The Challenge
Grist Mill Co., a manufacturer of food and snack products known for its creative marketing style, wanted to illustrate its innovation to shareholders through a non-traditional annual report. The objective was to make the 1993 report fun and informational. Just as important, the report needed to convey the company's strategic direction: to offer consumers value by providing high-quality, private label products at lower prices than comparable brand name items.
The Strategy
Private label or "store brand" products comprised Grist Mill's core business and future growth area. Our challenge was to communicate the growth potential and product quality of this market segment. To meet these needs, Padilla Speer Beardsley developed a theme telling the "fable of the store brand label." We chose the fable concept because it provided a creative way to tell Grist Mill's story. A fable is defined as a story with a moral or "truth" that is conveyed by animals who speak and act as humans. The fable begins under the sea where ...
Once upon a time, there was an ordinary fish (named Goldie) who made an extraordinary discovery: Grist Mill Co.'s private label, or store brand, products offer a much better value -- with low-priced, premium quality snacks, ready-to-eat cereals and candy bars -- than the big name products.
Throughout the tale, our story's protagonist, Goldie, discovers the great value of Grist Mill's products with the help of Grocer Grouper. The fable concludes ...
Which brings us to the moral of this story: Grist Mill's store brand products offer value that's worth its weight in Goldie.
The Results
This annual report was awarded a Nicholson Award as the best in its industry by The National Association of Investors Corporation (NAIC), an organization providing investment education and support for individual investors and investment clubs.