Cadbury's pack redesign: a colossal waste?

Was this logo & packaging redesign a waste of $1 million? 

The Daily Mail proclaimed, “Cadbury has spent more than £1million on a new logo that looks just like the old one… [they] ditched some of the words thickness and slightly re-moulded their tilt.”

What the Daily Mail didn’t do was assess the whole packaging redesign. Because it’s not just about the logo.

It’s about the whole pack. And the system — all those flavors and variants and pack sizes & shapes. Plus collateral, swag, merch, freight, and everywhere else the logo and other info will be used.

Critically, it’s about how it works not just on your computer screen, but in the STORE. On the SHELVES. Where shoppers who don’t much care about your logo are just trying to find their candy.

And there, we see that the refresh does a nifty job. It’s a bit easier to read and thus a bit easier to navigate. It locks up the whole “Cadbury dairy milk” name, and makes the flavors a bit more modern. 

Most importantly, it’s still recognizably a Cadbury bar. Which is all most people’ll notice.

So this is a good refresh. An evolution. Because revolution usually kills off the owned equities & recognizable assets a brand spends decades building.

Whether the redesign ‘puts the humanity back’ into the logo (as the lead designer said) is up for debate. Watch the whole redesign launch video on Vimeo.

Previous
Previous

50% of digital ‘working’ dollars aren’t ‘working’

Next
Next

Brand loyalty in a pandemic looks a lot less loyally