Kristoffer Evang and Anne Marte Ruud Evang, a married couple, started Ask farm in Jevnaker in 2013. They wanted to challenge the meat industry and offer an organic alternative based on sustainability, animal welfare, and quality. Using Norwegian ingredients, they create cured meats based on Italian tradition.
The corona demanded a new sales strategy
Originally, Ask sold its products through gourmet restaurants and delicatessens, a strategy they quickly had to change in March 2020 when the lockdown caused large parts of their sales to disappear overnight. The solution was to establish an online store with a thorough design, inviting pictures, and recipes created by famous chefs. Well helped by the grocery chain Meny's focus on local food treasures, the pandemic year 2020 became a good year of growth for Ask Gård.
Registered rights protect against copying
– Since the design for ASK is an essential part of the entire product, it is extremely important for us to ensure that no one else copies our expression and our values. We ensure this by protecting our names and our font through trademark and design registration. All too often, one sees that competing companies do not bother to reinvent the wheel, but simply copy what sells. From day one, we have wanted to protect ourselves against this.
Kristoffer Evang
Kristoffer Evang
Language and color scheme important in brand building
"For ASK, design and packaging have always been important. We are both educated in art and graphic design, and had this as a profession before the sausage adventure took shape. We have worked hard on branding and positioning, and through language and colors we have managed to stand out and establish a recognizable expression," says general manager Kristoffer Evang.
"This was initially done so that the consumer would quickly recognize the product. We weighted the packaging based on three elements: brand, i.e. ASK, color and name/product. The goal was for customers to remember the brand name ASK even if they didn't remember which sausage they bought last. If they remembered ASK and were to find the type of sausage, we thought it would be easier to remember a color than a brand name that was not known. Thus, we ended up with ASK sausage with red color."
The Ekvang couple wanted to establish product names that would stand out and tell a little about who they are as a company. They built a narrative for each product name, so that they could easily create a story around the product. For example, "PABLO" chorizo: "Pablo is a fiery Spaniard, a slightly chubby type who likes to enjoy a cold one in the sun. He has a brother named Pedro. Pedro is an angry type with a lot of aggression. We thought that the follow-up sausage could be called "PEDRO" and be a strong version of "PABLO". By creating small stories and meanings behind the names, we had more to play on in commercials and marketing," says Evang.
They have a designer on the team who is responsible for the entire ASK profile - Sindre Trolsås. He has developed the font and built up the graphic language around ASK.
– The design is based on the ASK font. It is built up of vector-based sausages in three formats, which together form the entire language. This makes us easily recognizable, and we easily detect if someone tries to copy us. At the same time, it is easy to launch new products; it is enough to write the name in our font, Kristoffer Evang, ASK farm
The font is used on everything from packaging, brochures, sausages, catalogs and also on the new production building.
"We think it's time to come up with something new in the meat industry. Meat has black as its color, which we wanted to challenge. Both to stand out from the established market, but also because of the environmental aspect. Black plastic is the worst, and the additive Carbon Black is prohibited in several countries. At the same time, black plastic is recycled as residual waste because the sorting machines cannot distinguish between black garbage bags and black packaging," concludes the founder.
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