Assessing the Strength of Your Brand Package

Click here or the image below to take the Brand Packaging quiz.

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.

Is your brand loved? Is your brand authentic? The first question is usually harder to answer. The latter is often overlooked. Both are important for a sustainable brand.

Starting with love, Brand Love gives you the ability to say “I’m sorry,” and those customers that really love your brand will continue to stay with you. Denise McCluggage, in a recent column for Autoweek (I’ve been a subscriber for 25+ years now), write beautiful prose on the topic of Brand Love in Love and Recalls. Please read the full story. The short is to recall the car in your past that you most loved and no longer drive, or own. Then after a brief pause, remember why you don’t drive that car anymore. Do you still have a smile on your face, or find yourself holding back a laugh? I’m going to go out on a limb and answer “Yes” for you. You still love that car. Mine was a 1972 Lotus Elan +2 S130. I loved that car. Even though I had to get my nails dirty on weekends to get it drivable for the next week. Or that it had no A/C and I would be sweltering in the Summer on drives from Berkeley to Fresno to visit friends. Reliable? Never. Fun? Absolutely! I loved that car.

In the same issue of Autoweek, K.C. Crain, in his column Zero to Sixty,  gives a lesson on Brand Authenticity in the guise of NASCAR’s Car of Tomorrow. In the worst case of what my wife says when I show her a new car on the road, – “It looks like a Ford Taurus.” (And one from 10 years ago to boot!) – all the cars look the same. Ford Fusion, Chevy Impala, Dodge Charger and Toyota Camry. No authenticity at the race track. How do you expect your customer to recognize your product on the street when what they see on the track has no resemeblance at all. A Ford Taurus indeed. And to complete the masquarade, the engines are completely outdated. They run with carburetors. Which is fine until you realize that the car you drive today uses fuel injection. And in the case of Toyota, they run an engine in NASCAR never built for production cars. How authentic is that?

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 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.

Of the three Detroit automakers, Ford is the only one going forward (and quite successfully) without government assistance. There are many reasons for their success. The products, the people, and their brand vison, mission and values. In a recent FORTUNE article, Fixing Up Ford, we get a behind the scenes look at how the new CEO, Alan Mulally has transformed Ford over the last 3 years.

It is clear that Mulally knows the value of brands and the value of values. On his first day, when reviewing the future product lineup, he noticed that the Taurus was missing. He asked why. The reply was that they had “made a couple that looked like a football…and they didn’t sell well, so we stopped it (using the brand) .” Mulally’s comment was “How many billions of dolalrs does it cost to build brand loyalty around a name?” The marching orders following the meeting was for the product team to “make the coolest vehicle that you can possibly make (and name it the Taurus).” His point was that poor product can easily damage or even destroy a brand and instead of abandoning the name, go and fix the real problem. And yet, the old Ford was willing to give up on the investment it had made in the Taurus brand for over 20 years and begin the process again of building brand loyalty around a new name. What waste.

Now two years later the payoff arrives with the new Taurus which has been met with postive reviews in the automotive press. Finally, the right product to deliver on the promise of the Taurus brand. The learning here is is that product and brand are inextricably linked. Both need to be in harmony with product leading the conversation. As I’ve been know to share with others, my observation is that until you get the product right, you have no brand.

Mulally also knows that for a company and brand (in this case the Ford brand) to succeed, requires focus and dedication to one vision, one mission and one set of values. He calls it ONE Ford, with the mission statement and four goals (expected behaviors) printed on two sides of a plastic card (business-card size). Every employee has one. As Mulally says, “…I wrote it, It’s what I believe in. You can’t make this shit up.” Right-on!

And finally, what has made me a fan of Mulally is his openness and complete transparency. And he uses a sentence, I’ve come to embrace. At at early meeting with employees upon joining Ford in 2006, the question on everyone’s mind was “Will Ford make it?” His reply was “I don’t know.” “But we have a plan…”

I’m still amazed – and grateful – that we continue to have real-time examples of businesses poorly executing their brand story. GM’s brand woes continue to fill the print and online space. They are trying hard to convince consumers to give them a second (or is it third or fourth…) chance at becoming their car brand. In the words of Susan Docherty, VP of Buick and GMC, “We need (Buick) to be relevant and we aren’t today.” Docherty is referring to today’s consumer – younger, more discerning, with higher expectations – that has zero loyalty to GM’s brands.

Great quote. Unfortunately you don’t change perceptions or capture these consumers overnight. The rule about brands is that if you nurture them, they will flourish and grow. If you neglect them, they whither and die. With most GM brands, it’s been a long-term case of neglect that only needed the recent financial credit crisis to push them over the edge. While the products had turned around, the brands had lost their relevancy.

What is GM to do? Well, first I would suggest ditching the advertising that talks about how we didn’t listen to our customers in the past and now we will (really?); and that the New GM will be stronger, better, more fuel efficient (really?), innovative, etc., etc. I’d call it greenwashing if we were talking about eco or sustainable products. I need a new term here – carwashing? I digress.

Instead of buzz words and 30-second sound bits, GM needs to focus on clearly defining and articulating the story of the remaining brands in the portfolio. Each brand should have a story that is authentic, memorable and meaningful to today’s consumer. Each should be clearly distinct from each other. And once the story has been penned, tell it over and over again – a thousand times.

Tell it with conviction and follow through with your products and service. Tell it with empathy and do the little things to make someone’s day. Tell with humor to show you are one of us. Tell it like you want your customers to tell it.

So, what’s your story?

Today is a big day in the business world. GM declares bankruptcy. You can read the numerous stories on the ripple affect this will have on the lives of many people beyond those employed by GM. Is it a wonder that the US government has taken a 60% stake in the “New” GM to “save” jobs. Will it be enough? Who knows. Maybe the more important question —  is GM a brand worth saving?

Looking back over the 100 year history of GM with my brand-goggles, I belive GM died over 30 years ago. It just didn’t know it. Even prior to the OPEC energy crisis in the 1970’s GM had begun to lose it’s way. The passion to create automobiles and brands people love began to fade quickly from that point on. The products were not the standard of quality anymore. For a long stretch, you could not tell a Chevrolet from a Cadillac (Remember the J-cars?). Innovation and leadership gave way to short term profit and increasing production to maintain their #1 standing as the largest automobile company in the world. While GM, Ford and Chrysler fought against higher fuel economy standards, the rest of the automotive world embraced them and moved forward. Now in bankruptcy, GM agrees with higher fuel economy standards. How times have changed.

When you look at GM from that perspective, it is not surprising that “loyal” American automoblie buyers went elsewhere. First to German brands. Then Japanese. Now Korean. Next Chinese?  Jaime Kitman, writer for Automobile Magazine wrote in this latest column that at a certain point over 87% of Saturn buyers did not know they were buying a GM product. I’m not sure if that is good or bad news.

My quick take-away is that GM has a tough road back. By shedding brands (Pontiac, Hummer, Saturn, Saab) and focusing on their core brands (Chevrolet, Buick, Cadillac and GMC) they might have a chance — if they really have the passion to built great automobiles. Having seen the new 60-sec. spot for the “New” GM by Deutsch, I’m not holding my breath. If GM has any chance at all, they need to change the conversation.

Want to read more on GM? Here are some article I found interesting:

GM turns 100, September 16 2008 , MotorTrend

GM and Me, Alex Taylor III, Fortune Magazine

When Bad Things Happen to Good Brands: Won’t Someone Save Saturn?, Jamie Kitman, Automobile Magazine

Will Burke’s article “Change the Conversation: Grow Your Business through Branding and Packaging” has been featured in Package Design’s April issue.

In the article, Will discusses the importance of reexamining your brand and its core strengths to determine what kind of conversation you need to have with your customer. He emphasizes that once you establish your core qualities, you are able to develop an authentic, meaningful and memorable brand story to guide your branding and packaging strategy and connect with your customer.

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