Donmar Foods: Brand Transformation Case Study

Outdated to outstanding – how NOVO MxC reimagined Donmar Foods’ brand, packaging, and digital presence to drive new sales leads, cut costs, and boost industry recognition.

Donmar Foods: Brand Transformation Case Study

Outdated to outstanding – how NOVO MxC reimagined Donmar Foods’ brand, packaging, and digital presence to drive new sales leads, cut costs, and boost industry recognition.

Background & Challenge

Donmar Foods is a Canadian B2B food ingredients manufacturer producing powdered soup bases, spices, seasoning blends, drink mixes, desserts and more. Their clients are commercial kitchens – from independent restaurants and chains, to hotels, hospitals, schools, caterers, and even correctional facilities. Despite its quality products and 50+ year legacy, Donmar’s branding had fallen behind the times. The company was marketing itself with an outdated one-page website containing only a few paragraphs of text, and aging packaging designs that failed to stand out in a competitive foodservice market. They also lacked lifestyle photography to showcase product uses, leaving potential clients without a visual sense of the brand or products. In short, Donmar’s digital presence and packaging were not doing justice to the quality of its offerings, risking lost opportunities as competitors with modern branding attracted attention.

Our Approach

NOVO MxC partnered with Donmar Foods for a comprehensive brand transformation, from strategy through execution. In the span of a year, our team delivered a suite of creative and marketing solutions to elevate Donmar’s brand image and market impact.

Packaging Redesign

We created new packaging for Donmar products which offers a striking, modern look for the brand, while reducing the brand’s carbon footprint. The new packaging features bold, vibrant colours and a greater emphasis on Donmar branding, replacing the outdated-looking labels that were applied to generic packaging containers. The new packaging uses pouches, rather than thick plastic bins, which weigh significantly less, uses substantially less raw material to produce and take up a lot less space in the waste bin. The packaging overhaul immediately elevated Donmar above competitors in visual appeal, and it achieved practical benefits like improved sustainability and a dramatic increase in cost-efficiency (detailed in the Results section below).

Website Design & Development

We designed a completely new, multi-page website to replace Donmar’s single-page site. The new site is strategically built for user experience and lead generation – it’s visually stunning, easy to navigate, and rich with content. We incorporated 3D renders of the new packaging and plenty of high-quality lifestyle photos to showcase Donmar’s products in use. The site tells Donmar’s story and product offerings in depth, instilling trust in visitors. It’s also mobile-responsive and optimized for search engines and AI chatbot searches. The overall digital presence now far exceeds that of Donmar’s competitors, positioning Donmar as an innovative leader in its category.

Lifestyle Photography

Our team produced professional food photography to bring Donmar’s products to life. We shot an array of lifestyle images featuring key products (like soup bases, spice blends, etc.) in real-world culinary settings – for example, soup bases being used in a kitchen, spices sprinkled on dishes, and finished beverages from Donmar’s mixes. These images are used throughout the website and marketing materials to create an emotional connection and give B2B buyers a clear idea of the quality and applications of Donmar’s ingredients. This visual storytelling was entirely missing before, and now it powerfully supports Donmar’s sales pitch.

Public Relations & Marketing Campaign

To maximize the impact of the rebrand, we ran a PR campaign announcing Donmar Foods’ new packaging and website to the industry and Donmar’s client base. We crafted press releases and targeted outreach to food and beverage trade media and blogs. The result was coverage in multiple industry outlets, including a feature story in Food In Canada – Canada’s leading food and beverage processing magazine – highlighting Donmar’s new packaging and website launch. We also assisted Donmar in communicating the updates directly to existing customers and prospects (e.g. via email newsletters and sales materials), ensuring the brand refresh translated into renewed interest and engagement from the market.

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