Ortalli
Flavour and experience

Packaging
Visual communication
New formats
Sales material
After the proliferation of oils of all kinds of textures, origins and flavours, the time has come for vinegar. We already experienced the emergence of balsamic vinegar from Modena 15 years ago (and balsamic creams 10 years ago).
The next big thing in the industry will be gourmet vinegar. This is the approach of Italian vinegar brand Ortalli.
Effective commercial actions are based on both good presentation material and annexe and a great idea. Theatricality is a very powerful weapon.
Intensity — Sometimes an assignment as simple as a selling kit becomes a project that demands much more. This is because appealing to a purchasing manager is almost as difficult (or even more so) than getting the attention of the end consumer. It’s not just about being appealing either but also, seeking to be remembered. In the end, being memorable is as much a question of packaging design and corporate visual identity as the creative concept for a selling kit. Everything is branding. Everything is brand projection, so… how do we imprint vinegar on the memory?

Consumer experience — A trite concept in marketing, yes. And most of the time just hinted at. You never reach its core. The “experience” thing is so widespread that in the end, its meaning has become distorted. The Royal Spanish Academy says that an experience is the “Fact of someone having felt, known or witnessed something”. We would agree that in general, consumer experiences are limited to “witnessing something” here we were looking for the “having felt something”.
Ortalli is a long-established brand, producing its vinegar in the heart of Modena by following traditional processes whose vinegar lineage goes back several generations. Its identity as a brand has to do with distinction, skill and craftsmanship. So we thought we should make the purchasing managers experience these sensations, not only in the visual aspect of the selling kit but also in everything that comes with a sample pack of different bottled vinegar.

Synaesthesia — The first experience ought to be visual. So, the box containing the four varieties of Ortalli vinegar opens like a flower. The graphic details are designed to impart the properties of the product but also to convey origin and flavour through shapes, colours and elegant rational fonts that are perfectly suited to the brand logo’s Gothic font. The outside of the selling kit is black in order to convey elegance and allude to the colour of the vinegar. Inside, the pastel colour of each petal is chosen according to the properties of the vinegar with which it is associated. If you were a synaesthete, you’d see it (well, actually, you’d feel it).
Try this — One of the high points in the process of “selling” a product to a purchasing manager is tasting it. All the ideas we had in this regard were unstylish, ordinary or a logistical nightmare. Breadsticks, mature cheese shavings, carpaccios and tatakis, micro-salads… But we discovered that in vinegar connoisseur circles (a secretive world of mysterious societies that makes even the Masons laughable by comparison) there is a truly exquisite tasting method.
A few drops of vinegar are poured onto a sugar cube and then the cube is sucked. The sugar makes the gasping effect produced by vinegar disappear instantly and the properties of the acetic acid are more readily appreciated. We went for it. Logistically it was simple; we solved everything with a lump of sugar and some stylish disposable spoons. The experience was literally extraordinary and amazing, and, of course, memorable.
