Dolmio Unveils Tasty New Brand Identity

Global design and brand consultancy, Elmwood, has announced its role in creating a contemporary new brand identity for pasta sauce icon, Dolmio.

Dolmio has been at the heart of Italian cooking in UK homes for decades and played a pivotal role in making Italian meals mainstream in the country. The brand wanted to ensure that it could maintain and grow its market-leading position, so it recently embarked on a major brand refresh, involving new product development, comms and design.

The company appointed Elmwood to deliver a full visual identity refresh, giving the brand the tools to be flexible, exciting and engaging online. Dolmio wanted to create a unique identity that would offer something new to the category, helping it reach beyond its traditional family-based audience and attract younger millennial and generation z consumers.

Following market research, Elmwood learned that consumers loved the Dolmio brand but how they cooked with its sauces had changed. Consumers were becoming much more experimental and not necessarily sticking so rigidly to traditional Italian flavours. Elmwood wanted Dolmio’s brand design to tap into this desire for freedom and fun. So, while the new brand identity includes flashes of Italian heritage – for example the red, white and green colouring on the packs – this has been done in a completely modern way, shifting the focus from provenance to delicious and eclectic taste.

Dolmio’s word mark is also a significant diversion from the brand’s previous identity and of pasta sauces in general, with a more eye-catching and 'epic' quality that captures the joy we get and the freedom we feel from creating big-hearted Italian meals full of overflowing yumminess. This is personified by the exclamation mark, an epic celebration that's big and bold, full of generosity and warmth.

The shape language of the mark - for example the counters of the D and the flicking of the L - has also captured Dolmio’s personality, with a speech bubble effect that looks like the brand itself is talking to the consumer.

The exclamation mark’s red dot can expand and act as a lens into the world of Dolmio, whether that’s offering an overhead glimpse of people and their meal stories or macro moments of a simple fork with tasty bolognese sauce.

Commenting on Dolmio's refreshed brand identity, Elmwood’s global provocation officer, Greg Taylor, said: “Through our partnership with Dolmio, we've reinvigorated its brand identity with new, distinctive brand assets that create the perfect balance between ‘Big Heart’ and ‘Great Taste’. Dolmio’s heart comes from the generosity, accessibility and inclusivity of its brand identity, offering people the freedom to use the sauce how they want. But its big heart doesn’t come at the expense of great taste. It’s been a pleasure working with Dolmio to reinvent branding in the pasta sauce market."