Your eating your toast, it’s early in the morning and you’re watching “The Today Show” before you make your way out the door for the school bus, and you see Al Roker showing the Smucker’s jelly jars showcasing the images of the elderly who are turning wild ages on it’s label, you kiss your parent goodbye and begin your sweet elementary carefree day – this is the memory my mind goes to when I think of Smucker’s jelly and jam. So when I was scrolling through logo after logo and landed on the almost unrecognizable rebrand of the classic “Smuckers Co” my toast-eating elementary school ass was downright shell shocked! Not THE Smucker’s?? What?? Even Smucker’s is turning into this wildly modernized and futuristic looking brand. As surprised and unhealthily attached to the nostalgic logo of my childhood’s past, I found my opinion on it’s new modern identity slowly changing into absolute adoration.
So why is Smucker’s looked upon so sentimentally by most Americans? Well it probably has to do with this jelly company being around since 1897. Many generations have used their spreads since as far back as most of us can remember and there’s just something special about breakfast and starting your day with some warm coffee and jellied up toast. When looking at the evolution of their logos and packaging, I noticed that Smucker’s hasn’t ever shied away from rebranding. There were many different label designs and logo styles to sift through, and this ultimately swayed me away from being a boomer in my idea that Smucker’s shouldn’t rebrand or modernize their identity system, I mean, they had been since the day they were established, so why not now?
I did my own research on the logo design history and this image (above) captures their logo evolution the best. As you can see, Smucker’s has always been changing their look, pretty dramatically. They had an apple as a logo to begin with, which turned into berries, which over the decades teeter-tottered from a wordmark back into a logo with a wordmark time and again. Even though on a whole it really shows how different they’ve designed their look, there’s always this “classic” theme, the font is serif, mostly decorative, and detailed. Today’s redesigned J.M SMUCKER logo is completely 180’d from anything they’ve done before.
Smucker’s, or as they now would like to be called, The J.M. Smucker Co, started out in Jams and Jellies, but as time went on they found themselves growing into many different brands, they bought out Jif, Crisco, Folgers, Meow Mix.. and so on. The CEO and other execs found themselves wanting to move on to the modern age with a modern image, and this is how the J.M. Smucker Co branding began. As I dove into their history and reasoning behind their rebrand I found myself going, “ooohh okay this totally makes sense”. This initial repulse turned into a moment of “wow this is actually genius rebranding” which I did not expect to have after the research.
I feel that their logo represents the modern day Smucker’s brand, which is exactly what the CEO and design team was striving for. They mainly found this inspiration and messaging through the colors of their current logo as well as playing with the berry shape of their past logos. When they went on to explain that the main red berry was “Heritage” throwing it back to the “familiar strawberry” of their original start, to the lime green berry representing “spark of inspiration and fresh ideas” on to the back berry leaves of “Creativity, Culture, and Growth” which is honoring the culture and leading creations in the forward thinking company values. I do feel that this is appropriate for their current and past audiences because they’re still honoring the base of the company being a jam and jelly company onto their wide range of products in the modern day and showing these many facets in the multiple elements of the current logo.
The J.M SMUCKER Co. is a rebrand that I ultimately am a fan girl of. I love the ideas and motivation behind the rebrand itself, it’s a company that wants to stay modern and forward facing while still respecting their humble beginnings, and they’ve successfully encapsulated this within their sleek and fresh new logo and identity. Though I will miss seeing the classic “Smucker’s” berries and name plate, you’ll still catch me eating my morning toast with some Smucker’s homemade jelly.
