Branding

Characters on a pack should always be engaging, recognisable and help convey the brand story.

A good character works just as well off pack as it does on pack to help recall the brand in the mind of the consumer.

As with a brand story, differentiation and uniqueness are key in facilitating this. Plonking some sunglasses on a lemon doesn’t cut it. Take this character off pack and it could belong to any brand.

We have created lots of characters over the years, from Freddo Frog through to the Aquafresh Nurdles on the kids range. Front of mind each time was giving them a key role to play.

In the case of Aquafresh, the Nurdles were based on the three striped Aquafresh toothpaste icon and had two main roles to play in the brand communication.

Firstly, they were used to help educate parents on the key stages of development in kids teeth and secondly to create relatable personalities for the kids to engage with.

So successful were these that they even have their own cartoon show!

Give the character a role and ensure they are created with distinctive assets that you could only ever attribute to that brand and they will help sell your product like miniature animated salesman.

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Making all of the information accessible on packaging is incredibly important. Never more so than when you have a challenging shape and a small canvas to work on.

Here’s a shot from the cat food section in a garden centre. As with most cat food, the packaging is tiny so you don’t have an abundance of space to work with.

On this pack from Applaws, the brand logo, flavour and product information all compete for space. Stepping back at the fixture it’s impossible to even make out the brand logo.

Even on the SRP the brand logo and flavour both fight for attention.

In these sort of situations it’s always better to try and work out what the most important piece of information is, let that sing out and relegate the rest to the back of pack or even better still, leave it off to free up more space for the important bits

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Here is an amalgamation of two very interesting brands both with positive stories to tell the consumer, although neither are pushed to the forefront

Tribe is all about natural energy whereas Wildfarmed are the champions of regenerative farming methods. Both credible in their own right but to any new consumer to this pack they may be left scratching their heads a little.

For the lead brand here Tribe, the point of difference is buried away in a small icon centre right on the pack. The story isn’t mentioned at all.

Sure, there will be consumers that know the back story but these product partnerships should be all about getting these unique positive differences front and centre to introduce themselves to those new two the brand.

Motivating stories create an emotional connection and are the things that encourage new consumers into the category, miss out on these and you risk disappearing into the competition.

If you have a story, particularly a positive one be loud and proud! It’s the difference between awareness and obscurity.

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Always be clear with the consumer what you are.

If you are offering something unusual and something unique, it’s important to be clear with the consumer what their reward will be and to communicate clearly and efficiently exactly what you are offering.

For food brands this means building appetite appeal and a desire for the end dish, particularly where meal kits were involved.

This example, whilst very unique and clearly Japanese, misses out on both appetite appeal and a clear explanation of what it is.

That then creates quite a challenge in shifting products off shelves

Often budgets aren’t available to do glossy food photography, it can be quite expensive but ultimately will do a lot of the heavy lifting for you.

In this example the food shot has been replaced by a simple line drawing. I’m not sure if that is down to lack of budget or from trying to make the pack design suitable for a restricted print requirement

Either way, it’s important to make sure that the design fits the limitations of the end print method but doesn’t compromise on the fundamentals of communication.

If the consumer doesn’t know what you are, or what you offer, why would they want to invest?

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Confectionery brands are never seen as being something that’s good for your teeth.

They come preloaded with the acceptance that these sweet treats are full of sugar and a bit of a once every so often indulgence.

Therefore, it would be pretty ridiculous to think of a confectionery brand moving into the toothpaste arena.

Toothpaste is already an incredibly confusing fixture with multiple variants, claims and formulations so introducing a confectionery brand into this mix would be a completely bonkers thing to do wouldn’t it?

That’s exactly what I thought when I saw this Chupa Chups brand extension into oral care. I imagine this is to get reluctant kids on board with scrubbing their teeth, however it feels more in line with that famous Colgate lasagna that was circulating a little while ago.

It’s a bold move indeed but brands seen as potentially causing one problem are not best placed to offer solutions to remedy this, especially if the overall architecture and asset usage is exactly the same.

The net result is a fairly unbelievable product line extension that misses out on important efficacy cues. Not to mention the potential damage this extension does to the product that inspired it.

Know your place and do that well or risk cannibalising your offer

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When you introduce narrative onto pack there are 2 main considerations, what you say and how it is presented.

Each of those has an important role. Tackle either incorrectly and you will have a challenge convincing your consumer that your product meets their needs.

Have a look at the Rustlers product below that misses the mark on both counts.

Let’s look at what they say specifically first.

The strap line on the SRP proudly states “better than you think “, Now, this comes across as an admission that your product doesn’t probably look the best and the consumer is going to take a bit of arm twisting in order to agree.

Honesty is always the best policy, but it’s always better to handle this in a positive way.

Onto the second point, how this messaging is presented. The choice of fonts is absolutely immense and with food products, it’s always good to pick fonts that communicate appetite appeal and as in this case, provenance.

Where the pack communicates “cheese “ it feels incredibly washed out on the background and its ‘chubby’ execution talks less about taste and more about artificiality.

Think of your narrative as an actor on a stage, how they are presented and how they deliver their lines cues a reaction in the audience. Always ensure they are the protagonist and not the antagonist.

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As a parent, when you’re buying baby food, you need to be reassured of two things. Firstly, that it’s healthy and secondly that the little bundle of joy is going to enjoy eating the stuff!

In many ways, it’s like buying pet food, the end user doesn’t really have much input in what you choose!

Therefore, it’s solely down to the parent to both find it on shelf and also feel reassured.

Herein lies the problem for the example below. The rather muted colours in the background, the product and the typography mean that at a distance there is very little shelf stand out in what is quite a busy graphical fixture.

Tthe second reason is a result of the first I’ve mentioned above. This washed out feel removes pretty much all of the appetite appeal. A double whammy!

If everyone else is being ‘excitable’, your choice is to either follow suit or better still, do something very different. If you decide to opt for the latter, then make sure it’s not so calm it becomes quiet.

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Whilst a monolithic approach to branding may be a great way to own the shelf it can make navigation across the portfolio tricky.

A Masterbrand solution is a great way to create a consistent uniform across all your product line. Successful branding is all about creating a relevant story and doing this in a consistent way.

That said, Being too rigid and too consistent can cause issues when consumers are trying to navigate different offers within your product portfolio.

Take a look at this example from Pasquier. On the brioche rolls packaging the architecture is consistent but the differentiation between different product types, with chocolate chips or without, is very minimal

The pack relies on quite a large window and because the product types are very similar at a glance when squished up against one another on a shelf a consumer could be confused Into picking up the wrong one.

In these situations, a better solution is often to introduce an element of flexibility into the brand architecture that allows for greater differentiation between variants without diluting the overall brand presence.

Own the shelf by all means, but never at the expense of navigation

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Getting the colour combination just right can be the difference between evoking appetite appeal and putting the consumer off.

There’s sometimes a scenario where you can’t present a food shot on a pack and you have to rely on colour to cue flavour, build appetite appeal and aid navigation across broad ranges.

In these instances the choice of colour or more often the combination of colours on pack can make or break it success.

Have a look at this example from purveyors a fine food Leon. Now, here they have a destination shot so appetite appeal is satisfied, it’s actually a really really lovely shot as well.

The issue here though is that that lovely scrummy food shot isn’t supported by a combination of colourways that help build appetite appeal. In fact, these zingy colours may be more at home on confectionery rather than authentically flavoured meal solutions.

It’s often great to do something a little different and grab attention, but make sure that if you’re trying to convey Taste, all of your assets are finely tuned to support this

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Stripping back the clutter on pack is a great way to focus on a core benefit, but can this go too far?

Have a look at this pack from HG that could never be accused of bombarding the consumer with too much information.

The question is, is it too stripped back? Would a consumer know exactly what the main benefit of the product is? Is it clear to a consumer why this is better than the competition?

Arguably all of the relevant information is on the front face of the pack but because it is so small becomes inaccessible.

This is accentuated somewhat through the illustration. If the illustration can take up so much of a pack, then it’s much better to show a bit more detail so that your core messages is less ambiguous.

The simplistic style utilised here is more often seen in iconography were lots of information has to be conveyed in a very small area.

It also renders the style a little bit cartoon like which can undermine professionalism and efficacy of the product.

Stripping back the amount of visual clutter on a pack always helps, but this should never be at the expense of the products core message. 

#Packaging, #Marketing, #Branding, #Design