In a career spanning 40 years, John Nunziato has helped shape and evolve brands like Coca-Cola, Burger King, Chicken of the Sea, Jolly Rancher, Gillette, Campbell’s, Unilever and Johnson & Johnson. He’s won major design awards, and speaks at industry conferences.
Locally, the longtime Westport resident has lent his talents to the Library’s VersoFest, school theater programs, and other organizations.
Nunziato just launched @TheBrandvertisist. On Instagram and TikTok he shares behind-the-scenes stories about branding, advertising, creativity, happy accidents, lessons learned, and the occasional “beautiful mistake” that helped shape his career.
He’ll report soon on Chef Boyardee, a recent client. Nunziato will explain how he and his firm, Little Big Brands, modernized a household name without losing its soul. You’ll never look at the “new” — yet still iconic — chef the same way again.
John Nunziato
On TheBrandvertisist the other day, Nunziato explored his work a few years ago with a locally based, well-loved and longtime family-owned business.
It was complicated and challenging: refreshing and updating the brand, making it work across hundreds of products (and trucks, etc.), without losing the playful essence that endeared it to generations. (And which the 3rd generation of family owners remain strongly attached to.)
You may not even notice it. But look closely, the next time you buy a Stew Leonard’s product.
The freshened look, working with a variety of colors — while retaining the “farm” and “fun” feel.
As the Norwalk location grew into what it calls (with incorrect punctuation) “The Worlds Largest Dairy Store,” and moved far beyond its glass milk bottle roots, the very familiar “kid milking a cow” had not kept up with the times.
The casual shopper does not realize what goes on behind the scenes. Stew’s prints nearly all their own labels. Their logo goes on wax-coated cartons, glass jars, paper boxes, aluminum cans and all kinds of other packages. It has to work in a variety of shapes and sizes.
The pre-digital age “kid” (now probably a grandparent) and cow (long ago perhaps someone’s dinner) could no longer do that.
Nunziato and his team may have won the job during the pitch phase. They dressed as cows for a meeting with Stew Leonard Jr., and his top executives — and decorated the way to their office with cow prints.
Stew and his crew liked what they saw. But they were also clear: They were not going to change much, whether it was the funky typography or the farm-friendly feel.
A natural fit, across product lines.
Do shoppers even notice?
That’s not the point. “The objective was to evolve the Stew Leonard’s brand, without disrupting it,” Nunziato explains.
“It’s friendlier and more shoppable for the consumer now — without someone saying, ‘This looks different.”
Nunziato recognizes how important the company — and its brand — is to all generations.
“They trusted us, beginning with the dairy items — what this company was built on,” the brand expert says.
“Working with Stew Leonard’s family is one of the great highlights of my career.”
(“06880” reports regularly on interesting Westporters, local businesses — and, like today, their intersection. If you enjoy stories like this, please click here to support our work. Thank you!)
Excited to watch the story on Chef’s. I grew up across the river from their factory and my grandmother worked there for nearly 40 years, alongside or supervised by relatives of many of my friends. She would send me off to every semester of college with a few cases of ravioli – dented “seconds” cans from the company store, naturally – and it made my room a very popular late night stop (at least until they ran out!)
It was an institution and it would be impossible to overstate how big of a story it was locally when Conagra returned the statue of Chef Boyardee himself – a real person! – after they sold the brand.
Can’t say I’ve had a lot of it in recent years, but may be time to grab a few cans for old time’s sake. And unlike my college friends, I will actually heat them up!