Does the word revolution seem strong to you? For Patafetta it fits perfectly!

This case study unexpectedly stimulated my way of developing Brand Positioning. I have been repeating it for a long time, the Packaging Positioning starts from the Brand Positioning to reach the Product Positioning, without these two steps it would not be possible to develop a packaging with the functional characteristics of the positioning.

As always we have developed a project aimed at a different product compared to those one on the market. This is where the revolution called AgriChips is born, our client “MCM” (Agricultural Cooperative with a brand already present in the fresh category, named Maremma che … Patata), has shown that junk food can be reinterpreted and re-evaluated in the modern culture of good food. Products like chips, made from 100% Italian quality raw materials, exactly the way we like them. Innovating is never easy, but innovating in a world where giants (big brands) have practically said everything, a highly competitive sector where every damn day the big players raise their entry threshold to those who face to put their packaging in the supermarket lane.

The truth is this, getting into large scale trade today is difficult, in snack / chips it is an impossible mission, so we had to make a revolution to get into that lane of the supermarket, with the focus on the consumer, one of the main rules of Packaging Positioning.

 

Who is the consumer?

The consumer is who makes the consumption, it means the user of the physical material goods and services produced by the economic system in which he lives.

In today’s case study, we’re talking about a product that affects 98.4% of “consumers”, we’re talking about a product that was born in America in 1853, to be exact in Saratoga Springs, in the state of New York. The product in question is French fries, the most correct name would be Chips.

The Chips, also called the Queen of Snacks. We are talking about the classic chips that we have always known, those in the laminated bag so as not to let in light, so as not to damage the product inside, this packaging has the characteristic of being without a window, I mean the porthole that in other sectors often show the product.

When I was a child, and I’m not talking about prehistory or Paleolithic era, there were no endless lanes selling snack inside supermarkets; the issue is different, even in the Ho.Re.Ca. channel there was not all that brawl of products that you now find inside the store, the chips had an exposure inside the bars as main protagonists, they were the leading lady.

In the last twenty years, things have completely changed and those lanes have continued to lengthen, today inside the large scale trade, the snack is a category that continues to grow in a very important way, many companies have invested in research and development of products to get into it.

 

Innovation, this is the solution.

Those who succeed in innovating better and before others will win the fight with the competition.
Innovating in the Chips category is not exactly a simple thing, we said it before, it is a product that has existed since 1853, so many brands have invested, there are huge interests behind, the same brands that do everything to keep the distance in the market towards the new competition that is coming out and want to appear in this market.

 

1st Step

In the brief they presented to us, there was the request to bring a fresh product like the potato in the vertbag packaging, towards the world of semi-finished products, because MCM is one of the benchmarks in fresh tuber, in this channel it has a good weighted distribution and a brand very well positioned named “Maremma che Patata …”.

 

We started to revisit the first vertbag packaging of the Maremma che Patata … brand, doing the restyling of everything. Logo and Packaging by re-positioning the Brand and the product on the market.

 

 

We have taken the magnet image of the Buttero (the cowboy of the Maremma), we have stylized it and created it as a sort of logo / label, in order to create a corporate color code and give an immediate recognition to the brand. The idea we proposed to our client was to be inspired by the concept of Chiquita by marking the potato, giving the brand the opportunity to own the category by applying a stamp of recognition and guarantee to the tuber, which could give us greater force in rebranding.

 

2nd Step

If you consider that the potato chips business in Italy is a market worth about 253 million euros, you understand perfectly why many companies invest so much in this segment, this is also one of the few sectors that has never felt the crisis in these years, a sector built on a very aggressive marketing and where the packaging releases all its anger in the purchase decision towards the consumer, you do it well or you are out.

The world of Chips or Crisps, as the Anglo-Saxons call them, is truly supercompetitive and overwhelmed. In developing this Packaging Positioning, we worked first on the concept of agrichips, and subsequently we identified a new positioning into this category, that’s how we created the Patafetta: like the Sottilette, we created a new category, the thick-cut potato with 100% agrichips peel.

 

 

[*] Attention: All the names and claims developed must always be subjected to legal verification by a specialist in industrial property matters which is external our agency.

What does agrichips mean?

It means that in addition to having high quality and 100% Italian raw materials, the potato are grown, harvested and produced inside the same cooperative, this also applies for example to the oil that is used in the chips production.

 

 

“The“ tool ”of the Packaging Positioning aimed at the Patafetta project, led us to the immediate insertion since its launch on the motorway network inside the Chef Express sores and immediately in the large scale trade, in Simply Auchan supermarkets of the whole central Italy with the forecast of covering the entire national territory in the short term. “

 

 

We have written it clearly on the packaging.

• 100% Ingredients Made in Italy
• Collected, Washed, Cut, Cooked
• Cultivated and Fried by Us Peasants

 

 

A quick and announced success.

A very ambitious project from the beginning, for this reason the “Agrichips” project received the Oscar Green regional award from Coldiretti Giovani Impresa under the patronage of MIPAAF. We positioned it and then dressed it with the Packaging Positioning and today Patafetta is a reality, a package present on the entire motorway network of central and northern Italy, a product included in the autogrill chain in the Chef Express chain and immediately in the GDO, in Simply Auchan supermarkets from all over central Italy with the forecast of covering the entire national territory in the short term.

 

On the wave of this success we made a turn upside down, as expected and taken for granted, the same market demanded the birth of two other products at Semia, we developed and created a vertbag for Patafetta and a Chips bag for Maremma che Patata…

 

What did we do exactly?

1. Briefing: We did a clear interview to understand our client’s pluses and minuses, and we immediately focused on the competition and what the various market players had done.
2. Brand Positioning: We have identified our differentiation on the market compared to other players, with really possible and credible features. Today we are beyond storytelling, today we need to have a credible storydoing on the target market, only in this way can we achieve a result.
3. Packaging Positioning: Once the positioning has been identified, we have sent it to our customer, asking if he could develop the product with the features we requested, for example the thick cut slide with the peel. Without this step packaging positioning is not feasible.
4. Sales Product: The most important step is absolutely this, we are talking about sales of the product, if the steps above have been developed correctly, the sales force will have to do its great job towards the buyer, but surely the sale will be easier and can have unique arguments and destroy any kind of objection.
5. Product Reputation: This step was named by me the Packaging of Genetic Profit, once we have done the four steps above, we must still maintain the rudder pointed towards the goal, continue to tell our positioning with our storytelling to give credibility to all the market around us. Only then will we achieve our high reputation.

 

This is exactly our business, to follow the five points. Even if you are a farm and grow vegetables, fruit or dairy products, do not hesitate to contact us to understand how you could enter in the market with a semi-finished product or how to reposition the fresh one to enter on the shelves of important brands of the large scale trade.