How cultural strategy helped Goodfella’s express ‘Italian Americanness’ for a UK context
The Challenge
Goodfella’s were on a journey to regain loss of market share and return the brand to its former glory by creating a new brand position which effectively tapped into its Italian American heritage in a way which is exciting, relevant and meaningful to its UK audience.
Our Approach
We conducted a full semiotic decode of the the Goodfella’s brand across all touchpoints to understand both the strengths and weaknesses of the brand existed currently and historically.
Following this with in-depth cultural analysis of the meanings and expressions of ‘Italian Americanness’ as it shows up in UK cultural allowed us to identify the most relevant cultural codes for Goodfella’s and how these could be bought to life with visual and verbal cues to tell more compelling and culturally relevant stories which link back to Goodfella’s distinct brand heritage.
The Outcome
We worked collaboratively with TBWA to integrate our cultural strategy with their creative platforms. From this was defined a new strategic way forward for the Goodfella’s brand, which tells a story of Italian Americanness which is about community, hospitality and sharing the ‘good stuff’.
This guided the ongoing work of the creative agency, which lead to a complete repositioning and relaunch of the brand across product, packaging and comms in January 2025.
“It was evident from our consumer’s perspective that Goodfella’s did not have a clear brand positioning and was leaving consumers confused. Our Italian American identity was not coming through, so we needed to create a brand identity that ingrained the Italian American heritage of the brand and ultimately that was relevant for both UK and Ireland markets. The approach we took exceeded expectations and not only delivered a distinctive brand position for Goodfella’s that could create an empathetic connection with our consumers but could provide a foundation upon which to base our future business decisions for the brand.”
— Laura Craft, Insight Managing UK, IRE & Europe, Nomad Foods
Watch the ‘Goodfella’s Goooood’ campaign video here.
