Food Federation Germany

From Farm to Fork

Since its inception, the Food Federation Germany has represented the food sector throughout the entire supply chain, “from farm to fork.” Nationwide, it serves a variety of associations, 250 companies – ranging from mid-sized firms to international corporations – as well as 150 individual members from the areas of agriculture, food processing, and food selling. Moreover, the Food Federation Germany functions as a partner for dialogue with political, administrative and scientific sectors, as well as for consumer protection and media matters.

The Task

Despite being the leading association of the German food sector, BLL was lacking a compelling and unifying way of articulating its distinct identity and experience. The organisation struggled with aligning the overall brand with its particular tasks and prerogatives. In its attempt to be descriptive, the organisation’s name turned out very long and challenging to use in the internal and external communication. It was often misspelled in various media and its abbreviation ‘BLL’ did not tell a story about the organisation’s purpose, activities, etc. Hence, a new name had to be created which is descriptive, yet impactful in summarising the brand essence. Another challenge in the renaming project was to combine and align the organisations’ wide range of interests and heritages, i.e. the proposed name had to pass two approval gates, of which the latter had to be confirmed by every single one of its 800 members.

The Solution

By means of a series of interviews, brainstorms, research, benchmarking, and collaborative internal naming workshops, we crafted a new name: ‘Lebensmittelverband Deutschland.’ Moreover, it became clear that only a truly iconic brand system would leverage the power of name recognition. Thus, we further strengthened the name by designing a logo that visually represents the organisation’s reach and, thus, simplifies conveying its values and message: “from farm to fork.” To additionally bring a sense of humanity and reflect the organisation’s turnkey approach, we created an easy to grasp brand appearance that tells their story of togetherness and determination to create an impact. The new name was well accepted, both internally and externally. It reached the most critical goal of clarity for the target audience. A big press conference followed with invited renowned journalists and politicians, resulting in 1500 PR clippings in one day.