Background

In 2017, Valio, one of Finland’s largest dairy producers, sought to become consumer facing in China after more than a decade of successful B2B operations. Facing a heavily crowded dairy segment, they needed a new visual design to debut their premium dairy UHT milk and milk powder products. Backed by more than a century of experience and Nobel Prize-winning technology, Valio has a proud heritage, yet a low consumer awareness in China as a high-end dairy producer. The challenge lay in creating a completely new consumer-facing packaging design that reflects Valio’s strengths as a premium dairy provider and encourages China’s millions of dairy consumers to try their products.

Describe the creative idea (40% of vote)

In addition to lack of awareness surrounding the Valio brand, consumers in China had very little understanding of one the company’s strongest selling points – the freshness and purity of Nordic dairy products. To address this, we developed the creative direction “Nordic Purity”, designed to convey Finnish dairy as a source of purity, high-quality and worthy of a premium price-point to China’s mid- to high-tier consumers. After extensive research into this target group, Valio specifically selected 1L and 250ml UHT Whole Milk and Skim Milk products for China and work developing packaging that could immediately distinguish their products on the supermarket shelves and begin building a brand image surrounding Finnish dairy.

Describe the execution (40% of vote)

Our creative direction “Nordic Purity” evokes the fresh, pure spirit of Finland through a series of stylized landscapes centered around the country’s glaciers. The minimalist landscapes wrap around the packaging, ensuring the story is continued no matter what side of the packaging is visible. Simple, bold colors combine with premium-feeling foil elements to express the brand in a clear and sophisticated way. Additional high-end design details, including a seal of quality noting the brand as 100% imported and recognizing its 100+ year history, were then incorporated to help tell Valio’s story. Several iterations of the packaging were then created to make different the product lines immediately recognizable, while maintaining a highly consistent set of core design elements that worked to establish Valio’s brand identity.

List the results (20% of vote)

With high-end packaging in place packaging created, Valio has been elevated to a premium customer-facing brand. Already, they have been met with resounding success on their journey to to inform Chinese consumers about the quality and purity of Nordic dairy. And the numbers speak for themselves. Valio’s UHT milk and milk powder experienced powerful sales growth in 2018 following the project implementation: • Sales of Valio UHT milk exceeded 400 million tonnes • Online sales increased by 487%, reaching 4.7 million RMB • More than 34,285 boxes of Valio’s Total Lactose-free milk powder sold