Have you ever bought an item at the grocery store only to get home and realize you bought crushed tomatoes instead of tomato sauce? How about the “sweet” version of BBQ sauce instead of “spicy”? Non-fat vs Original? It happens all the time, and it’s never a pleasant experience. However, by using the correct hierarchy in your packaging design, you can help consumers avoid these mistakes and cultivate a relationship that may lead to a brand-loyal customer.
Visual Elements: Design Against the Consumer’s Attitudes
Let’s start with what consumers want to know when they grocery shop:
Numbers one and two have a little lee-way in hierarchy depending on your product. If you are selling just one product or two products that are clearly different (such as bacon vs pork tenderloin), then perhaps brand should be number one. However, if you are selling a line of products whose only difference is flavor (like BBQ sauce or ice cream toppings), then the specific product should really trump brand. Otherwise, your customers may end up with the mix-ups mentioned above.
Visual Elements in Practice
Let’s take a look at the examples below:
In the Hunt’s example, you can see where the brand is clearly #1 in hierarchy, and the actual product gets a little lost. Most consumers don’t want to be in the grocery store for hours. They want to find what they need quickly and get home to their families and busy lives. The Hunt’s products look so similar that you can see the situation develop where, if someone wasn’t paying close attention, they may grab the wrong item. Briannas Home Style Dressings packaging, however, is a great example of how to communicate the specific flavor of dressing while keeping the brand front-and-center as well.
Let’s see two more examples:
Here, The Food Doctor logo takes up 80% of the packaging. The color-coding of the packages is helpful, but the first and third items are both “bulgar wheat & quinoa.” You can’t even tell the difference between the two until you read the last line, which is the smallest item on the front of the packaging, making it the lowest-ranked item in the packaging hierarchy. Even the packaging weight is more prominent than the flavor! Combine that with the fact that the only visual on the packaging is an apple and that none of these products contain apple or apple flavoring, and you have yourself a confusing mess.
The Briaura brand does a really good job of keeping their brand identity very clear, while also making it very obvious what type of mix you’re putting in your cart. In addition to a color-coded system, it uses mouth-watering imagery as well as a large title at the top of the packaging.
Visual Differentiation
When creating packaging design, it’s also important to keep in mind that branding is more than just a logo. As mentioned above, you may not have this brand vs product-recognition hierarchy problem if you only have one product. If that’s the case, your packaging has to work harder to stand out on the shelf. More than likely, it takes up less shelf space than those with full product lines. Although only a concept, the packaging for Spine Vodka is a great example. The brand minimizes the actual logo while still standing out on the shelf.
Ready to Design?
Thus, to maximize your brand visibility, we are always happy to work with you at NewPoint Marketing on hierarchy in your package design.
To identify and isolate areas for improvement in shopper marketing program strategies and tactics to further your CPG brand growth against set KPIs:
Maximize the economic performance of your CPG brand shopper marketing investment
Increase velocity at retail and consumer brand affinity
This shopper marketing audit will detail and contrast your CPG brand shopper marketing and messaging versus that of industry standard competitive practices and will include, but not limited to:
Target market reach, integrated retail marketing support, promotional continuity & awareness, offers and incentives, and tactical execution timing
Go-to-market launch strategies, timing, and tactical execution
Deliverables
Marketing Communication Audit Report
The deliverable will be a white paper with NewPoint Marketing findings and recommendations related to marketing activities in one retail partnership or DMA/market as defined by the client.
Brant brings 20+ years of experience to NewPoint as chief brand communicator and marketing-plan contributor.
Brant’s specialty is bringing an outside, investigative perspective that can feel alternately “rigorous” or “exasperating” depending on your point of view. Yet, he never fails to uncover a business’s unique selling proposition—one which can serve as a brand foundation for marketing that is compelling, creative and “sticky.”
Throughout his career, Brant’s applied his skill set to a broad range of business applications along the food supply-and-service chain. His services have provided vital clarity for all types of operations, from the more conventional food and food equipment manufacturers to the adjacent enterprises that partner with them, such as the Purdue University College of Agriculture.
Stephanie Bossung
Food industry marketing expertise—from retail to food-service and food-service equipment— is a natural outcome of having deep knowledge in every facet of a business’ operation. With 10 years in branding and business development, preceded by 15 years in mass media and promotions, Stephanie is an FMI Emerge mentor, holds an executive-level expertise in sales, marketing, media, and production management.
This exceptionally diverse skill set adds value for NewPoint clients by providing a full complement of perspectives on food-industry brand management endeavors.
Wired for a hawkish attention to detail while also maintaining a high-resolution view of the big picture, Stephanie is uniquely able to provide astute branding direction and simultaneously apply the business principles necessary to squeeze more bang out of every marketing buck.
Patrick Nycz
A member of the Forbes Agency Council and quoted in the New York Times, USA Today and Adweek, Patrick Nycz is the author of Moving Your Brand Up the Food Chain: Marketing Strategies to Grow Local and Regional Food Brands. He is an FMI Emerge mentor, an American Advertising Federation’s Silver Medal Award winner, and the Founding President of NewPoint Marketing, a full-service food industry marketing firm focused on food industry brands On a mission to grow.
Patrick’s vision for NewPoint emerged from his team’s success using this proven model for food industry clients and is fueled by NewPoint-funded food buyers and food manufacturers research around tracking consumer, industry, and ongoing food trends.
Kristy Blair
Since starting her 20-year career in commercial graphic design at one of the foremost catalog retailers in the world, Kristy’s visual branding skills have organically narrowed into the food-industry niche.
In that time, she’s directed graphic identities for snack food and restaurant startups, print materials for multiple agricultural seed companies, display graphics and merchandiser signage for major food-equipment manufacturers and everything in between.
Today, as one of the key brand architects for NewPoint clients, she continues to lead our visual research & development team, always working to find the innovative median between the best practices worth honoring and the accepted rules worth breaking.