Lemon Grass Kitchen

Lemon Grass Kitchen was a new brand launch by an established company in the highly competitive frozen Asian food category. The agency I worked for, specializing in CPG brand advisory and shopper marketing, advised them to fill a void for a clean-ingredients, authentic Thai product. My role was pretty vast, but the centerpiece was storytelling and writing around the brand and products. To craft marketable but fufillable stories, I looked to the ingredients (which drive flavor profiles for each variant), as well as regional and cultural connections. This also informed my art direction and design. 

Above are screens from the website, which focused on incredients, toppings, authentic SE asian style including motifs and colors. The site includes a "cultural inspiration" page to educate about the tie between Lemon Grass Kitchen recipes and regions/cultures, and a space for Chef Mai Pham, the originator of a restaurant by the same name and LGK's Culinary Director. I created social content to augment the launch and build a feed into the website.

The details about ingredients and regions lent the authenticity to this new brand—which was part of our strategic aim as "real" was lacking in the frozen aisle, particularly with Asian brands. I also oversaw packaging photography and was the art director for "flyover" video of freshly prepared plated food, helping find the right props and with the shot styling. This video showed both raw ingredients and recommended garnishes and sauces next to plated food.

The video above was used to promote the Lemon Grass Kitchen attributes to the important store buyer audience. The pitch to get on shelves utilizes trends in ingredients and flavors, frozen convenience, southeast Asian cuisine popularity, take-in dining trend, multi-culturalism, chef-inspired, package co-creation, as well as highlighting the need for grocers to find frozen products that attract millennial shoppers to lift overall category sales.