Baking a new brand
Ferguson Plarre’s Bakehouse is a fourth-generation family-run and operated bakery business. A highly successful and fast growing business, with a proud history dating back to the 1800s, Ferguson Plarre’s continues to provide customers with the best range of sweet and savoury treats. A great local, Victorian success story!
Ferguson Plarre was originally two separate entities (Ferguson’s Cakes and Plarre’s Cakes) before the families joined forces to form Ferguson Plarre Bakehouse in 1980. However, with the Ferguson family selling out many years ago, CEO Steve Plarre, wanted to evolve and simplify the brand to being just Plarre’s to establish the foundation for the future direction..
A key objective was to remain identifiable through their incredibly famous brand name, however, the Ferguson Plarre name was too long and reduced the impact of the brand. Davidson was commissioned to develop the new brand positioning, refresh the brand identity, and create a brand identity system and roll this out across their 86 stores in Victoria.
Davidson developed a new brand positioning ‘Baking people happy – since forever’. This reinforced their culture and philosophy around making people smile and delivering joy through incredibly delicious, handcrafted, baked goods.
To celebrate the rich history and authenticity of the company, Davidson reviewed the original logo from the 1900s and produced a refined, modernised version. To incorporate and reflect love and care as one of Plarre’s core values, we replaced the apostrophe with a small graphic heart.
There was strong equity in the existing vertical candy stripes, however, the burgundy colour was dated and heavy. Davidson’s design retained the bold stripes, making them more vibrant in colour and using them in a more creative way across all touch points.
The unique tone of voice is an important differentiator for Plarre’s. It was essential to express their quirky and fun-loving culture by sprinkling a little personality across all touch-points including the store experience, website, coffee cups, and everywhere possible as a way to build consumer love and loyalty.
The new brand was rolled out to help birth the next generation of Bakehouses. The fresh new brand can be seen everywhere from their new Drive-Thru to store signage, uniforms, coffee cups, cake boxes, paper bags, napkins, socials and the Plarres style guide.
Ferguson Plarre’s Bakehouse CEO Steve Plarre says the new store rollout will feature new in-store branding which has a fresh look and allow for further store growth and franchise opportunities. Steve Plarre also shared some kind words about working with Davidson Branding.
“Having worked with branding agencies in the past, I can confidently say that the Davidson Branding team delivered a brand creation experience that was next level. With excellent competitor analysis and deep semiotics research, they navigated and respected our complex and long history in everything they did. Most importantly, they listened. The final product was to deliver a modern iteration of a century-old brand that communicates a contemporary and exciting future for the next generation of our family baking business. Brief nailed.” – CEO, Steve Plarre