenance to delicious and eclectic taste,” it explains.
Perhaps most significant departure in whole rebrand is Dolmio’s new word mark. Standing apart from its previous version and world of pasta sauces in general, new word mark aims to capture joy and community people feel when rustling up a big, hearty Italian meal for ir friends and family.
It takes shape as an exclamation mark, perfect embodiment of excitement and warmth. Along with its red dot, exclamation mark acts as a lens into world of Dolmio by providing an overhead glimpse of people and ir meals or a close-up shot of a simple fork getting stuck into some delicious bolognese sauce.
Accompanying exclamation mark is a new shape to lettering itself, namely counters of letter D and flicking of letter L. These gave designers room to morph letter shapes into speech bubbles so that it looks like brand is talking to customer directly as y scroll onto it on ir phone screens.
Commenting on Dolmio’s refreshed brand identity, Elmwood’s global provocation officer, Greg Taylor, said, “Through our partnership with Dolmio, we’ve reinvigorated its brand identity with new, distinctive brand assets that create perfect balance between ‘Big Heart’ and ‘Great Taste’.
“Dolmio’s heart comes from generosity, accessibility and inclusivity of its brand identity, offering people freedom to use sauce how y want. But its big heart doesn’t come at expense of great taste. It’s been a pleasure working with Dolmio to reinvent branding in pasta sauce market.”
