Rich and hearty soup in a can

American canned food brand Progresso welcomes this year’s soup season with the launch of newly rebranded soup cans and products across supermarket shelves. The rebrand, carried out by brand experience agency Hornall Anderson, reminds consumers in an increasingly health-conscious market that there is no substitute for quality ingredients and flavor.

The stripped-back, redesigned packaging serves as a fitting complement to Progresso’s brand, whose products are free of GMOs, artificial colours and flavours, trans fat, partially hydrogenated oil and high fructose corn syrup. The simplified design replaces the old logo, garnished with the classic pepper, tomato and onion trio, in favor of a more modernised, cleaner logo complementing the purity of the ingredients, while still embracing the brand’s heritage.

The rebrand also replaces excess detail with legible straplines and simple colours so shoppers can more easily identify favourites among Progresso’s wide range of products. The traditional soup options can now be identified by the light blue pop of colour above the logo on the can, while the vegetable options sport green. The light, 100 calories-or-less per serving soups are marked with white, while the rich and hearty soups are marked with yellow. Additionally, the photography on the cans feature less background detail, instead drawing focus to the carefully selected ingredients in each spoonful or bowlful of recipe.

The rebrand spans the full line of Progresso foods, stocks, broths and condiments.

The Progresso brand, which dates back to the late 1800s in Italy, created its first premium soup in 1949 based on an old Taormina family recipe. As importing food from Europe became difficult during World War II, Progresso started canning and bottling foods domestically in America and began making soups during the winter months when vegetables were out of season. In 2001, the brand was acquired by General Mills after its acquisition of the Pillsbury company. Today, all the brand’s chicken soups are made with 100% antibiotic and hormone free chicken.