Windsor Salt gets granular with comprehensive rebrand

Windsor Salt is about to get more refined as part of a series of brand updates.

The company’s water softening products were refreshed in September, with planned updates for its pool salt and ice melting lines – primarily sold under the Safe-T-Salt name – in 2017 and 2018 respectively.

It is the first major brand refresh for Windsor Salt in 10 years and includes a new logo and product packaging, as well as a revamped website and social media channels.

Michel Prévost, manager of consumer products marketing for Windsor Salt in Pointe-Claire, Que., says the brand refresh is intended to “modernize” the brand’s look and make it more appealing at shelf-level, particularly to millennials.

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“Even iconic brands need an update to make sure they stay relevant,” said Prévost. “We’re hoping to get that age group to try Windsor Salt. When people say, ‘It was in my mother’s cupboard,’ that doesn’t work today. We need to capture that market and continue serving the consumers that have been with us for years.”

While the updated logo retains the brand’s iconic castle design and the “Windsor” work mark, the entire product portfolio is now unified under the “Windsor blue” colour scheme, which replaces the full-colour palette it boasted before. A silver flourish was added to convey the brand’s premium nature while adding more visual interest.

The company’s founding year, 1893, has also been permanently affixed to the logo in order to convey its heritage to consumers, while the packaging also features more contemporary sans-serif fonts.

The company retained iconic dots on the packaging after research indicated they continue to resonate with consumers. However, the dots were reduced to a single row and colour (previous boxes featured two rows and colours).

The rebrand is being rolled out throughout the year across Windsor Salt’s entire culinary line, which includes its signature table salt product as well as coarse and fine sea salt products, kosher salt and pickling salt.

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Prévost said that the specialty salt category represented a key growth opportunity for the brand, fuelled by the growth of sub-categories including sea salt, kosher salt and Himalayan salt. “Consumption patterns have been shifting towards what we call specialty salts, and consumers are willing to pay more for premium salts,” said Prévost.

Windsor Salt has been the exclusive Canadian distributor of the French sea salt brand, La Baleine, for more than 10 years and is adding its revamped logo to the brand in April. “We’ve grown those SKUs tremendously in the last five to 10 years,” said Prevost. “ is a growing market.”

Windsor Salt is supporting the rebrand with a four-week TV and YouTube campaign featuring the tagline, “Got an ingredient?” The campaign is targeting cooks seeking recipes, and driving them to the WindsorSalt.com website.

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Windsor worked with branding and design firms Addison and Pause for Thought. Head Research conducted both consumer and business-to-business research that informed the new master-brand strategy and visual design. Ketchum Public Relations is responsible for PR and social media related to the brand refresh, and 3H Communications is overseeing creative and media for the campaign.