Branding

Don’t let taste appeal be the compromise for functionality.

It’s often very difficult to stand out in the cereal aisle. The brand in here are stewn with vivid colourways and animated graphics. It’s more like walking into a Nickelodeon TV studio than a supermarket.

Surreal has tried to take on some of the big players here with its pack design and latest festive flavour offering, providing quite a challenge to both the inquisitive consumer and the taste buds.

Taste appeal (and increasingly healthiness) is incredibly important in this sector especially to combat the artificial colour-ways of some of the products.

If, as here, there is a fantastic functional benefit to the product, always ensure taste is not seen as a compromise to this added functionality.

Whilst it’s great to offer up something completely different to a sector, I’m not convinced the packaging design captures the right amount of desirability expected by a new consumer.

Challenge the consumer to excite them but always make the product feel like a tasty reward.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #health

In the battle of the Christmas chocolates, there is one clear winner so far, at least in my local store anyway.

How much of this is down to brand and how much is down to actual love of the product is open for debate, but it would seem that Mars are winning hands down in this instance.

The thing that struck me here, is actual consumer perception when you have depleted stocks of one and overstocking of another.

It’s sometimes calls into question perceived quality credentials of one brand over the other. We are all very tribal by instinct so consumers can have a tendency to follow what other consumers do so as not to miss out.

From a brand communication point of view, this definitely works to Mars favour!

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

Ensure your flavour extension looks like part of the range.

You may have seen my previous, rather critical post about it After Eight’s Fine Sticks Packaging design. Nestlé’s very confusing, chocolate mint brand extension

Safe to say, it filled me with an equal sense of bamboozlement when I saw this extension into an orange mint version.

Now, flavour extensions, need to be empathetic with the parent product. They need to look and feel like part of the range and ensure that the flavour communication has the same tone of voice as that of the parent brand.

This however, feels like a ghost of Christmas past, well the early 90s anyway. The brand architecture is out of the window and a font has been chosen for the flavour communication that would be more at home on an ibuprofen pack.

Pack architecture needs to be crafted in such a way as to allow extensions into other flavours. This however, feels as though David Dickinson has been out and found a picture frame on Bargain Hunt to plonk the parent pack in in!?

Every flavour extension or product extension needs to borrow from the tone of voice of the parent pack in order to help support what the brand stands for. Otherwise you create a bit of a clash that looks like it doesn’t belong.

I’m going to grab myself a coffee and take a few deep breaths!

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

This was quite a surprise to see.

In packaging design, we are used to dealing with awkward canvases and having to try and tell a compelling brand story, complete with individual product stories on a tiny label. But that’s the art of it.

The consumer has a very little time to scan the fixture and make an informed buying decision based on the communication to hand. So it is important that what space you have, works hard.

Seeing these neck tags on a premium spirit, seems to be an admission that the pack design didn’t work hard enough on its own.

A premium spirit should look like an object of desire, overloading it with additional extra communication that seems to be a bolted on afterthought, has a tendency to devalue the product and brand.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

All change.

Flora changes more often than the British weather. Literally turn your back from the shelf for five minutes, look back again and it’s probably a different pack design.

The most recent version puts plant-based at the centre of the brand and starts to incorporate it into the logo, moving away from the heart on the previous pack.

The logotype is now reversed out of a holding shape giving it much more punch than the previous design.

This latest iteration creates a much more naturalistic feel to the brand to focus on the 100 percent plant-based message.

Interestingly the iconic sunflower has now been relegated to the side of the pack, but maybe that shouldn’t be a surprise. Dialling down the sunflower helps create a more ‘Flora first’ message making it much harder for the discounters to copy.

It will be very interesting and quite a challenge to change consumer perception of a margarine, but then health advice in the UK seems to change even more often than the Flora pack Design!

This will be an interesting one to watch to see how long this iteration lasts.

What are your thoughts?

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

A picture says a thousand words.

If you have a wide portfolio of different tasltes or flavours, differentiating products is often done through a combination of colour and copy.

On some product sectors such as coffee this layering of copy can create busy packs that lack immediacy.

Also, following what the competition do lacks adventure and creates a sea of offerings that are all doing the same thing.

One clever way brands can successfully differentiate though, is instead of talking about flavour, talking about the overall ‘taste experience’.

Have a look at this fantastic example from a coffee brand Ueshima, where they have used an abstract textual illustration in order to help describe the experience of drinking the product.

It’s an amazing visual shortcut to talk about taste when words alone won’t do it justice.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

Aim to be the only.

In theory, it shouldn’t work. It’s recessive on shelf it’s hard to make out from a distance or access to any of the information.

Oh, and the label doesn’t fit the bottle!

For anybody that follows my posts regularly, they will know that this pack goes against every single rule in the book, so why does it work?

Well I suppose that’s the burning question, but this is where being unique comes to the fore.

If anybody’s tried to find this on shelf, you will know that it sums up the proverbial needle in a haystack. it’s easy to miss. I’ve probably gone round the store six times looking for it!

Maybe that’s part of its currency.

The fact is, it’s different. It means to be different. It means to look odd, and because it’s the only brand that does this, thats what makes it stand out.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

In the world of big and bold flavours, you have to be big and bold with your branding and packaging design.

The ready-made source fixture is that one stop shop for those lazy short of timers that can’t be bothered to rustle something up from scratch with some simple ingredients, those consumers that want a big punchy meal time offering with little input and fuss.

This sector is filled with brands that offer ready-made simplicity, so it’s unusual to see Heinz very recessive offering at such a prominent eye line in store.

It certainly needs to be at eye line as well! On a recent shopping trip, Mrs G grabbed one and said, ‘Look at this, it looks just like baby food!’.

I don’t think she’s wrong, a gentle and recessive approach seems to be the opposite what consumers are looking for in this sector.

Maybe its one of those designs that tested well as visual close-up, but not in the real world on a busy fixture.

Come on Heinz, you need to give it some welly!

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Protect your assets.

I’m seeing the example below quite a lot recently.

Brands are challenging and changing their logo in order to fit a seasonal offering.

Hovis has transformed to ‘Ho Ho Hovis’ and Warburtons, rather more subtly has become ‘Warbrrrtons’.

Whilst this may seem fitting, it removes recognition from previously strong branding.

Importantly, maintaining brand consistency also strengthens the legal case from private labels and discounters trying to copy hard fought assets and equity.

In advance of comments stating, ‘it shows the power of a good logo and how it can be flexed’, it doesn’t show flexibility. It shows dilution, and that is not what a successful brand should do.

Protect the assets at all costs!

Ho ho hopeless! Have I gone a bit Bah Humbug?

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Challenge the sector norms but always remember to use strong category cues.

It’s that ingredient that we all have at the back of our condiment cupboards and are ever quite sure how it’s used what to use it for.

There are probably many products like this that seem to be the staple ingredient of many a celebrity chef. If like me, you get about as far as salad dressing and then start scratching your head. I don’t think you’d be alone.

It’s up to brands and packaging to explain to consumers how to use these mythical items and also reassure them of the transformation in flavour that they offer.

I saw this example from Willey, and I have to say it made me scratch my head, whilst it’s a pretty looking design and very different to anything else in the fixture, the overall looking feel is very medicinal, not really the effect you after if you’re trying to talk about meal time transformation.

Challenge the sector norms but always remember to use strong category cues to reassure the consumer.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing