Tesco's Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market is introducing a new private brand line of cookies - chocolate and vanilla sandwich cremes - in its 175 stores in California, Nevada and Arizona, that's about as "me too" as it gets in the world of cookie category retailer brand product creation.
But the grocer has added a signature branding twist to the Oreo-style cookie variety offered by nearly every cookie maker-marketer on the planet and retailer in the business that has its own cookie brand.
That twist: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has baked its clock logo into the middle of outer portion of the sandwich cookies, giving the common cookie variety an edible brand signature. Think of it as the cookie version of a tattoo. (If you double-click on the photo at top you can see the clock logo on the cookie clearly.)
We like the "cookie tattoo" of the clock logo and suggest it's a smart point of differentiation and a nice branding signature for a product that otherwise offers little opportunity for differentiation because of its basic nature and ubiquity in the marketplace.
The new fresh&easy brand cookies, which contain no artificial colors, flavors or preservatives, come in two varieties - Chocolate Cookie Cremes with a Vanilla (creme) Center and Vanilla Cookie Cremes with a Vanilla (creme) Center, as you can see in the photograph at top, which is of the front panel of the package as it sits on the shelf.
The packaging for the new cookie varieties was created for Tesco's Fresh & Easy by London-based design firm P&W, which has worked closely with the El Segundo, California-based fresh food and grocery chain on private brand product creation and design since before the first fresh&easy brand products hit the stores in 2007. The firm also does design work for Tesco in the United Kingdom.
The branding inspiration behind putting the Fresh & Easy clock logo on the cookies came from the design firm as well, we're told.
Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market has included its clock logo (above), which it calls a clapple, on other private brand products.
And last year it even launched a line of clapple-shaped candy. We wrote about the candy in these two stories in 2010 - June 24, 2010 - New Fresh & Easy Clock Logo-Shaped Candies Are A Pretty Sweet Idea; and July 17, 2010: New Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Clock-Shaped Private Brand Candy Line Hits the Shelves at Fresh & Easy.
The new fresh&easy brand sandwich cookies with the vanilla creme centers are already in many of the Fresh Easy stores, and are supposed to be in all 175 units by the end of next week, according to our sources.
Will a "Double Stuf" variety and other line extensions be coming soon from Tesco's Fresh & Easy? Clappel included of course. Stay tuned to Fresh & Easy Buzz to find out
Recent Stories from our 'Private Brand Showcase' feature
May 16, 2011: Wing Man-to-Wing Man: Mollie Stones Market's 'Mike & Dave' Create and Set to Launch 'Personal Brand' Wing Sauce
May 12, 2011: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Launches New Meat, Poultry, Veggie 'Grill-Pack' Items; 'Bigmista' Going 'On the Road Again'
April 22, 2011: A Little About Those 'green things' At Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market on Earth Day 2011
April 20, 2011: Raley's Supermarkets Introducing New 'Raley's Tonight' Fresh Heat-and-Eat Gourmet Entrees
March 22, 2011: That's Amore: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Introduces New 'Gourmet' Frozen Pizzas For $3.99 Each
March 15, 2011: There's Nothing Pie-in-the-Sky About Trader Joe's 'Elegantly Simple' Pie Recipe Contest
February 8, 2011: Private Brand Showcase Déjà Vu: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Announces its New 'Gourmet' Brand
February 7, 2011: Getting There First...Plus, Are Tesco's Fresh & Easy and Safeway Traveling Down A Similar Private Brand Aisle?
January 6, 2011: Fresh & Easy Neighborhood Market Hopes 'eatwell' Makes For A Healthy 2011
January 5, 2011: Safeway Adds 'Open Nature' to its Natural-Organic-Healthy Foods' Private Brand Portfolio
Additionally, Click here to see more stories in our 'Private Brand Showcase' feature
