Dive Brief:
- General Mills' Cascadian Farm brand has undergone a packaging overhaul that increases transparency by featuring the brand's farm roots and simple ingredients.
- The new packaging emphasizes the brand's farm-to-table claim by enlarging the picture of the farm to stretch across the box instead of in a smaller graphic and includes a "Visit Our Home Farm" stamp on the label.
- The new packaging also highlights aspects of the ingredients using "Non-GMO" and the Non-GMO Project seal, "Certified Organic" and the USDA Organic seal, "No Artificial Flavors," and the "Fair Trade Certified" seal.
Dive Insight:
This packaging makeover demonstrates how companies can achieve better transparency directly on the product label, which is where consumers want the product details like health and ingredient information. The brand also encourages trust in the label claims it makes by including third-party verified seals to accompany the "Non-GMO" and "Certified Organic" phrases made elsewhere on the package. To ensure consumers don't miss or misunderstand the seals by themselves, the brand includes both the phrase (for clarity) and the visual seal (for trusted verification).
Consumer confusion is consistently an issue for manufacturers, so clarity is key. More than one-third (34%) of consumers across the globe do not understand the meaning of the term "clean label," according to a new survey from Canadean.
The emphasis on the brand's farm roots tells consumers more of the backstory and authenticity of the product and where the ingredients come from through simple label imagery. Combined with the phrase "Visit Our Home Farm," Cascadian Farm encourages consumers to learn more about where the product's ingredients come from.