Perdue freshens up design with Pearl the chicken

Your bologna has a first name. Now, your chicken does, too. Perdue Farms’ new packaging includes a blue cartoon chicken named Pearl, named for founder Arthur Perdue’s wife. The new packaging, unveiled Monday, features bold graphics with clean lines and basic colors – an attempt to attract millennials to a brand that is, by its own admission, dated. The refreshed design also includes a simple barn, slightly reminiscent of the old-fashioned farmhouse that adorned Perdue’s packaging from 2005 to 2017. Updated large type highlights that the chicken contains no antibiotics, while a green “freshness guaranteed” badge decorated with a leaf is now nearly dead center. Gone is the “Fresh From Family Farms Since 1920” tagline. “It’s about contemporizing the brand,” chief marketing officer Eric Christianson said in an exclusive interview with USA TODAY. “One of the uncomfortable truths is when you tell people you work for Perdue, people say, ‘I love Perdue. My grandmother loves it. She remembers that Frank guy.’ ” Frank Perdue, son of Arthur and Pearl, starred in the TV commercials when he ran the company and was known for his catchphrase, “It takes a tough man to make a tender chicken.” He died in 2005. The cartoon fowl that bears his mother’s name will not be animated or speak, the company says. “It’s fun and playful and inviting and a good symbol for us right now,” Christianson said. “There’s not much of a role in advertising for her right now.” The new packaging is for freshchicken products only, according to the family-owned, Salisbury, Marylandbased poultry company that sells $1.5 billion worth of it annually. The purpose of the packaging overhaul was to drum up new business. “We are hoping for a significant increase in sales. We expect a bump with this,” Christianson said. “Millennials are entering that space. We want to pick them up as loyal consumers, as they continue to grow their families.” Twenty-seven percent of U.S. shoppers said they’re paying more attention to product claims and nutritional information on poultry, and 58 percent were more concerned about treatment of animals raised for food, according to market research firm Packaged Facts. Hence the brand repositioning, said Mark Lang, a food marketing expert at the University of Tampa. “What’s happened in the food business for big companies, like Perdue, is they’ve been cast as mass-produced industrialized food, completely detached from whole foods and locally sourced,” Lang said. “It’s meant to be a graphic that suggests an animal being natural. It’s eating off the ground, in natural foliage. They’re trying to communicate a bird not in cage, not in an industrial building.”

PERDUE FARMS Perdue’s new packaging is designed to attract millennials to the brand.