Maggi is a Swiss seasoning brand with a strong international following attributed to localized product development and marketing. To build brand presence in the United States, my team created new packaging, an original mobile app, and airport restaurant.
Experience Designer
UX/UI
Experiential Design
Strategy
Oct - Dec 2020
From India to Nigeria to Costa Rica, the Swiss seasoning brand has been able to replicate success in countries around the world. The secret so far has been localization. Go to India, and you'll find a population obsessed with Maggi Noodles. Go to Latin America, and chances are you will find Maggi's Caldo de Pollo in every kitchen.
Many Maggi products can only be found in the international aisle of major chains. Dedicated international markets often carry multiple versions of a Maggi product to target different ethnic groups, without any visual explanation of the differences. Maggi's current marketing in the US targets the Spanish-speaking diaspora living in the United States. For a regular American looking to try Maggi, the learning curve is high.
We created Maggi quick seasoning blends for beginner-friendly and authentic recipes across an array of different cuisines. Each blend is derived from the recipe of the Maggi counterpart sold in its country of origin.
Trying new cuisines can be hard when you don't know where to start. The Maggi app is the gateway into the world of Maggi and curates recipes popular and relevant to a user's country of origin, preferred cuisines, and cooking level.
Maggi currently hosts a library of recipes on its website. With the Maggi app, users can access those same recipes on their mobile device with added features like ingredient checklist, step-by-step instructions, quick shop to featured products, and community tips.
Shop products and find them in a store close to you. Using image recognition, hold up your product to your camera to pull up product info and popular recipes using that ingredient.
The Maggi Café is a concept restaurant featuring Maggi recipes from around the world. Piloting at JFK International in Terminal 4, the Maggi Café would cater to traffic coming from the brand's most loyal markets such as India. JFK was a top choice because of the breadth of international traffic it covers from every corner of the globe -- from Europe to Latin America to Asia.
We chose a partnership with the Star Alliance of airlines because many of the national airlines belong to countries with a strong Maggi brand loyalty, such as Air India/India. It is also home to Swiss Air (Switzerland being the birthplace of Maggi).
Several restaurants and store chains over the last few years have been lambasted for "culturally appropriating" international cuisines to fit the American palette, or what some would call the "white-washing" of food. We wanted to combat this trend by emphasizing the characteristic that has made Maggi successful worldwide -- authenticity and respect for local cuisine.
In addition to talking to individuals unfamiliar with Maggi, we also checked in with Maggi loyalists, many of whom are international students living in the United States or second-generation Americans. The Maggi brand carries a lot of love and nostalgia for many immigrant groups that now reside in the United States. In creating our new solution, we sought to capture a new audience while ensuring the brand remained recognizable to the people who made it successful in the first place.
I grew up with Maggi in my household. Many of my friends who came from immigrant households also remember having a Maggi product in their home. But my team members had never heard of Maggi before we started this project. When we discussed the food we ate growing up, our experiences could not have been more different. However, it was this diversity that helped us find a solution that could cater to both of our upbringings — one that would give people like myself an opportunity to see Maggi in a different light and one that would encourage people like my teammates to try something new.