Re-establishing key design assets and equities.
The global growth of King Oscar, the 145-year-old Norwegian canned fish brand, had left it vulnerable to increasing global competition. It had developed an inconsistent and fragmented expression, was visually misaligned across the world and was hard to navigate. Our task was to help this iconic brand to reassert its authority within the market.
Ensuring the brand identity is fit for a king.
The Change
In 1902, King Oscar II, ruler of Norway and Sweden, tasted the sardines from one of Stavanger’s preeminent canneries. So impressed was he that he gave permission for his name to be used, and so the King Oscar brand was born.
Roll on 120 years and the brand identity no longer felt quite so fit for a king. Having grown to operate in 10 markets with a product lining spanning nearly 50 SKUs and ambitions for more, its fragmented and inconsistent expression and increasing competition was leaving it vulnerable.
The Opportunity
Seeing a growing market with an ever-increasing interest in fish as part of a healthy diet, King Oscar set itself an ambition to be ‘the world’s number 1 global seafood brand, with a reputation for craft, provenance and quality.’To achieve this the iconic brand needed to reassert its authority and its presence.
We worked closely with our clients to reflect a new Masterbrand strategy that saw us re-establish key design assets and equities. We re-instated the brand’s bold use of red across its portfolio and created a brand architecture to provide greater coherence and ease of navigation across the range.
Our newly created design system came to life across the entire range and cascaded through King Oscar’s global markets from Norway to China Refined, elegant and dignified, the design embodies the very heart and soul of the King Oscar brand proposition, ‘The King’s Choice’.
Lastly, we created a Super Premium tier for the US, targeting a key younger, more modern target audience, based on King Oscar’s authoritative ‘O’ monogram.
The Results
The brand has expanded its range in the US, has recently launched in the UK and the redesign is being rolled out in Australia, all bringing us that much closer to achieving the brand’s No 1 vision.
