Case Study

Tomi / The ketchup with attitude

Visual identity Package design Packaging concept

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Context
The Romanian ketchup market was made up of entirely local producers, Orkla Foods Romania being the
detached leader of the category by means of its Tomi and LaMinut portfolio brands. At the time, the
government introduced a new fiscal policy regarding food product imports that created a tremendous
opportunity for international producers to enter the Romanian ketchup market.

Orkla Foods Romania anticipated this market threat and decided to get a head start and enforce Tomi’ s brand
equity in order to be able to withstand a potential attack from any international new comers.

Challenge
Orkla Foods Romania appointed BrandTailors to revisit Tomi’s brand platform in order to preserve the existing
strong brand associations and to create new relevant ones in norder to generate loyal behavior among existing
consumers.

BrandTailors faced the challenge of anticipating a potentially complex transformation of consumers’ motivation
and needs with regards to ketchup that might be induced in the following years by the international brands.

Solution
Following an in depth qualitative research to explore all possible consumer motivations and needs connected
with ketchup and an extensive quantitative research conducted in order to measure their importance and
potential, BrandTailors saw the opportunity of Tomi’s migration into the “vitality” positioning territory while
preserving its “pleasure of taste” and “fun-making” brand associations.

Thus Tomi was transformed into a self-confident, full of attitude character, who has the power to make fun of

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itself. The new “think up side down” positioning proposition was illustrated into a more dynamic logo design
and a new package concept.

Based on the importance of showing the product origin on the label, the brand symbol – “funny tomato” – was
given a distinctive personality in line with each of the SKU’s flavor character by a spirited mixture of ketchup
ingredients. So Tomi became “sweet like an angel” – classic flavor, “angry like a torro” – hot flavor, “rebellious
like a punker” – garlic flavor.

Results
The new package design generated an instant 35% growth in volumes within the first couple of months from its
introduction onto the market unassisted by other brand communication support. Tomi not only preserved its
detached leadership position in the category, but also recruited new users from the competition.

Follow-up
Due to the success of the new package design concept, BrandTailors was given the opportunity to continue its
work while the product portfolio developed further. Three new SKUs were labeled in the years after: “the big
sweet” – 1kg classic flavor, “the Italian cook” – for pizza use, “hell’s fire” – extra-hot flavor.

Contribution
Brand audit, brand strategy and naming - Beatrice Daniş
Project management - Roxana Iancu
Graphic concept and development - Janos Kurko
Image retouching and printing pre-production - Mircea Brătianu

Project implementation started in December 2005.

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