Unmistakable assets drive salience, and growth. Cutting through the clutter, forming memories, and bringing the brand to mind across media. But sometimes even the most unmistakable and famous of these assets can become a liability. At odds with brand strategy, at odds with culture, and filtered out by consumers.

Special K was in just this situation. Its unmistakable red K – one of the most iconic marks in branding – had become synonymous with last century slimming rituals: tactical calorie deprivation, skinny ideals, and women in red swimsuits. The brand found itself at odds
with a culture of body positivity and wellness (both mental and physical) where people are seeking highly nutritious food without culinary compromise.
Our brief was to build the iconic K, as an asset, losing the associations with skinniness and empty food, whilst moving the brand into a wellness space – rooted in nutritious foods.

Three strategic shifts were made in design to achieve this:

1. The design was simplified to put the iconic K firmly centre stage. And the K doubled in size. The Kellogg's branding moved aside. Bowls and spoons and offers for free tape measures were lost from the packaging. To present the brand in a confident way – and a succinct, photogenic way that works on a smartphone.

2. We connected the iconic K with the food. Flakes behind and ingredients forward. A simple, easily shoppable, design that celebrates the famous flake as something natural, textural, culinary – something it is. Underpinned by a bespoke story of macro and micro nutrition.

3. Finally we opened the brand up, beyond red, into a world of eat-the-rainbow colour. Taking the colours that had once resided in bowls into the K's themselves. Signifying nutrition, the diversity of culinary experience that people are looking for today, and wellness.

The end result was a simple, vital aesthetic for a simple, vital brand. Leveraging and building the iconic K. Losing negative diet associations. Putting food at the centre of the brand, coding nutrition and wellness and most importantly making the iconic K an asset again