'Living Flavour' - Bradley McGurk creates exciting new food brand

Company History

Living Flavour comes from a company that is in the 3rd generation of the family.

George Long set up Oaklands Nurseries in the 1920s - a market garden business based in Rathgar, South Dublin, growing vegetables, herbs, bedding plants and cut flowers and supplying these to the Dublin wholesale market as well as to local shops and residents living in and around Rathgar.

His son, Joe Long took over the business over 50 years later in 1979 on George’s retirement. Joe and his wide Edna ran the business for the next decade, and in 1990 their sons, Mark and Joe Junior joined the team and developed a van sales business to shops and garden centres, supplying homegrown bedding plants and pot plants.

In 1994, Long Life Plants was established as the sales side of the business with production being managed by Highfield Nurseries. The business expanded, outgrew its original Rathgar site and, in 2003, the company bought a 50-acre farm in North County Dublin, on which a new nursery was built, which opened in Autumn 2005.

In 2007, Long Life Plants Ltd operated a six-acre/24,000SqM (under glass) production site in Oldtown, North County Dublin, supplying retailers with flowering plants, baby leaf salads and fresh herb products. In addition, 2.5 acres (10,000SqM) is currently available as outdoor production.

Brand Project Rationale

The rationale for the brand project was that the company could add more customer value to the shopping and user experience by creating a recognisable and distinctive brand. In so doing, the company sought to de-commoditise this strongly-growing and high-margin sector of the vegetable-food retailing area.

Branding the product would, therefore, have the key benefit of protecting current margin gains in view of the probability of new competitors entering the growing Irish market for fresh herbs.

Project Methodology

So how did Bradley McGurk proceed on this exciting project to build a fresh herb brand for the consumer? We proceeded on three fronts: 1) research; 2) strategy; and 3) creative development.

commenced the project by undertaking a brand audit of the sector by carrying out desk research of available existing market information along with a visual audit of the company, competitor branding and customer communications in the marketplace. This included studying the benchmark players and their brands, both in Ireland and internationally.

A key element of the research stage was to interview selected retailer-buyers face-to-face in order to understand their experiences and perceptions of branding in the herb sector, including their views on the status of packaging design and customer messaging in the marketplace.

Bradley McGurk also carried out a number of consumer focus groups to explore consumer attitudes and usage behaviours and to understand lifestyles and how the new brand would fit-in with today’s demanding fresh food consumer needs. Different types of consumer were brought together to discuss their perceptions and user experience of herb products and its in-store presentation.

Once we had analysed the collective findings of this research stage, we defined the new brand’s values and proposition to the market. This was an exciting stage as we realised that the new brand would have the potential not only to take a profitable position in the market but to actually re-invent the fresh herb category. It would achieve this by promoting the product benefits of fresh herb consumption and, crucially, the emotional dimension of using fresh, growing, potted herbs in the home.

Naming the new brand followed a thorough name generation process which long-listed a series of different naming ‘territories’, validated these and then short-listed candidate names for final name selection. The winning name, ‘Living Flavour’, was then briefed into design for brand identity development and a strapline created to support the brand. To guide this process, a written design brief was created and a series of design directions developed for presentation and assessment with the client.

Following approval of the new Living Flavour brand identity, Bradley McGurk was then commissioned to proceed into design application onto corporate stationery, product packaging, a new website (www.livingflavour.com) and in-store merchandising and product-stand design.

Living Flavour – The Brand Impact

Living Flavour was launched at Easter 2009 and its business has been reorganised around the Living Flavour herb range. A key benefit of this business reorganisation has been the ability of the company to now anticipate and plan for herb production well in advance of delivery dates. This was not the case with the previous flowering-plant-based business.

Since the launch of Living Flavour, sales volume has already increased by 50% and management are confident that sales have the potential to increase four-fold, and are forecasting a turnover of some €2.0 - €2.5M for 2011. In addition, and very significantly, the new brand is commanding a much higher profit margin right across its fresh herb product range.