PORTLAND – Redesigned packages of Gifford’s Ice Cream are now landing on retail store shelves as the company rolls out the first phases of an extended rebranding campaign.
Vice President of Sales Lindsay Gifford-Skilling said the effort, which includes a revamped logo, will help distinguish the Skowhegan company and its product from competitors in the premium ice cream market.
“I think that it will give us more sales because it portrays a … high-end, quality product,” Gifford-Skilling said. “People (who have) never tried Gifford’s before will want to give us a shot.”
The updated logo is a letter “G” shaped like a bowl of ice cream. The new containers have a coffee-colored background. Flavors are printed in large, capital letters.
Bath-based Briggs Advertising helped with the brand overhaul.
New ice cream packages have been shipping since March, and Gifford-Skilling said a redesigned website will go live soon — possibly at the end of May or beginning of June.
But she said updating all of the company’s branded items — such as flavor boards, road signs, napkins and ice cream cups — may take months.
She predicts the effort, which cost “thousands and thousands of dollars,” will not be finished until the end of 2011 or early 2012.
Gifford’s Ice Cream launched in the early 1980s, when brothers John and Roger Gifford decided to convert their father’s dairy into an ice cream business.
Now a company with $12 million in annual sales, Gifford’s is available at major supermarkets throughout New England and at several hundred ice cream stands as far south as New Jersey.
Staff Writer Jonathan Hemmerdinger can be reached at 791-6316 or:
jhemmerdinger@mainetoday.com
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