NOSH Bootcamp Winter 2021: CPG Branding & Design Best Practices, Sponsored by GRO Agency

Speaker 1 [00:06] Hi, everybody. Um, welcome to our presentation. We are going to talk to you about building a brand. So we're gonna give you a really good behind the scenes look into how we create a brand strategy and package design. We're the Grow Agency. In case you haven't heard of us, we have been in the food and beverage space for 30 years. We do, uh, brand strategy, packaging design, and marketing. We have offices in New York and in Los Angeles. And, um, our philosophy is really about creating maximum connections. So we are the creative bridge between you and your consumer. Kelly and I are gonna be giving this presentation. I'm gonna do a lot of the upfront talking, and then Kelly is going to chime in later. Um, I am the chief strategy officer over at Grow, and Kelly is our chief creative. OK, so let's talk about what brand strategy actually is. The intersection of your product and how your product or your messaging or your website makes people feel is your brand. So whether you have intentionally created a brand or not, you are leaving the consumer with an impression, and that impression is your brand. It is much more connective to intentionally create that impression, and that impression, um, encompasses your, uh, packaging design, your marketing communications, your website, all of that stuff. And the strategy goes beyond that to really identify your core mission and values, and to help align you and your team on making business decisions. And then that brand strategy is translated into a packaging strategy. So, your packaging strategy is illuminated when we consider the brand strategy and how that works within the buying environment. So, whether that's in a retail store or that's direct to consumer um via your website or it's another online marketplace, that's where we pinpoint the uh packaging design. All right, so, what we've decided to do today is actually build a brand with you. So, we have invented a brand from nothing, and then we have taken that brand through all of the stages that we would conceivably take you through, um, to teach you, one, how to better understand the process so that you can vet freelancers, or so that you can work on it yourself, whatever works for you, or just, you know, to better your education. The assignment we've created is to create a brand strategy and package design for a kid-friendly cookie mix. This particular cookie mix is going to be on the healthier side, and the positioning or the intention behind it is that it is specifically for kids to uh make the cookies themselves. So, it's a fun activity that parents can do with their kids to empower their kids. So the first thing that we're going to do. is an audit. We really need to understand the competitive landscape before we make any creative, strategic or creative decisions. So, for you, if you want to understand your um competition, we recommend following this checklist. It's very easy. And if actually through this talk, you, it piques your curiosity, we, if you wanna um reach out to us through our website or email, we can provide you with a template for this that we've created. So the first thing you're gonna do is you're gonna visit grocery stores and take pictures. You wanna really absorb what the actual um retail environment looks like. And you want to Google your category and your target retailers. So you really wanna know. Everything that's happening in your category, you wanna know what your target retailers, how they're positioned, who they're, the audience they are targeting, you wanna really deeply understand your potential customers, um, on the retail side. And your competition. Then you want to create a visual map of the competition, and we're gonna actually show you an example of that in a minute. And then you wanna make sure that you are looking at all of your competitors' websites and messaging. You wanna understand their taglines, you wanna get a feel for the brand voice that they are using, you really wanna know, um, What the consumer sees. You want to know what's out there so that you can identify the white space. And then you want to document your findings in a visual way. So again, that you can analyze the trends that are already out there and really figure out where the gaps and opportunities are. So this is a snapshot of our competition. These are cookie baking mixes. We just want to digest what we see here, what stands out to us, if there are any color trends, for example, uh, we just want to look at the overview of our competition. And then once we've absorbed that, we're gonna move on. To mapping the competition. So, for the purpose of this brand map, you can choose whatever access points you want. We decided to map these based on the aesthetic values of practical versus playful, and then also, you know, less healthy versus more healthy, which also is sort of an aesthetic, um, cue, but, you know, plays on the product formulation as well. So, obviously, there's a lot of wide open space in less healthy, healthy and very playful. But we're moms, that's not really where we want to go with our product, we want a healthier product. We're targeting children making the cookies themselves as an incentive for them eating healthier cookies, and we want parents to feel good about connecting with their kids with this very easy to execute activity. So, we're going to land at the very top right corner in the more healthy and playful. And we want to look at the space. So we see that in the healthier cookie mixes, the aesthetic is very practical and not very interesting. And in the less healthy cookie mixes, the aesthetic again, It is very practical, very conventional, and kind of boring. There's a little bit of creativity happening up there in the more healthy, um, quadrant, but it's not really that connective, and it's certainly not actually, um, positioned on the activity or marketing to kids. So now we're going to run through a brand strategy checklist. So, as you're developing your brand, and we're going to go into the building blocks of that brand in a moment. You want to look at the following. Do you know your target? Are you being specific? Nobody gets anywhere targeting, you know, 18 year olds to sixty-five-year-olds. You really wanna look at what the that bull's eye in the center of the target is, and you want to go narrow. You wanna ask yourself, who will be the earliest adopter of my product? Who will run to the store fastest because it solves a specific need for them, and that's your initial target. Then you want to make sure that you distill your solution. You want to have a unique value proposition. There really is no point in bringing a product to market that doesn't have a unique value proposition. You have to be solving something for the consumer. Once you've identified what that is and you've articulated that in a really succinct way, then you're gonna craft your brand voice and personality to be both authentic to your mission and your product, but also resonate with your target market. So what is your audience listening for? How are they taking in content? What do they need, and then what's the intersection between that and what you stand for as a brand? Define your company values, you want to make sure that you have this foundational brand strategy so that you and your team can align on the steps forward. We here, we talked to lots of entrepreneurs and uh, um, a major pitfall is saying yes to too many things, going in too many different directions, not having a, a very clear, distilled, um, path forward. Part of distilling that path is to understand your mission, your values, and to stay really narrowly aligned with that for the beginning. And then to translate all of this into packaging design, you have to create a mood board. You have to capture visual examples of how you think your brand should come to life, and you need to articulate, um, how, why, why you chose those examples, and we'll get into all of that in more detail in a little bit. All right, so here are the brand building blocks. We're going to start at the very bottom. First, you want to list out your functional and emotional attributes. What does your product offer? The most straightforward features of your product. Based on that, you're gonna ladder that up into what's your brand promise. What are you providing the consumer? What problem are you solving? And that's, you know, takes into account your values, your social mission, and, um, and, and whatever else. So, what are you promising the consumer? What are you giving them? And based on that, what is the personality? How are you bringing this brand to life? Imagine your brand as a human, what do they sound like? What do they look like? Um, because you really want to make this as connective as possible, you're having a conversation with your consumer, and you want that conversation to be lively and resonant and connective. You want to speak to them in the language that they understand, um, and you want to make an immediate impact. And then all of that ladders up to your brand essence, which is typically a 1 to 3 word statement that summarizes that really, um, hones in on exactly why your brand is out in the world. So, for example, Volvo's brand essence is safety, and Apple's brand essence is think differently. When you think about those brands, that makes sense. When you think about Volvo, you think safety. When you think about Apple, you think, wow, they think differently. Um, so that's what you're looking for with your brand. It's a clarifying statement. It's something really easy to digest that will always keep you on track. And then again, you want to identify your target audience and you want to be really clear, really specific, and really focused about that. This is an example of one of the strategy tools that we use for clients. This is a very easy to digest one-page strategy document. It's called a brand wheel. The point of this, uh, exercise is to make sure that each of these components that you're articulating your point of view in the most succinct way possible. So, you can go through this, um, later on your own to read into these, um, modules in detail. But starting at the top right, you have your target audience. Then on the left, you have your need state. Um, once you move from your need state down to, so the need state is going to be talking about exactly what problems the consumer is solving or the consumer has that you'd like to solve. So, you really want to imagine, you know, a need state for this particular project is busy parents looking to connect with their children in easy ways. Or, you know, um, parents that want their kids to eat healthier treats, parents that want to empower their kids to be more independent. So, you really want to think deeply through what problem is the consumer experiencing. And then what's the emotional payoff that you're providing with your product. For this example, the emotional payoff is feeling like a good parent. What's the personality based on this? Uh, whimsical, resourceful, inclusive, inventive. And then you want to give yourself a brand mission, something larger than just your product. This is not based in selling your product. This is based in what you want to provide in the world, what you want to stand for in the world, your company values, and then moving up. To the Blue brand feeling tone module, that's the, the tone, the feeling that you're going to leave your consumers with when they experience your packaging, your website, your marketing assets, etc. So for this, we're empowering both kids and parents, and we're bringing them joy. And all of that, um, comes together in the brand essence, connection through recreation. That's really what this brand is offering in the world. Now that we have a strategy, we need a name. We didn't have a name for our cookie mix brand yet. So, as we're brainstorming names based on the strategy that we just identified, we want to ask ourselves the following things. Does it connect? Is it memorable? Is it easy to pronounce? Say it out loud. Does it allow room for growth and diversification? If you name your brand something related to a star ingredient, you are married to that ingredient forever, and I promise you, inevitably, you will expand outside of that ingredient, or the market or category will shift, and that ingredient will no longer be as um Impactful, and you'll want to be named something else. So, don't box box yourself in by naming yourself after an ingredient. Can you trademark it? Obviously, extremely important. And does it pass the search engine screening and connotation and foreign language screening. You want to search around on Google, Google knows everything. You want to find out if your name, the, the potential name that you're going to use, brings up anything that's in conflict with your brand. You also wanna know if you may expand into other countries in the future. You want to make sure that your brand name doesn't mean something offensive in another language, that sort of thing. So for the purpose of this, we invented some names, Jane Doe, Dosi dough, Bacon Bond, or Whisket. So we put these all through that process, and we landed on Dosi dough. So Dosi Doough really evokes, um, you know, an activity, it evokes fun, it's related to the product, and it's, um, fun to say out loud. Now I'm gonna turn it over to Kelly to talk about how you translate this brand strategy into mood boards and packaging design. Take it away, Kelly.

Speaker 2 [15:25] Thank you. So, mood boards are really, really important to help establish the direction of your visual identity. Um, so, mood boards will help you to connect with your designer and really download the types of things you're looking for, what resonates with you and what doesn't. So, Pinterest is your BFF. Pinterest is a great resource for mood boards because it's essentially built for that. So you can take, uh, you can also take screenshots, you can take photos of stuff in the world, you can, um, you know, walk through grocery stores, but whatever you do, get a lot of images and put them together. And as you're doing that, look for color palettes, font styles, design styles, um, examples of packaging, graphics, art that you like, um. But not just what you like, also what you feel communicates your brand essence. Um, and the most important part of this is to note the specific reasons why you like these things. So, if you took a snapshot of a package you really love, what is it about that package that you love? Is it the fonts? Is it the colors? Is it the feeling that you get from looking at it? Does it feel nostalgic? Does it feel modern? Be very specific about those things because that will help your design team or your freelancer or whoever you're working with, um, get on the right track. So here is a mood board that we put together for our Dosi Do brand, and you can see it's pretty consistent. It's got, you know, bright fun colors that ladder back to the whimsical personality. Um, it's got some interesting connective illustrations that are kind of both good for kids and adults. And so we've kind of established some, some different typography styles and um kind of a nice look and feel that we're gonna go for with these designs. So now I'm gonna take you through a checklist about what what's packaging supposed to do, what good packaging should do. Um, so, good packaging should visually communicate the brand positioning. This is like your home base for your brand, it's where your brand positioning will come to life. Um, it should immediately and intuitively differentiate your brand, so you should be able to tell immediately, just from the packaging, why your brand is different from the competitive, um, products out there. It should communicate taste appeal or functional benefits. So it immediately you should know what it is and what it does. It should create an emotional connection with the target consumer. Obviously, if this is based on your brand strategy, we're really just amplifying that emotional connection that your brand strategy has established with the consumer, and these visuals should just bring that all to life. Um, and if it's doing all of those things well, then it will guide consumer purchase decisions in 7 seconds or less. So I'm going to take you through some packaging examples. These are brands that we have, uh, met at Nosh and at Bevnet over the years, and we're gonna walk you through, um, essentially how we communicate that brand essence in a visual way. So the first example, top left is Simple Life. They are a brand um of CBD beverages. And their essence is good vibes. So we created a really calm yet positive tone with the muted color palette, with the illustration, and with a really strong communicative um hierarchy. And so just a note on visual hierarchy. So, visual hierarchy is um essentially leading the viewer through your communication in its order of importance. So, it's really important to note that um sometimes you think that brand is the most important thing, but it's not always the most important thing you want to convey. Sometimes, uh, if you're in a brand new category or have a brand new type of innovative product, sometimes product statement of identity is the most important thing. So, Really understanding before you get into the design, what you want the um consumer to know first is super important. Uh, in this case, obviously, brand is the first thing, but we've organized the communication in a way that it leads the consumer through um in the order that we want them to read it, essentially. Our next example is doozy pots on the top right. So, uh, they're a line of plant-based gelatos. Um, their brand essence is magical alchemy, and we created a really strong, uh, connective visual language that is personality-driven, and it conveys this sense of innovation and creation and magic, uh, through this illustration and through this really strong and, um, easy to digest, um, layout. And then we have Solam Agua Fresca. They're a Mexican brand that wanted to launch a functional agua fresca in the US and their brand essence is the jubilant creator. So, we created this kind of god-like mascot, uh, to disrupt in the category, uh, functional beverages were really about function, you know, really a little more serious and a little more function, uh, driven. So we created this kind of playful visual story that represents their Mexican roots. And uh the next example is have a ball, which is a um fruit and nut ball snack, um, and they're all about playful nutrition. So, in that category, there was a lot of clutter. We wanted a really clean, simple design, and we came up with a name and a visual language that really emphasizes play. Um, and that playful spirit, and we're using the product photography in the illustration to create a really, you know, unique perspective in the category. OK, so back to Dosi Do. This is where the design starts. Um, typically, we do logos and packaging at the same time because, uh, you can get a really great logo designed and then put it on a pack and it doesn't look right. And so we do those at the same time, but this is an example of an initial kind of logo exploration. When you see your first round, always make sure you see logos on and off pack because again, you don't want surprises, but here's, you know, some different ways we could visually show that. Um, unique brand essence. And this is an example of a first round of design. So, I'll just warn you guys, don't be scared of the first round, you know, the first round of design is that initial kind of ideation. And, you know, it's the design team coming up with different ways to address that brand strategy and to talk through or to visually represent the brand um personality. So this first round is, you know, colors based on the mood boards, a lot of fun, a lot of activity, there's a lot of stuff going on, and there's um a couple of different ways of approaching this brand. Where the real magic happens in packaging design is the collaboration between the client and the designer. So, always, when you're working with a design team or a designer, always tell them what you like, what you don't like, uh, feel free to, um, you know, throw out all your ideas. That's really the beauty of this process. Um, so, that said, our next round would be to kind of hone in on some of the things that the client likes or didn't like. So we picked 22 designs that we wanted to further develop. We played with color, we played a little bit with hierarchy and logo, um, and got to these designs. And then, of course, for the last round, we're really honing in and coming up with kind of a final look and feel, which ended up being, uh, this design. And so, you know, I think it's a I think it's interesting to discuss too. We've talked about hierarchy already. The first thing you see on this design is let them bake cookies, which is an emotionally connective, um, statement that also quickly communicates what it is and what it does. And the, the logo, the brand is kind of secondary to that. While, while Dosi Do is a great name and we really love the logo, it made more sense to really grab. Um, the consumer with let them bake cookies with something that they could resonate with. And then our next step is mechanical production. So, this includes laying out the full pack, getting everything ready for the printer, and um while it may be the boring part, it is actually really super duper important because at the end of the day, you don't want to spend all this time creating a beautiful design and getting it back from the printer and seeing that colors are off or something you forgot something, or, you know, you have to reprint. So, this is a great checklist. Always connect with your print vendor and get all of the information up front, the dye line, how many colors you have to print with, all of that stuff and convey that to your design team. Um, and that, with that, you can lay out the full APL, that's the all panel layout that shows the front and the back and the sides of the package. There's a lot of things that need to be included in that. Um, and then always, always show the printer a preview of the art before your design team releases it to them and ask them if they have any issues. Um, and my last thing to just really stress is always look at a proof. Um, surprises can happen and you don't want your baby to go out there and be printed wrong. So here's an example of what an all panel layout looks like, what a kind of a mechanical file looks like. And here's the front and back of pack, and I think um sometimes we skip over back of pack, but back of pack is really important. That's the place for anything that didn't go on the front of the pack, right? This is where the consumer can learn more about the brand. We always suggest on the front of the pack to keep it as simple as possible. So, if you've got 30 claims you want to put on the front of your pack, don't do that. Pick the top 2, pick the top one, you know, and all the rest can go on the back of the pack. That's where the consumer, what we want to do is we want to draw the shopper in to pick up your product and say, oh my gosh, what is this? And turn around and to learn more. So, all the rest. Your claims can go on the back. Um, that's where any kind of brand story or marketing copy can go. In this case, we have, um, instructions, so that the kids know how to use it, pretty simple instructions for kids, and anything else can go back there. Obviously, we have a lot of requirements back there, but you can really utilize that space for, um, you know, brand centric, uh, copy. And that is it. Thank you guys so much for coming and listening to our talk. You can learn more about us at thegrow Agency.com. We have a lot of tools and, um, you know, we've got some templates you can download to use for audits and for design briefs and things like that, so. That is all.

Speaker 1 [27:04] Yeah, thanks guys.