Coley Porter Bell refreshes Jammie Dodgers brand and packaging

Coley Porter Bell has unveiled its refresh of Jammie Dodgers' packaging, designed to bring consistency to the biscuit's portfolio and evolve some of its key assets.

The global design studio has worked with Fox's Burton's Companies for several years, most recently on the packaging update for Maryland Cookies. This new project continues the collaboration between the brand and the studio.

According to Coley Porter Bell senior account director Harriet Sharp, the design team was excited when the brief to reimagine the Jammie Dodgers brand came through. She describes the biscuit brand as being "iconic and well-loved with distinctive equities," adding that the studio was keen to get stuck into modernising and strengthening it.

Sharp says that despite being so well recognised, "the brand's cohesiveness had started to suffer across multiple variant and flavour launches". To support future growth, Jammie Dodgers needed to improve consistency across its product offerings while simultaneously differentiating between flavours and format extensions.

The ultimate goal was to "enhance variant awareness and support product innovations too", says Sharp.

Coley Porter Bell's strategy involved turning the positive nostalgia associated with Jammie Dodgers into excitement. To achieve this, the studio converted the brand's most unique emotional and functional aspects into an ownable brand idea.

"Our unordinary Idea of 'Cheeky at Heart' encapsulates the qualities that make Jammie, Jammie Dodgers," says Sharp. "It balances a good-natured yet mischievous brand attitude – one that is loved for its playful intention to test boundaries; with the most iconic visual feature of the product: the love heart."

Taking inspiration from the logo – a splodge of sticky jam – the studio created a suite of graphic assets in the form of stickers. Coley Porter Bell design director Isaac Sodipo explains how the stickers lean into "the fun, playful and mischievous attitude of the brand, allowing it to appear where you don't expect it so it can grow and be seen in places you've not seen it before".

Since the strategy involved holding onto the distinctive assets that Jammie Dodgers has had for many years, the studio sought to optimise the jam splodge to give it more energy. Working with hand lettering artist Alison Carmichael, Coley Porter Bell also refined the cartoon-style typography.

This ensured that it was readable but still "light-hearted and fun", says Sodipo. "This is all held together as a standalone sticker, ensuring the brandmark stays consistent across the portfolio and other elements," he adds.

Similarly, the colour palette of Jammie Dodgers has been tweaked slightly while retaining recognition and distinctiveness. There have been some changes to the packaging layout.

While the biscuit is still positioned on the left with the new logo proudly in the centre, the right-hand side now houses a small sticker selection containing the fruitier jam claim, the flavour descriptor and a large fruit illustration. Sodipo says this was done to "aid navigation by clearly showcasing the fruity flavour".