Inspired by the spirit of the California wine movement, California Olive Ranch began creating premium, domestically-produced olive oil in 1998. Eventually, it climbed the ranks to become the top-selling U.S. brand that is actually manufactured in America.* By 2014, the company had undoubtedly come a long way; California Olive Ranch products could be found on the store shelves of major retailers where they generated tens of millions of dollars per year—but their packaging had yet to catch up.
“Consumers would tell us that our packaging still looked like it was from 1998, so we definitely needed some updating in terms of style,” said Grace Rusch, marketing manager at California Olive Ranch. “We also realized that some people were confused about key messages that we wanted to get across. Relatedly, we wanted to make it clear that this is premium, extra virgin olive oil,” she continued.
“First, we did some shelf research to understand the competitive landscape. We saw that we were already standing out against competitors because our color scheme was pretty different. This gave us the sense that we didn’t want a radical departure from our current packaging,” said Rusch.
