Olive Branch - Olive Oil - THE HOUSE LONDON

Olive Branch – Olive Oil

Olive Branch – http://myolivebranch.co.uk/ – came to us a couple of years ago to start a new food company. We’ve become known for this type of work and have found some great success.

Olive Branch is a new range of products from the sunny Greek island of Crete. Starting with the tastiest olive oil we have ever had the pleasure of putting in out mouths, we began to create a brand. New projects are added to the range every few months including jam, red wine vinegar, olives and a couple we can’t quite announce yet.

What was the problem?

Olive Branch founders Maria Koinaki from Crete and her partner Kamil Shah came to us with an idea; create a product range around the delicious, juicy olive fruit from the sun drenched climate of Crete. We loved the name and loved the taste of their first product, olive oil, even more so we got to work.

Like most Cretans, Maria’s family owns their own olive trees and as a child, she would take part in the annual olive harvest, hand picking fresh olives and helping her father to take them to the local olive mill in Ierapetra (Southern Crete).

Olive Oil, particularly from this area of the world, is known for it’s health benefits, so this was a key element when creating the brand. Check out the benefits here http://myolivebranch.co.uk/information/health-benefits

We needed to think about the long term aims of Olive Branch focussing on more than just one product. The brief was to create a brand than is fun, interesting, a quality product and had health benefits.

And how did we solve it?

Olive Branch had big plans for many new products and we’re seeing them deliver on this every month we work with them to create a strong and sustainable brand. With this in mind we needed to develop a group brand and allow this to adapt successfully for each product so there’s a consistency across all the products.

Olives are of course at the heart of most of the products so this had to be included. However we wanted to create a second smile in the mind and hence the olive is hidden within the negative space of the “O”. As we learnt more about the brand and the amazing life extending qualities of olives, particularly the ones we are using from the island of Crete, we knew we had to focus on this to differentiate the brand. We highlighted the word “live” within “Olive” and have plans in the future to develop this with “O live” longer, wiser, happier, better etc.

The first product was Extra Virgin Olive Oil and with the new logo identity, we created a series of illustrations to support the theme. Olive vines, doves of peace and illustrations to explain the process from field to plate, all help to communicate the softer side to this brand. We worked closely with the client to pull out the key messages to tell consumers and have work on iterated versions based on market research.

The next product to launch to follow up with Olive Oil in various sizes was a unique product call Olive Oil Jam. It’s all the freshness and fruitiness of jam mixed with a drop or two of Olive Oil. In Crete many people drink a shot of Olive Oil to start the day and they have the lowest levels of heart disease and longest life expectancy in the world. We created 4 new flavours and have recently added a 5th with Fig.

Again the style and theme of the olive follows through with each fruit logomark surrounding the olive centre. Droplets have become a unifying theme across all labels now and as we develop new products like Red Wine Vinegar and Olives for example, this theme will continue.

The Results?

The products are selling well across independent food stores, at farmers markets and the product range is expanding all the time. The plan for 2013 is to enter the supermarket scene.