Thirty years of Chianina. On the shelf you could not see them.
Bianca Terra has been raising Chianina cattle at Stanghella, near Padua, Italy, for more than thirty years: home-grown feed, no GMOs and no antibiotics, animal welfare as a constraint rather than a slogan. All true, and all invisible in the chilled cabinet, where one tray looks like the next. We built the mark, the packaging and the digital presence starting from what the company actually is, choosing illustration instead of photography. The result: organic traffic up 40% in six months and commercial leads tripled.
WHO BIANCA TERRA IS
Cattle breeders first, crop farmers as well.
Società Agricola Bianca Terra raises the Chianina breed at Stanghella, near Padua. The distinctive part is not the animal: it is the supply chain. They farm the land that feeds the cattle themselves, so the feed is home-grown and traceable from the field to the barn, with no GMOs and no use of antibiotics.
Mattia Cappello started thirty-five years ago with one precise obsession: Chianina genetics. Around that obsession grew a team that works to the same standard, from animal welfare to the back office. A company where quality is not a department: it is the way things get done every day.
THE CHALLENGE
The value was there. Somewhere to see it was not.
The chilled cabinet is the most hostile context there is for a quality product: a black tray, clear film, a label with weight and price. In two seconds the customer has to understand why one meat costs more, and in two seconds nobody reads certifications.
Then there was a second, less visible problem: Bianca Terra speaks to two audiences at once. Retail distribution, which thinks in volumes, margins and turnover. And the person standing at the counter, who is buying dinner. The same mark had to hold up in a negotiation and on a shelf, without becoming two different marks.
THE ANALYSIS
Before drawing anything, we looked at the counter.
Analysis of the Italian premium meat sector: how direct and indirect competitors communicate, what they promise, how much they resemble one another. The finding was clear: a visually uniform market, where differentiation ended up being left to price.
Then Kapferer’s prism, filled in with facts and not with adjectives: physique, personality, culture, relationship, reflection, self-image. The personality profile that came out — ISFJ: concrete, warm, attentive to detail, attached to tradition — decided everything else: tone of voice, visual choices, even what not to put on the pack. A brand that promises care cannot communicate like a brand that promises luxury.
ADAM phase: Analyze
Sector analysis
Kapferer’s Prism
MBTI profile
THE MARK
The same mark, rebuilt on the grid.
The mark already existed and worked: a Chianina drawn with one continuous line, recognizable even at tiny sizes. It did not need replacing, it needed putting back in order. We took it apart on a construction grid and rebuilt it proportion by proportion: ratios, weights, clear space, minimum size.
The result is the same mark, but governable: it holds in reverse on the site’s dark ground, at one centimeter on a paper band, and large on a shipping carton. A logo is not a drawing: it is a set of rules that lets anyone use it without ruining it.
ADAM phase: Design
Restyling on a grid
Clear space
Brand identity manual
THE DESIGN CHOICE
Illustration, not photography.
This is the decision we are proudest of, and also the most counterintuitive: in food, photography is the absolute standard. But a photograph of a pasture is a photograph of any pasture, and anyone can buy the same one from a stock library.
We had the estate illustrated: the farmhouse, the cattle grazing, the wheat field that becomes the feed. An image nobody else can have, which shows the supply chain instead of hinting at it, and which on the shelf is recognized before the name is even read. It costs more than a stock photo. It is also the only part of the project competitors cannot buy.
ADAM phase: Design
Original illustration
Color system
Pack hierarchy
THE SYSTEM
Ten products, one single grammar.
Six cuts — fiorentina, rib steak, asado, tagliata, chuck roll, picanha — and four ready preparations: tartare, 180-gram and 290-gram loaf, burger. Every pack has the same structure: mark at the top, name of the cut in two typographic weights, illustration at the bottom, three icons for the non-negotiable promises.
The name changes and the product changes; the grammar stays. So the tenth pack costs a fraction of the first, and on the shelf the range reads as a family, not as ten decisions taken on ten different days.
THE HEART OF THE PROJECT
The proof is on the back, where nobody is obliged to put it.
The back of a pack is the one place where the customer really stops to read. We put there what you need in order to decide and to cook: the cooking suggestion minute by minute, the ingredients, the nutritional values, the mark of the Italian breeds consortium, the FSC paper, the tray with 20% recycled plastic, the energy from renewable sources.
It is not a list of virtues: it is the promise on the front made verifiable. The same criterion carried over to the site, to the video shot in the barn with Mattia, to the social content and to the campaigns used to bring traffic there. A consistent brand is a brand that says the same thing even where it could stay quiet.
ADAM phase: Amplify
The biancaterra.it site
Video storytelling
Social and campaigns
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THE RESULTS
RECOGNIZABLE, NOT JUST BETTER LOOKING
Same meat. Different story.
Organic traffic
+40%
in the first six months after the new identity launched.
Commercial leads
×3
compared with the previous year, with the same product.
Range on the shelf
10 products
six cuts and four preparations, on a single graphic structure.
What the company said
“We recognize ourselves”
“We finally recognize ourselves in our own brand, and customers feel it.”