For decades, Mother Dairy’s milk pouches have occupied a familiar place in Indian households. The colour and pack architecture have remained largely unchanged, helping build a level of trust that few FMCG brands enjoy.
But in a market shaped by quick commerce, digital shelves and increasingly conscious consumers, even the most established brands must find ways to evolve.
That challenge recently led Mother Dairy to partner with Landor, a brand consulting and design firm, on a packaging refresh that modernises the brand’s milk portfolio while preserving the familiarity consumers have built over generations. The redesign introduces a new visual language centred around the brand’s promise of ‘Maa Jaisi Care’, alongside India’s first naturally degradable milk pouch in soil.
In a behind-the-scenes interaction with Marketing Mind, Jayatheertha Chary, Managing Director of Mother Dairy, and Arnab Ray, Executive Creative Director of Landor, shared how the refresh sought to balance heritage, relevance, and future readiness.
Deciding What Should Never Change
For Mother Dairy, the exercise began with identifying the elements consumers valued most.
“At Mother Dairy, we are very clear that the brand’s core, trust, purity and care, is non-negotiable. These are the foundations that generations of consumers have relied on, and they remain unchanged,” Chary said.
However, he acknowledged that relevance cannot remain static. “With changing times, we felt there was a need to dial up the aspirational quotient and contemporariness of our packaging,” he added.
Landor approached the project with a similar philosophy.
“When we are refreshing a brand with legacy, what we need to do is keep in mind the equities and associations that have been built over time,” Ray explained. The agency conducted what it calls “sacred asset mapping” to identify the visual cues consumers associated most strongly with Mother Dairy.
“You cannot start a refresh exercise without looking within first. You have to search deeper into the brand’s equity and give respect to that,” he said.
The result was a deliberate exercise in evolution rather than reinvention. Mother Dairy retained category colours and recognisable pack elements while modernising typography, visibility and overall design clarity.
“We did a study to figure out the recall aspects, between what to lose and what to retain. For instance, colours pertaining to categories have not been changed,” Chary noted.
Bringing ‘Maa Jaisi Care’ To Life
If trust was the foundation of the redesign, care became its most visible expression. For Chary, ‘Maa Jaisi Care’ is more than a campaign thought.
“‘Maa Jaisi Care’ is not merely a communication thought for us, it is the brand’s core philosophy,” he said. The refreshed packs feature a bolder Mother Dairy logo, improved legibility and softer visual cues designed to make the brand feel both contemporary and familiar.
At the centre of the new system sits the ‘Note of Care’, a visual device inspired by the brand’s iconic logo. “More than a design element, it further amplifies the unique identity of the brand and the values it embodies,” Chary said.
For Landor, the Note of Care represented an opportunity to create a lasting brand asset.
“When we close our eyes, we think of the Coca-Cola ribbon, the Nike swoosh or the McDonald’s arches,” Ray said. “What was important for Mother Dairy was that it had to come out and be bold and confident with its own sacred asset.”
The device emerged directly from the Mother Dairy logo. “It was birthed out of the Mother Dairy logo itself. It’s an extension of it,” Ray explained.
The ambition, he added, is for consumers to eventually recognise the cue even without the logo. “A successful sacred asset creation is one where tomorrow, even if you remove the logo, people should be able to associate this asset with Mother Dairy.”
Why Modernisation Alone Isn’t Enough
In recent years, several legacy brands have embraced minimalist redesigns in pursuit of modernity. But both Mother Dairy and Landor stressed that aesthetics alone were never the objective.
“The aspect of modernity is not going to be useful if there’s no relevance and there’s no meaning in it,” Ray said. Instead, he argued that design decisions must serve business needs, consumer expectations and brand positioning.
“You achieve modernity with relevance. That’s why it becomes more long-lasting and more welcome,” he noted. That balance becomes particularly important in a category like milk, where consumer behaviour is driven more by habit than active consideration.
“In a habit-driven category like milk, emotional associations often play a significant role alongside functional attributes,” Chary said.
While consumers may purchase milk routinely, their choice of brand is influenced by years of accumulated trust and familiarity. “Effective marketing helps strengthen recall and reinforces consumer preference in a category built on everyday trust,” he added.
The challenge becomes even more pronounced when engaging younger consumers. While new-age and D2C brands continue to emerge, Chary believes legacy brands still possess significant advantages.
“Younger consumers are open to exploring new brands and formats, but their expectations around quality, trust and convenience remain uncompromising. Ultimately, staying relevant requires balancing heritage and credibility with innovation and contemporary consumer needs,” he observed.
Expanding The Meaning Of Trust
Perhaps the biggest shift influencing the redesign has been the changing definition of trust itself.
“While the fundamentals of trust in dairy, purity, freshness and quality, have remained constant, the definition has certainly expanded over time,” Chary said.
Consumers today want greater visibility into sourcing, manufacturing practices and environmental impact. Adding to that, Chary mentioned, “Trust is no longer limited to what is inside the pack; it extends to how the product is sourced, processed and even packaged.”
That thinking informed Mother Dairy’s decision to introduce India’s first naturally degradable milk pouch in soil. “We do believe that sustainability will increasingly move from being a differentiator to a baseline expectation for FMCG brands,” Chary said.
For Ray, the conversation around packaging has also changed because consumers now encounter brands across multiple environments.
“Packaging will never lose relevance because it is actually a very tangible thing,” he said.
However, he pointed out that brands must now design for both physical shelves and digital storefronts. “When designing, you have to keep in mind both entities, the digital and the physical shelf.”
That requirement influenced everything from typography and colour vibrancy to the prominence of the Note of Care. “The identity had to feel resolved. It had to do justice to both worlds,” he quoted.
Building A Future-Ready Brand
The collaboration already extends beyond Mother Dairy’s core milk business. Landor has also worked on the brand’s flavoured milk range, applying the refreshed identity system to a younger and more vibrant category.
For Mother Dairy, the success of the redesign will ultimately be measured through stronger recall, improved imagery and a more intuitive consumer experience.
“The refreshed design has been developed to make product identification easier, improve differentiation and strengthen shelf visibility,” Chary said.
For Landor, meanwhile, the project serves as a reminder that consumers rarely reward change for its own sake.
“Affinity is equal to comfort,” Ray observed. “As soon as something familiar becomes uncomfortable, people react.”
The answer, therefore, is not to abandon what consumers recognise, but to evolve it thoughtfully. In Mother Dairy’s case, that meant modernising a brand identity while ensuring the values that built the brand remained firmly intact.
