Branding

Gift packs have evolved over the years. They used to be only festive chocolate selection boxes or random sets of shower gel and soaps, however many of the premium spirit brands have seized on the opportunity also.

These are a great opportunity to present single servings to loyal or new consumers. Many of these are combinations of spirit brands with an appropriate mixer as per the example in the image below.

You would think it’s an easy challenge to bring some of the brand story onto what is effectively an increased canvas ,but many brands struggle.

A couple of years back I did a post on the Engine gin brand as it was an interesting example of challenging the format in a very busy category. This engine oil inspired pack was a great way of standing out amongst the competition, however when it’s contained and constrained in a small gift box this cheeky format seems a little overlooked.

In this instance, the gift box completely covers up the unique oil drum container, the key point a difference for this brand.

What could be a very unique offering then ends up looking like every other gift set out there.

If your brand is known for something, push this every opportunity. Your ‘point of difference’ should be just that.

#Design, #Marketing, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Clarity is everything, especially if you want to introduce something new to consumers.

Have a look at this drink, It was buried away half way down the shelf and it took me lifting it out of the SRP in order to work out exactly what it was.

As I’ve mentioned on posts before packaging has a few roles, the most important of which is, what is it and why do I need it?

Neither of these were particularly clear. Whilst there are a variety of restrictions regards claims on CBD products, it was incredibly difficult to extract a benefit or what the brand stood for. Two huge strikeouts when you are new to the market.

The only iconography on the pack is a hand making a V for victory, or is that the peace symbol? Who knows? Is it signalling to hippies or friends of Winston Churchill? It’s hard to tell.

The overall look and feel is incredibly minimal and in these instances it’s important to make sure all of the assets work together and support one another. Here, you can see part of the illustration cutting through some of the copy almost turning the C of CBD into a G!

Now I can hear some of you strip everything back purists telling me how wonderfully simple this is but going back to my initial point. By doing this have they helped clarify what it is and how it benefits me?

Sure, simplicity is fantastic as it creates a single minded approach but that should never be at the expense of communicating a comprehensive brand story.

Confuse your consumer at your peril. When adding functionality you need to convey trust and reassure the consumer

#Marketing, #Design, #Packaging, #health

Getting the composition right on pack can be the difference between making sense to the consumer or not .

Composition is different to pack architecture. Packaging architecture is about the underlying rules and ratios that define how key elements are proportioned and consistently arranged across a portfolio, while composition is about the specific layout of those elements on an individual piece of packaging.

Have a look at this example from Tony’s. It’s actually a great product idea, a bag full of little chunky bars. The thing is, I only realised that once I’d picked it up wondering what it was.

The composition of the illustration creates a very low angle meaning there is very little aperture at the top of the bag showing the product but a huge expense of nothingness at the bottom.

Changing the composition so that the camera looks down into the bag gives a lot more opportunity to showcase the individual bars without sacrificing any readability.

Maybe the illustration was created by elves who are far too short to see into the bag?

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Colour is there to provide recognition, interest and depth. Colour creates that beacon on the shelf to draw the consumer in and quickly identify your pack.

The right choice of colour, or combinations of colours, can also help convey appetite appeal.

Get that Colour choice wrong though and the pack can disappear on shelf amongst all the competition. I saw the attached line extension to Special K yesterday and this suffers from exactly that.

In order to up weight their Crunchy Golden Clusters, the Kellogg’s K, product communication and to some degree the product imagery all disappear onto one level when executed in the same hue. The easily identifiable brand assets lose their shape and form as rather than split the pack into a foreground, midground and background, all assets appear on one level and so end up fighting for attention and recognition. Getting this balance right is incredibly important, especially when viewing from a couple of metres back as you approach the shelf.

Next to other variants in the range the Kellogg’s K almost disappears making it look more like a copycat brand than credible portfolio extension.

Always use colour and contrast wisely. It’s the most powerful tool in grabbing attention, especially if you’ve got something new to shout about.

#Design, #Marketing, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

Characters on 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.

#Marketing, #Design, #Packaging, #Sustainability

If you have a unique offering, it’s up to you to tell the consumer what that is. that may seem a very obvious thing to say but there are many brands out there that aren’t fully clear with the consumer.

If the consumer doesn’t know the meaning or origin of something, they may tend to make something up based on their limited understanding.

Take the Pack below for example. On first inspection, because there is nothing obvious on the can you may assume that this is a statement about sustainability or the environment. It’s actually because the coffee is made from green coffee beans!

The next thing you then have to explain to the consumer is what the benefit of it being made from green coffee beans is. These are two incredibly important pieces of information.

If these aren’t presented, then the consumer is going to take the information that is there and make something up based on the assets and communication used.

The other easy error to make is that it’s a derivative of Coca-Cola. Probably because of the lines going up the side of the pack cueing the old Coca-Cola can Design.

So if you don’t explain what makes you different, the consumer may do that work for you and it may be wrong.

#Marketing, #Design, #Sustainability, #Packaging

Bahlsen recently had a change from the iconic big logo pack and have moved to a more left right pack architecture. This makes the logo much smaller than it was previously.

I saw the latest pack in an SRP recently and it shows one of the problems faced by many brands forced to go to a smaller logo shoved over to one side of the pack.

As soon as you popped these into an SRP with their rather unforgiving side panels, important information can get obscured.

it’s again an warning to check every touch point in every part of the design system to make sure everything is working asynchronously.

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

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

#Marketing, #Design, #BrandDesign, #Packaging

The Ineos packs have had an update to the back design.

Regular readers of my posts may remember my thoughts on the previous iteration being to utilitarian and monolithic design across all sectors making it very confusing to navigate between different product ranges. Whilst the latest iteration has moved away from some of the functionality of it predecessor in both graphics and copy, it’s created new problems in an attempt to remedy the old.

The most important aspect to look at here is the logo. The black logo type on the red texture completely disappears in the supermarket environment. Taking a couple of steps back at the fixture renters it almost impossible to make out.

One of the things they struggled to communicate last time was the plant powered aspect. A functional and very utilitarian design tends to work against this more natural proposition.

The plant powered communication has now been relegated to a much smaller area on the base of the label. This makes it hard for not only this element of the back to stand out but with its look and feel still rooted in science and utilitarianism, for it also be believed by the consumer.

So whilst the new design may be a step in the right direction in softening the industrial and scientific approach, it still misses on a few of the aspects that the redesign desperately needed to win over new consumers.

#Marketing, #Design, #Packaging, #Sustainability

Monolithic approaches to branding may be a great way to own the shelf, but 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

#Marketing, #Design, #Packaging, #Sustainability