Bazana! Healthy Roasted Snacks!

Derrick Lin

Global

Agency: Artisticodopeo Designz
Bazana! Co-Founder & Director: Justin Ancheta
Location: India
Project Type: Produced
Client: Bazana! Foods Pvt. Ltd.
Product Launch Location: India
Packaging Contents: Dry Fruits, Seeds, Trail Mixes
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Plastic
Printing Process: Flexo printing

Bazana! is a brand of roasted, flavored nuts – seeds – trail mixes launched in 15g pack sizes in the Indian FMCG retail market. They are promoted as an easy, quick, healthy snack on the go for millennials, young working professionals & mom & kids.

The project was to conceptualise, design and develop the Brand visual identity and Packaging variant designs for the latest entrant into the snack market, Bazana!

omgsogd omgsogd

 

How I would love to take credit for coining the brand name, Bazana!, but that was the brainchild of the Brand’s Co-Founder and Brand Strategist, Justin Ancheta, who after weeks of wordplay ideations, hit upon a eureka moment that had an instant connect. All this while neck-deep in setting up the factory, researching machinery and snack formulations with his partner and Co-Founder, Sameer Bhanushali AND having teams in the market for weeks, carrying out valuable, market research that was to be a godsend while conceptualising the branding.

A client who understands the nuances of branding AND is equally passionate about it? Yes!

This project was a true collaboration and partnership between us. The tone was set very early on in our discussions with Justin saying, “Let’s build something Dope together!”

Now considering my alter ego is Artisticodopeo, I’d say this was fate!

 

 

Once I got my hands on the actual ground market research, I got into voracious design and packaging research via books or online on neuroscience, like Brand Seduction by Daryl Weber, watching and listening to podcasts by the genius, Chris Do of thefutur and pining up designs, color palettes, typography styles on Pinterest and Instagram. It was also imperative to get an actual feel of existing dry fruit brands and their packaging designs currently retailing in the market. That meant a number of trips to kirana stores around, comparing snacks, their design styles, websites, social media and more.

Eating, Living, Breathing design. This was design nirvana, folks!

 

 

I xeroxed multiple copies of the actual pack KLD and used that as my framework to sketch out brand logo ideas because the one point that was constant through all our discussions was that the brand logo needs to be visible from far and distinct enough to stand out among the rest. I needed the visual constraints of the pack dimensions to think outside the box.

Yet stay inside a pack! Ironic.

 

Over the course of delving deeper into Justin’s research, it was evident that people were pronouncing the name as, ‘buzz-aa-na’. It was like saying in Hinglish, ”bring me the energy!” Which was in many ways perfect for a dry fruit snack brand with specific target consumers. This led me to add the ‘!’ in Bazana! to symbolise energy and enhance the pronunciation of the name. Adding the ‘!’ not only helped in giving the brand personality, but also set the visual and emotional tone for the brand that matched the creative brief and confirmed my color palette direction – an explosion of color!

So Bazana! Bring it on!

How? by playing a game of typography tetris! Yes, you read right. It was like the game, but instead of tiles, we fill up the space with letters. I sketched 2 letters each of Bazana! into 3 levels to visually represent the phonetic pronunciation of the name. That helped to make the brand logo highly visible on a small pack size and definitely on future larger packs. The typography style is bold yet legible so that a consumer – be it a millennial or even a child, can instantly read it from afar.

Next…Packaging!

 

 

We wanted to showcase the ingredients for each pack in a way that was fun and visible, yet not come across as being niche or animated. Having the logo occupy a major portion of the pack allowed us to play around with different positions of placing each ingredient. Since this was meant to be a quick snack, I opted to display each dry fruit individually around the front and back of the logo…as if they were in a state of motion. The core hero ingredient of the pack took center stage while flavor ingredients were spaced out around it.

Once all the pack mockup designs were approved, we commissioned well known food and lifestyle photographer, Namrata Mesharam for the actual dry fruit photography. With a passionate eye for detail and specializing in macro lens food photography, it was a perfect fit for the both of us.

Now time to infuse visual energy into the pack!

 

 

India is a colorful culture in every sense of the word, be it our festivals, weddings, bollywood, fashion, advertisements, food or packaging! Color gives energy and I too, am all about color! The highlight of each pack are the use of vibrant Pantone shade colors which visually represent the flavors of each pack. Shades of the same color were selected for packs that had the same flavors but different core ingredients. For. eg. Blues for Roasted Salted Almonds, Cashew, Pistachios etc.

Color = energy. Energy = emotion. So Color is also an Emotion!

One of my mentors taught me very early on, “Your business card is your passport in the world of business. It can open doors or close them.”

 

 

Now, when you are launching a brand in an already crowded FMCG market space, in one of the most populated countries in the world – having doors open for you is always great for sales. I wanted to carry forward the vibrancy of our pack designs onto the business cards. I designed vertical cards to symbolise the packs. Similar to the actual pack, the front of the cards has Bazana! with a bright color background that represents an emotion, be it Red for passion, Orange for energy, Green for wealth, etc. and the back has other important details. It is like carrying around a business card sized Bazana! pack. What is the ingredient? The energy of the person whose card it is!

Definitely helps in brand recall for the sales team!

 

With the visual language ready to roll, we designed the Bazana! Brand guidelines manual to help other collaborators understand the brand ideology, the voice, use of custom designed iconography to represent different experiences, brand typefaces, color codes and so much more.

We designed and developed a responsive website to cater to the growing response from the market. Bazana!’s profile, vision, founders, products, where to buy, career opportunities and contact details are displayed on the website. Amazon and Flipkart ecommerce stores were set up simultaneously to sell Bazana! Packs online.

Various promotional graphics were created to support the marketing and sales teams on the ground or online. Be it sales brochures, PPT templates, dispenser boxes, delivery boxes, posters, standees, danglers, retail stickers, vending machine graphics and more.

Our Bazana! baby was born and out the door running!

 

 

And How?! Getting call backs from established FMCG distributors in the market on wanting to distribute Bazana! Snacks through their channels or retailing in corporate offices and over 15,000 stores across Mumbai, Bangalore and Pune with plans to go national soon – the response exceeded our expectations.

As anyone in branding would understand, creating a brand isn’t as simple as the above case study shows. There are so many details which would make this an even longer case study. So I’m going to leave some of it for the Bazana! video that Justin and I, shot together where you may understand our collaboration better!

 

Its always fun when friends or acquaintances message me, ‘Hey, I got to eat Bazana! Snacks at our office’ or ‘I saw it in the store near my home – you designed it?’ or happy mom’s messages saying; their children asked if they could pack that colorful snack in their lunch boxes!

It’s the Bazana! energy folks! Have you tried it yet?

 

 

What’s Unique?
The general feedback from the market has been regarding the unique 3 level branding of the name, showcase of ingredients and the bright color palette which isn’t very common for a dry fruit snack brand in the Indian FMCG Market.