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Unified Grocers’ iconic brand gets a facelift

Unified Grocers’ iconic brand gets a facelift

The Springfield store brand was the subject of the largest brand marketing campaign at Unified Grocers.

“This was the largest brand awareness campaign in the history of the Springfield brand and at Unified,” JoAnn Murdock, Unified’s executive director of marketing, said Wednesday at an FMI Connect session in Chicago.

JoAnn Murdock
JoAnn Murdock (Photo by Steve Greiner)

The large-scale, 18-month initiative — which included a dedicated website; $10,000 sweepstakes; retailer-tagged radio; television ads; a Facebook page that has more than 11,000 "Likes"; in-store shopper engagement; and cobranded retailer-specific microsite — led to a 23% year-over-year sales increase for the Los Angeles firm.

Created in 1947, the Springfield brand encompasses 900 SKUs and is available primarily in the Southwest, including Southern California, Nevada and Arizona.

The recently completed relaunch campaign included new packaging graphics; the addition of front-of-pack nutrition icons; and a new brand tagline: “Right Quality. Right Price. Right at Home.”

Unified invested in the brand after consumer research showed that while consumers liked the brand, they felt it looked old and tired.

“It didn’t appeal to younger consumers whom we wanted to target,” she said.

Consumer research showed shoppers viewed Springfield more as a national brand than a private label. So a national-brand-level campaign was in order.

Unified launched a dedicated website, springfieldbrand.com, that’s easy to navigate, and includes product information, recipes and a store locator.

“Any good brand has to have a website,” she said. “We included all the things to let consumers know more about the brand and where to find it.”


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Consumers could enter a $10,000 kitchen makeover sweepstakes via a microsite that includes an email opt-in. Nearly 3,000 consumers opted-in to receive Springfield information and offers

“We built up a good consumer database,” she said.

Unified is now revamping its Golden Creme private label dairy brand. Packaging will now feature a new brand mascot: Goldie, the cow.

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