Stefano Faita is a celebrated Italian chef from Montreal’s Little Italy. After achieving success with his cookbooks, TV shows and restaurants, he had set his sights on succeeding in the retail space with his tomato sauce recipe. However, his talent in the kitchen did not guarantee retail success. The agency had to make sure that his bold and colourful personality that made his charm and success was also found in his brand. That is why they leveraged his well-known face and contagious smile to build the Stefano retail brand. Over the last three years, the agency has developed the brand strategy, identity and packaging, and helped Stefano Faita turn his dream to launch four tomato sauces into a national brand selling quality Italian products that include sauces, pizzas, sausages, panettones and more. One typical Italian product, however, remained: pasta.

The goal was to launch the pasta line and incite consumers to purchase Stefano pasta to go with their already beloved Stefano sauces. They had to develop a product with mass appeal that would stand out in a category led by a handful of dominant players.

Success in other categories did not guarantee success with the pasta. In order to compete on shelves dominated by strong brands with blue (Barilla, Catelli) and green (Delverde) colour blocking, the pasta would likewise have to have a visually strong on-shelf presence to get noticed. That also meant that the different products could not express their own personality through colour, like they do in the sauce category. They would need to find a different way to show the variety and dynamic nature of the pasta products. Typography turned out to be the key ingredient.

With research showing that almost three-quarters of Canadian households consume pasta at least once a week, they had to ensure that the product would be perceived as an everyday option while remaining true to the brand’s promise of quality. For this reason, they decided to turn elements related to everyday decisions, such as cooking time, health claims and product origin, into rich design elements that communicate the quality of the brand.

With the packaging being the only communication tool for this product launch, all the design elements had to come together perfectly and stick, just like a perfectly cooked al dente pasta. The bold red colour, along with the matte finish, present on all Stefano products allows the brand to easily catch the consumer’s attention in a sea of blue and green. Distinct typographies, carefully chosen to represent the different pasta cuts, allow the brand to express its variety and dynamic tone and manner. Well-crafted design elements are used to convey information that helps consumers make their decision at the shelf and prepare the pasta at home. Of course, to achieve the goal of prompting consumers to choose Stefano pasta to accompany their Stefano sauces, they proposed sauce and pasta pairings right on the packaging.

The launch of Stefano pasta has generated plenty of consumer enthusiasm and demand, and has allowed the Stefano brand to reinforce its position in the market as a high-quality yet affordable authentic Italian brand. With its balanced combination of artful design and mass appeal, the pasta packaging has allowed the Stefano brand to secure distribution in many independent, more fine food stores, in addition to big grocery store chains. Also, strong consumer demand for his pasta has convinced Stefano to launch five new pasta cuts this year.