Will Burke has been invited to judge next year’s first annual The Dieline Awards, a worldwide design competition recognizing the best in package design. Launched by thedieline.com, the world’s leading package design Web site, the competition will be held in conjunction with the 2010 FUSE Conference, taking place in Chicago on April 14^th, 2010.

30 winners across 10 different categories will be awarded a prestigious Dieline Award, with one Best of Show winner. Will is one of only ten industry experts on the judging panel.

Click here for more information on the competition.

Will Burke was recently asked by thedieline.com to contribute to their feature series, ‘Top Packaging Advice from the Pros’. The series, targeted to brand owners that want to rebrand their product or students looking to enter the package design profession, offers advice from top designers in the fields of branding and package design.

Will’s article, ‘How to Make Your Creative Energy Work for You’,  offers tips to develop skills that support the design process, guide your creativity and create excellent results.

To read the article, click here.

Brand Engine was recently added to dexinger.com’s directory for Logo and Branding Design. Click here to see our listing.

Will Burke was recently featured in San Francisco Business Times Entrepreneur Profile.

To read the article, click here.

The Organic Center, an organization that helps consumers, policy makers, researchers and the media understand the benefits that organic products provide to society, is throwing their 5th Annual Bay Area Celebration ‘for the Health of Our World’ on September 12th.

Brand Engine is a sponsor of both events during the celebration. In addition, Will Burke is a discussion leader at the morning’s ‘Entrepreneur’s Open Forum’, which will focus on strategies for healthy business growth. The event is hosted at Numi Tea Garden in Oakland at 10 am. For more information and to RSVP for the morning forum, click here.

The evening celebration at Clif Bar in Berkeley will feature organic hors d’oeuvres, a silent auction and a 15-minute film festival showcasing Food Inc, FRESH, Soil: In Good Heart. For more information and to RSVP for the evening celebration, click here.

Clear Beverage’s Kid Fuel Naturally Flavored Water Beverage was recently featured in Contract Packaging’s Magazine’s July/August issue. The article, “Stepping up for the little guys”, focuses on Kid Fuel’s success in utilizing value-added services of contract packagers and others in the supply chain to achieve measurable cost efficiencies while also keeping desired package designs intact.

Click here to read the article on Contract Packaging’s Web site, or click here to read the article pdf.

Will Burke has been invited to participate in AIGA Reno Tahoe’s Principal Display Panel in North Tahoe on August 20th.

Other panel members include Michael Osborne of MOD and Steven DuPuis of The DuPuis Group. Moderated by Andrew Gibbs, Editor in Chief of The Dieline, the group will discuss the trends, psychology, art, and engineering of some of the worlds most trusted brands…..and the box they come in.

For more information on the event and to register, click here.

Will Burke was invited to contribute to Shelf Impact’s guest authored column, and his article, “Package Structure: A Brand Manager’s Investment in the Brand Experience” is featured in the July 9th newsletter.

The article focuses on how package structure is an often overlooked opportunity for brands to reinforce their brand story and core qualities with their customer. It goes on to discuss that a unique structure shape and material is an investment in the company and will produce multiple returns, including increased sales from both existing and new customers and packaging production efficiencies.

To read the full article, click here.

Assessing the Strength of Your Brand Package
In our previous newsletters on the topic of “How is Your Brand?” we gave you some homework to evaluate the health of your brand and offered tools to develop a relevant brand strategy based on your business objectives. The next step in our brand development process is assessing the strength of your brand’s package to ensure that your package is a natural extension of your brand and communicates your brand story.

A brand’s package must quickly convey the brand’s personality, promise, unique position and look, preferably in the few seconds it takes a customer to scan a shelf. Of all the different touch points for telling the brand story, the package is the most engaging because it can hit all the senses and draw in the customer. The package is the ultimate test of a brand’s survivability and sustainability.

The brand package should clearly communicate and connect with your core market. More than simply capturing a customer’s attention, a package must engage their emotions by contributing to an authentic, meaningful and memorable brand story to create sustaining power. To achieve this, brands need to focus on customer psychographics rather than their demographics to know why customers buy, and to learn their values and attitudes. They need to get to the emotions and rationalizations behind why people purchase rather than what population group they represent. The package needs to speak to their lifestyle, even help solidify the mindset they use to judge the category. A package is merely a commodity if it doesn’t create a memorable experience with the customer.

Put your package to the test
So how do you know if your packaging is properly representing your brand strategy and fully connecting with your customer? As customers weigh their choices, it ultimately comes down to being able to tell a compelling brand story through packaging and presentation. Once engaged, customers will find every reason to make that brand part of their lifestyle.

Evaluating the strength and relevance of your brand’s package
7 questions, 7 minutes and you can give your brand package a quick diagnosis. Answer each question on a scale of 0–5, with 5 being “I strongly agree” and 0 being “I strongly disagree.”

So, how do you score our Little Bug frozen baby food redesign?
Insights from Brand Engine revealed that the original design did not communicate their core values and lacked a strong brand position. After defining Little Bug’s key qualities and brand story, Brand Engine utilized these differentiators to convey a meaningful story on package:

• The strong green background color, symbolizing the natural land connection and short-farm-to-table approach, is distinct and ownable in the freezer section.
• The illustrative “window-like” bull’s-eye treatment, representing the one pure ingredient, appeals to multiple senses, inviting you to touch and smell the fruit.
• The clean and simple design uniquely positions Little Bug in its category.
• The brand identity expresses the brand personality, targeting mothers looking for wholesome choices for their children.
• The kraft box is a unique material, fully recyclable and an eco-friendly choice for moms and their babies, supporting their values of sustainability.

If you didn’t have the opportunity to evaluate the health of your brand from previous newsletters, click here to take our brand evaluation quiz.