Reuben Mattus

The story: Where does the name Haagen-Dazs come from? What does it mean? Was the brand created in Europe? Despite its foreign connotation, the name was contrived by the brand’s founder, New Yorker Reuben Mattus. In the early 1920s, Mattus worked for his mother’s ice cream company in the Bronx, selling fruit ice and ice cream pops from a horse-drawn wagon. He launched his own company in 1960, calling it Haagen-Dazs to reflect the old-world traditions he embraced. By 1973, the products were available throughout the United States. And in 1983, the brand was purchased by The Pillsbury Co. Today, Haagen-Dazs is available in 50 countries.

The challenge: The brand’s current packaging hadn’t been updated in about five years, causing it to fall short of consumer expectations. Haagen-Dazs took this as an opportunity to contemporize its packaging and better call out the products’ benefits.

The goal:Haagen-Dazs teamed up with Sterling Brands to creat a new package design that would improve shoppers’ experience with the brand on-shelf.
“[In addition to] increasing relevancy, we want to make sure that we maintatin our positioning as the super premium ice cream,” says Jason Merideth, associate brand manager at Haagen-Dazs. “When consumers invite us into their homes and shop us at shelf, we want to make that experience as pleasurable as possible and make it easy for them to find their flavor,” Merideth adds.

The solution: During consumer research, the team found equity in the brand’s logo and color scheme. As a result, the logo stayed the same, and the gold and burgandy color scheme remained- but they found a new interpretation. The redesigned cartons feature a gold background, instead of the burgandy used on the old packaging, which makes the text easier to read. The gold background is also designed to reflect the texture of the ice cream inside.

Article by Stephanie Hildebrandt, As seen in Brand Packaging magazine 7/21/2010

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