Branding

Craft and consideration are hugely important, especially in the Beer category.

It communicates authenticity and a respect of time honoured traditional brewing methods.

There seems to have been a trend over the last few years of stripping things back which has sometimes meant taking the pedigree and prestige out of brands in favour of a more simplistic, look and feel, often to the detriment of the brand.

There are examples, such as the one attached that seem to remove this consideration and expertise from the illustration to the detriment of the brand. If the style doesn’t fit as here, it works against this.

Some of this could be down to following design trends, but some of it is also down to budgetary restrictions. Illustrations of brand icons are normally done by employing illustrators that are experts in their field. These illustrators can create powerful memorable icons that support the brand and are crafted in a particular style. Where budgets are an issue, these illustrations are sometimes tackled in-house rather than using an external illustrator.

Whilst it may be cost effective and remove a pair of hands from the invoice, it also removes some of that expertise for the brand communication.

If craft is important, allow budget for bespoke illustration.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

If you have a masterbrand use it.

If you have invested time and energy in an instantly recognisable, master brand, it’s advantageous to use this navigational aid across the entire portfolio.

This consistency creates reassurance in your consumer and links the wider portfolio together.

It also ensures that your product looks like it is from the brand leader rather than one of the copycat discounters.

Have a look at this example from Red Bull, they seem to have forgotten that unique checkerboard identifier from the parent pack.

This inconsistency creates sub ranges and product lines that don’t seem as though they are part of the portfolio and so risks them disappearing into the background on the shelf.

A robust masterbrand serves as a beacon to reassure the consumer of their choice. If you have one, use it or risk losing it to the competition.

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Differentiate through use of an unexpected format.

Sometimes it’s good to play around with different unrelated formats for products, especially when those formats are better recognised from completely different sectors. This helps add intrigue and excitement.

Have a look at this fantastic example from the world of gin. The normal square, green bottle has been dropped in favour of a format more familiar in the world of engine oil.

Whilst ths may seem odd, it serves 2 purposes. Firstly it creates a focal point and visual noise on the shelf and secondly it supports the more utilitarian brand proposition of 70’s and 80’s motor racing and Engine’s retro Italian roots.

An great way to differentiate from the usual artisan offerings!

Sorprendente! As they say in Italy.

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Be different, different is good.

Now, I imagine, some of the main reasons that you would colour your hair, are to get a different look, make you stand out or feel refreshed.

It is maybe then surprising that in this entire category of hair colouring brands, they all opt to do exactly the same thing with their packaging design.

The fixture resembles one of those rather tired hairdressers/barbers window displays adorned with sun bleached photos of models, where wide eyed punters point and say “I want it like that”, in the slim hope that they will look even slightly like the model after 12 hours of chopping, washing, dyeing and blow drying.

Doing something different will immediately make the brand stand out from a competitive set that are all doing the same thing.

Allocating a large portion of the pack to the brand colour or logo creates impactful signposting and draws the consumers eye.

If you try to shoehorn too much onto the pack, you risk disappearing into the shelf with the mass of messages from the rest of the competition.

This doesn’t mean removing salient pieces of information, remember a pack is a three-dimensional item, there are multiple faces on which to convey messages and introduce a hierarchy of information.

Be different. If all the competition show ‘head shots’ then why should you? If all the other packs are symmetrical then break symmetry. Each element on pack has a valuable role to play at different points for the consumer.

Entice first, Educate second, but remember to always be different.

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Is word overload on pack becoming the norm in pharma and personal care?

Over the last week, I’ve been looking at pharmaceutical and personal care packs that have issues with their branding, be that orientation of information on pack or not establishing an accessible brand architecture.

Here’s a brand that struggles with both of those issues! All of the information is presented at the same weight and the vertical orientation accentuates this inaccessibility.

Clearly, they’re trying to put too much information on here. If you’ve got lots of great benefits to share it’s advantageous to focus on one of these and be single minded.

The net result of this decision is that it looks like it’s been created purely using chatGPT, with the prompt ‘write me a research paper 5000 words long!’

If you have a key benefit, push this. Be the brand known for that.

Cramming on everything you know about the product can be detrimental. Consumers will score claims and information on a pack in order to reach a mean average. If you’ve got underperforming claims on there, it’s only going to drag down the overall performance and clutter the whole pack.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #health

It’s very easy to overwhelm consumers at the fixture.

If you have lots of information that you need to convey, it’s good to separate it into bite-size chunks and if possible, be single-minded.

Creating elements on pack at a similar weight or size causes them to compete for attention and mean that the consumers skim over it without ever actually taking anything in.

Take this example from Floradix. The brand name, descriptor and benefits are all executed in a font with a similar weight and look.

You wouldn’t actually realise it at first glance but there are also two variants here, Floradix and Floravital. However, because of the overwhelming visual clutter and similarity in both communication and illustration they merge into one.

Overwhelm the consumer and you will invariably create confusion.

Brands are there to solve needs and problems. Not create more.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #health

Consistency in your communication is incredibly important. This is even more true if you are an iconic brand.

Brands that are consistent, have much greater consumer recall and build more trust.

Jiff for example has recently undergone a bit of a brand makeover, possibly partly to distance itself from certain cleaner with the same name.

It’s a brand synonymous with pancake day and something I remember fondly growing up with as a kid as apparently lemons didn’t exist up north back in the 80s!

There are a couple of key issues here, firstly, even though these two products are fundamentally the same they are treated very differently so they look almost like different variants. On the bottle, the logo appears on a completely different colour background to the plastic squeezy lemon.

Secondly this latest iteration is actually quite difficult to see on shelf. This is probably due to the amount of visual clutter and thin keyline around the logotype which from a distance causes the letterforms to disappear into one another.

If you are an icon, It’s important to be confident, proud and single-minded in your execution, never dilute this through inconsistent replication or poor standout.

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Be the brand that solves the problem rather than accentuates it.

When you have a limited canvas area, in order to get the brand name large and accessible, we often look at running the logo type vertically, as on a book spine.

This works in most instances as long as other elements of the communication work horizontally in order to make them accessible, especially if they are much smaller.

Here’s a great example of were this approach doesn’t work so successfully. Voltarol is a brand aimed at people with back and neck muscle pain, so there is some irony in providing an SKU where you have to tilt your head in order to read the information that’s on the pack!

Should you take this vertical approach, it’s also worth ensuring that the logo is visible above the SRP!

If you are a brand with empathy and therapy at the heart of your offering, you should always endeavour to show this and make it front of stage communication, rather than accentuate the problem they came to you for in the first place.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing

T’is the season to be sniffly. As the temperatures drop, and the daylight hours fade, cold and flu season starts to rear is ugly head again!

With bleary eyes and nose is running like Niagara Falls, there is nothing you want more than to go into the local chemist and navigate to fixture without a fuss.

This is always been a bit of an issue for cold and flu treatments, I’ve worked on many over the years and they all seem to have suffered with the same old problem. They leave the consumer saying, “What does that one do?”

Claim is king, although you wouldn’t think that when you look at some of the packs as the active ingredients seem to take centre stage above and beyond any of the apparent benefits.

Sure, this is all because somebody with a clipboard in a laboratory somewhere needs to rubber stamp these, but it does seem to be getting more bonkers by the year at the expense of the consumer.

Have a look at this example from Lemsip, where you need to be actually sat on the shelf in order to decipher any of the benefits on the pack.

Whilst the big brands may endeavour to offer relief for some of the symptoms of this seasonal trauma, they don’t seem to have cracked solving some of the issues of legibility.

Always ensure that the most important information is made accessible. Empathy and action rule for brands that need to cue efficacy.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #health

If the pack looks bland and washed out, then so to the benefits.

Yellow on white, or even white on yellow, is never going to give you shelf stand out or legibility on pack.

It’s an issue that pops up often on packs that are lemon or banana flavour. In these instances you have to be clever with how you utilise colour.

Take a look at this rather insipid baby food example from Aptamil.

Even when you zoom in on the photo, it’s quite tricky to read the information that’s on the pack and can turn consumers off.

Once you’ve built lots of time building busy new parents trust, the last thing you want is not to be able to communicate that through the on-pack narrative or appetite appeal.

Yellow is much better utilised as a background colour to an environment or holding shape with a bolder colour copy instead of white.

#BrandDesign, #PackagingDesign, #Packaging, #Marketing