PCC rebrands: Cooperative drops “Natural Markets” for “Community Markets”

For decades, PCC (the Puget Con­sumers Coop­er­a­tive) has been a fix­ture of Seat­tle and more recent­ly the greater Seat­tle met­ro­pol­i­tan area, pro­vid­ing organ­ic food from local farms, ranch­es, bak­eries, and dairies. When we need food for an event, such as our annu­al Win­ter Hol­i­day Par­ty, NPI turns to PCC.

Since 1998, when PCC adopt­ed the moniker “Nat­ur­al Mar­kets” to dis­tin­guish itself as a dif­fer­ent kind of gro­cer, this has been its increas­ing­ly omnipresent visu­al iden­ti­ty, grac­ing the fronts of its grow­ing num­ber of stores:

But as of today, PCC has a new look and a new name: PCC Com­mu­ni­ty Markets. 

Here’s the expla­na­tion for the change:

In 1998, when Puget Con­sumers Co-op changed its name to PCC Nat­ur­al Mar­kets, the world was a very dif­fer­ent place. You could buy a home in Seat­tle for $180,000, a dozen eggs cost 88 cents, and organ­ic foods were years away from being stocked in the aver­age kitchen. At the time, adding “nat­ur­al” to our name made it clear to shop­pers who we were, how we were dif­fer­ent and what we believed.

Now, 20 years lat­er, Seat­tle is one of the fastest-grow­ing cities in the nation, draw­ing thou­sands of poten­tial new mem­bers to our region. More peo­ple rec­og­nize the impor­tance of nat­ur­al and organ­ic prod­ucts to sup­port their health and the environment’s, which means these prod­ucts are more wide­ly available.

The word “nat­ur­al” remains unde­fined by reg­u­la­tors and, as a result, is overused, dilut­ed and less impactful.

Over a year ago, we start­ed to real­ly think about what these changes mean for our co-op. We asked our­selves, “How do we stay rel­e­vant in one of the most com­pet­i­tive gro­cery cities in the coun­try, stay true to our co-op val­ues and hon­or our mem­bers who set us apart?”

We talked to mem­bers, shop­pers, PCC staff and our Board of Trustees to answer this ques­tion, and you rein­forced what has made PCC rel­e­vant for over six decades. You told us you appre­ci­ate that we’re mem­ber-owned and always have been. You val­ue that we have direct, per­son­al rela­tion­ships with local pro­duc­ers, farm­ers and ranch­ers. You trust that in every depart­ment of our store, we have the high­est qual­i­ty stan­dards around, and you appre­ci­ate that our staff are always will­ing to share their knowl­edge, pas­sion and a smile. In fact, it’s this sense of com­mu­ni­ty that brings you back to PCC, time and again.

And so, we felt our name should reflect this. That’s why we are chang­ing our name to PCC Com­mu­ni­ty Mar­kets. PCC Com­mu­ni­ty Mar­kets is who we already are, and who we’ve always been since our mod­est start as a food club in 1953.

With the new name comes oth­er excit­ing changes. A new logo. New, reusable totes. A new, eas­i­er-to-nav­i­gate web­site with an improved recipe search. New aprons for our staff.

We’re even launch­ing a new, local, organ­ic, grass-fed, ani­mal wel­fare-approved PCC yogurt in part­ner­ship with Pure Èire Dairy — because PCC real­ly is about the cul­ture we create.

All of these changes include a long-stand­ing ded­i­ca­tion to organ­ic and nat­ur­al foods, and hon­est shelves. In fact, PCC’s prod­uct stan­dards are among the high­est in the nation.

So, whether you’ve been a mem­ber for a few months or 50 years; whether you care deeply about food and ingre­di­ent qual­i­ty and pol­i­cy, or are a cham­pi­on of the co-op econ­o­my; or, whether you sim­ply want to sup­port a local Seat­tle mar­ket and the farm­ers, ranch­ers and pro­duc­ers who fill our shelves — thank you for tak­ing a seat at our table and for being part of the PCC community.

Cate Hardy
CEO, PCC Com­mu­ni­ty Markets

This is a sen­si­ble and well-thought out name change, but we’re real­ly going to miss the old logo. The new one isn’t as cheery, res­o­nant, or appeal­ing. PCC could have eas­i­ly mod­i­fied its already excel­lent logo to just drop “Nat­ur­al” for “Com­mu­ni­ty”.

Most peo­ple have prob­a­bly heard of the adage If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it at one point or anoth­er. Sad­ly, this adage is increas­ing­ly ignored in the mar­ket­ing world as com­pa­nies and orga­ni­za­tions rush to under­take expen­sive reband­ing exer­cis­es, often at short­er and short­er inter­vals. Change can be good, but it should have a pur­pose. Change for the sake of change is usu­al­ly unnecessary.

Mozil­la, for exam­ple, recent­ly fin­ished replac­ing its per­fect­ly ser­vice­able logo out of a mis­placed desire to rebrand. There was noth­ing wrong with the old logo. Nev­er­the­less, Mozil­la lead­er­ship decid­ed it had to be replaced.

Some well-known com­pa­nies have sen­si­bly resist­ed the urge to nuke their visu­al iden­ti­ties and start over. Imag­ine if Dis­ney, Coca-Cola, or Ford dropped their icon­ic marks one day and “rebrand­ed” with unfa­mil­iar logos. There’d be a lot of con­ster­na­tion, and per­haps worse, con­fu­sion. Those com­pa­nies would be jeop­ar­diz­ing decades of invest­ment in mar­ket­ing were they to do so.

With respect to PCC, the name change was nec­es­sary because PCC needs to empha­size what makes it unique­ly dif­fer­ent from com­peti­tors. Years ago, major gro­cers did not car­ry organ­ic lines and Whole Foods and Trad­er Joe’s had not yet pro­lif­er­at­ed. Today, there are lots of prod­ucts brand­ed as “nat­ur­al”, and as CEO Cate Hardy not­ed, the term has no legal­ly enforced mean­ing. It’s very vague.

But the logo change seems to be some­thing that’s being imple­ment­ed at the same time mere­ly for the sake of hav­ing a new visu­al identity.

While Cate’s let­ter artic­u­lates very com­pelling rea­sons for the name change, there is no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion pro­vid­ed for the logo change. It is men­tioned only in passing.

PCC has been well-served by its leaf logo, which is sim­ple, dis­tinc­tive, invit­ing, and time­less. One of the most impor­tant fea­tures of the leaf logo is that it can eas­i­ly be seen from a dis­tance. Dri­ving or walk­ing up to a store, it’s always reas­sur­ing to see the PCC leaf and know that whole­some food is just steps away.

If you look at pho­tos of PCC’s stores, you can see the leaf logo is the dis­tinct and iden­ti­fy­ing fea­ture that marks each build­ing as a PCC store. The logo appears on store exte­ri­ors as a three dimen­sion­al met­al struc­ture. It’s grace­ful and iconic.

The new logo lacks the strengths of the leaf logo. The ini­tial­ism is hard­er to make out because the char­ac­ters in PCC all have dif­fer­ent dimen­sions, with the P and sec­ond C de-empha­sized in favor of the mid­dle C, which looks more like an O that’s not ful­ly closed. The cen­ter ele­ment, which is where the eye is drawn to, is an illus­tra­tion that can vary, result­ing in an incon­sis­tent look and feel.

And while green was a com­mon attribute that linked past logos togeth­er, this new logo breaks with that and uses orange for the let­ter­ing against a field of dark blue.

PCC no doubt went to some expense to com­mis­sion a new logo, and they’re not like­ly to bring the leaf logo back just because we and oth­er mem­bers like it a lot bet­ter. But we wish they would. The illus­tra­tions and col­or scheme of the new logo could be repur­posed for adver­tis­ing cam­paigns or oth­er uses.

One final note: this Sat­ur­day, PCC will be hav­ing com­mu­ni­ty fairs at its stores, and you can drop by to learn more about the coop­er­a­tive and become a member.

Find your near­est store here.