Pronas : Modernizing a 70-Year Heritage Brand for Next-Generation Consumers

Pronas: Turning One Iconic Product into a Portfolio Brand

Pronas had one of Indonesia's most recognisable food packaging assets and was barely using it. The corned beef tin, with red background, cow illustration, prominent Pronas logo had 70 years of consumer trust behind it. Walk down the canned food aisle and buyers reached for it without thinking. Then they'd look at the rest of the Pronas range: canned fish, sambal, bumbu, pasta, vegetables, fruit, each product carrying its own visual logic, none of it connected to the brand equity sitting on that corned beef tin. The portfolio looked like a collection of unrelated private labels sharing a company name, not a brand family.

The commercial loss was concrete. A shopper loyal to Pronas corned beef had no visual reason to trust or even recognise the Pronas sambal next to it. Decades of brand investment in one SKU was not transferring across the shelf. Meanwhile, younger consumers: the millennial and Gen Z buyers reshaping Indonesian grocery purchasing, found nothing in the existing visual system that spoke to them. The brand read as old, and not in the dependable sense.

Komunikasia developed the brand strategy, brand identity, packaging system, and full portfolio architecture. The FMCG Packaging Design strategic recommendation was to take what worked on the corned beef tin and build the entire visual language from it. Red as the dominant corporate colour. The cow illustration retained as a brand asset, evolved rather than replaced. The Pronas logo brought forward as the master brand driver across every product category, from canned meat to fruit to condiments.

The packaging architecture gave each product category its own identity within a unified system, distinct enough to navigate the range, consistent enough that every product on the shelf contributed to a single, unmistakable brand block. The result was shelf blockage: a Pronas section that reads as one brand rather than a fragmented collection, with a visual language modern enough to earn consideration from younger buyers without abandoning the recognition that built the brand in the first place.

The outcome:

Stronger retail visibility through shelf presence that finally reflected the full portfolio scale, improved brand recognition across non-corned-beef categories, and a visual system relevant to younger consumers without losing the heritage signals that kept loyal buyers buying.