BY JACKIE DeLISE
For over 50 years, the Marcal brand has been synonymous with 100 percent-recycled paper products. Paper made from paper, not from trees. Today Marcal’s vision remains the same ~ help to conserve resources, protect our environment and keep the air we breathe cleaner and healthier.
Marcal’s Small Steps line, debuting in 2009, focuses squarely on the brand’s green heritage and helps consumers “make a small, easy step to a greener Earth.” The Small Steps line of 100% recycled bath tissue, paper towels, napkins and facial tissue are manufactured without chlorine bleaching, are hypoallergenic and lint free. They are made entirely from recycled paper, mostly newspaper, magazines and office paper collected curbside from residential neighborhoods across the Northeast.
It’s these values that let consumers feel good knowing that they are taking a small, easy step that can help make a big difference, without having to pay more.
Each year, Marcal recycles over 200,000 tons of recovered paper. This recycling effort saves enormous quantities of resources every day: 6,000 trees, 2 million gallons of water, 140,000 gallons of oil, 30,000 cubic feet of landfill space, and 22,000 pounds of pollution. Indeed, if each American household were to buy just one roll of Small Steps paper towels and bath tissue, we would save one million trees.
Being green does not mean sacrificing performance. With strength and softness, consumers will not feel they are making a sacrifice to change their behavior for a “green” product, whether they are cleaning spills or wiping faces.
Marcal was established in 1932 and is committed to sustainable manufacturing. Its products are distributed to grocers and other retailers for home consumption and to distributors for away-from-home use in hotels, restaurants, hospitals, offices and factories. Marcal Paper Mills, LLC employs nearly 1,000 people in its Elmwood Park, New Jersey and Chicago, Illinois manufacturing operations.
Strategic Branding and Design Considerations
Marcal worked with the Zunda Group to restage the brand and create a newly designed logo, brand identity and packaging graphics.
The program objective was to “celebrate” this unique sustainable positioning, and redesign the packaging for the full Marcal product line, to reflect an enhanced “green” brand positioning platform and differentiate the brand vs. main stream competitors.
The packaging strategy was to create designs that communicate the brand’s environmentally centric heritage of saving trees by using premium recycled paper.
The brand positioning centers around those consumers who want to do something good for the environment. Marcal is the only leading brand of paper goods that delivers to consumers an easy, affordable way to be green because Marcal is made from 100% recycled paper, consumers can feel good that they are helping to save trees.
The brand personality embodies caring, passionate about values, not afraid to act and stimulate change, beautiful and self confident, popular and well liked by the broad population
The brand values integrate saving mother earth, simplicity, people that are real (i.e. good product at a fair price) and value for the children and family
The brand essence captures Marcal’s ability to make it easy for consumers to do something green (i.e., save trees)
The new Marcal logo is reduced in size to a white typeface, with the descriptor “saving trees since 1950”. The leaf shape background anchors the logo with a visual device that is suggestive of the environment, adding a more natural dimension.
The Small Steps sub-brand creates a platform for the product positioning to more fully resonate with consumers. Again, just by purchasing Marcal products, consumers will be assured that they are doing their part to help the planet.
The logo is designed in two colors ~ green to denote nature and brown for earth/environment.
The arrow in the “p” was designed to associate with the familiar visual equity element of the “reduce, reuse, recycle” logo. This is a subliminal (environmental) nod to “coming full circle/closing the loop, as in product life stage recycling.
Additional graphic elements such as a green shade tree, designed in lieu of a more typical flag or burst, with a consumer call to action “help us save 1 million trees”, is perched atop a graphic lock-up of “100% premium recycled paper”.
Visual re-staging the brand at retail, which is traditionally a price brand in the category, resulted in a brand block of color to add a more distinct image than the leading national competitive set.
Simplicity is communicated in primarily a soft yellow and green color palette, depicting a sunrise and field of buttercups, which serves to frame the lower portion of the package.
Promotions
Marcal worked with the Topspin Group to secure immediate impact, by relying on tools of promotion, developing a promotional launch plan to support the brand within grocery channels, that builds momentum, driving customers to the store to purchase.
A new website was also designed to create a hub that communicates brand equity and provides a destination for consumers, media and retailers.
Take A Small, Easy Step to a Greener Earth
When customers choose the Marcal brand of paper towels or bath tissue, they are taking a small, easy step toward a greener world.
And, if every household in the U.S. replaced just one roll of paper towels or bath tissue with 100% recycled paper, the cumulative savings would be nearly 500,000 trees!
For over 50 years, this leading brand of paper products has been made from 100% premium recycled paper, not by cutting down trees, helping to conserve resources and protect our environment.
Further, this brand of high quality paper products are strong and absorbent, manufactured without chlorine bleaching, hypoallergenic, virtually lint free, unscented and has no dyes.
Plus, it’s less expensive than the other leading brands, so doing something good for the environment finally doesn’t have to cost more. When choosing the Marcal brand, consumers can feel good knowing that they are taking a small, easy step that can help make a big difference to their daily lives and in the bigger picture of saving the planet for future generations!
As retailers seek to provide affordable and meaningful eco-friendly choices that consumers are increasingly seeking, the new Small Steps line of 100 percent recycled paper products gives retailers just that: a convenient way to go green without compromise. The new and improved Small Steps line of bath tissue, paper towels, napkins and facial tissue arrive on shelf at grocers across the Northeast in early 2009.
Past, Present, Future
As generations of consumers have chosen the Marcal brand, they feel good knowing they are doing their part through purchase and taking a small, easy step that can help make a big difference for generations to come.
Jackie DeLise is Vice President New Business & Brand Development of Zunda Group LLC. Zunda Design Group creates brands that inspire, by designing visual identity and packaging that evoke emotions and connect consumers to their brand, ultimately captivating attention and purchase intent at retail. Jackie can be reached at j.delise@zundagroup.com.
Subscribe by email
I have typically been very impressed with Cogent Research's skills with brand positioning
Posted by: Felix Chesterfield | August 24, 2009 at 11:47 AM
Marcal is the biggest air and water polluter in the state of New Jersey. They have been fined almost a billion dollars by the EPA, and do much more harm than good. They filed Chapter 11 to avoid paying for the clean up, and also used it as an opportunity to break their union contract. Nice guys, huh? Then when they emerged from bankruptcy, they painted themselves green. For them to claim to be a green, eco-friendly company is a joke, as well as a lie.
Posted by: Hank | February 21, 2010 at 03:05 PM