Silver Fern Farms
Silver Fern Farms is New Zealand’s leading processor, marketer, and exporter of premium quality lamb, beef, and venison. As China makes up a significant portion of their business, and with eyes on building a global brand, they knew success in local adaptation of their product would be critical. Silver Fern Farms needed to better understand local consumers so that they could develop a brand platform and identity that held relevance in the Chinese market. They engaged TSI to help them in that process.
Service
Discover, Innovate, Scale
Client
Silver Fern Farms
Year
Geography
2020
New Zealand, China
To begin to understand local stakeholders, TSI looked beyond just the typical consumer. Of course, they were also part of the conversation, but there are other pieces to the puzzle. TSI held extensive interviews with professional chefs, restaurant owners, and buyers to understand how the market perceives the category, how they viewed the Silver Fern Farms’ brand, and what potential distinctive assets could be. With these findings, TSI would better interpret what positioning could look like in China and explore the focal angles for communications, assets, and marketing collateral.
Building the right assets
Taking all this information from stakeholders, including consumers, TSI then used our proprietary SPRINT methodology to land on the perfect name to represent the SFF brand in China. From here, we needed to build out the right assets to drive consumer conversion. These included logos, visual identity, point-of-sale, digital assets, brochures, and other collateral.
Ensuring consistency
A major headache for international brands working in China often occurs when local branding teams take liberties with visual identity. To ensure against this, TSI developed a brand and visual identity guidebook which incorporated the unique elements needed for China while keeping true to SFF’s original branding. This ensures a consistent brand across all touchpoints, including online, offline, and traditional marketing. TSI was even present at commercial shoots to ensure consistency.
The Silver Fern Farm brand, with TSI-developed assets, made its China launch in July 2020.
"The Silk Initiative is the bridge between Western markets and China, demonstrating a strong sense of ownership with every engagement. They have been instrumental in providing a strong
and strategic partner for our growth."
Rebecca Stratton, Brand Manager Foodservice, Silver Fern Farms
