Food Product Packaging Design Case Study with Jenn David [Food and Beverage Marketing, Part 7]

Transcript

Packaging Considerations

[0:00] Packaging. It’s one of the most important considerations when marketing a food and beverage product. So much so that we wanted to do a deeper dive into the subject and fully round out our food and beverage product marketing series.

In this episode, we’re doing nothing but case studies. Three to be exact. As career food and beverage marketer, graphic designer, brand strategist, and all-around packaging guru, Jenn David Connolly walks us through her methodology. Two of the case studies focus on the delicate task of evolving a brand with an established base.

In the other, Jenn walks us through the process of building a brand out from scratch. We touch on naming, color theory, mood boards, iconography, and a number of other variables Jenn considers when using a design thinking approach to getting into the heads of prospective customers.

If you’re a food and beverage brand or the maker of any consumer product good, you’re going to love it. Just like you’re going to love all the episodes in our 10-episode series on food and beverage product marketing, link above.

If I’m right, please hit the like button, maybe subscribe, and in a perfect world, give us a shout out or a share on social media. We’d really appreciate it. But now, Jenn David Connolly.

[1:04] Music.

[1:11] And we’re back with another episode of the Niche Marketing Podcast. This time we’re virtual. I don’t usually do virtual, but I had to in order to get my next guest, Ms. Jenn David Connolly, onto the show. Jenn, welcome to the show. We’re so excited to have you. Thank you, John. I’m happy to be here. I’m a little slow with the sound effect, but we got him in there eventually.

[1:37] Jenn, we’re super excited to have you because you have a really deep background in all things packaging, CPG packaging, particularly in the food and beverage space. We’re, of course, going very deep right now in food and beverage, and we’re excited to have some of your insights.

Today, we’re going to do something a little bit unique, and have you walk through some case studies of your work, helping the audience understand your process as a packaging design expert, and frankly, what goes into making amazing packaging designs for food and beverage products.

But before we get into that, I was hoping you could share a little bit of information about yourself personally, professionally, help the listeners understand who you are, what you do, and how you ultimately launched. You operate under essentially your name, Jenn David Connolly, right? Well, Jenn David Design is the business name officially. Jenn David Designs.

So, if you could share a little bit about yourself, Jenn. Yeah. So, I’ll start at the beginning. I grew up in Boston and the Boston area, and I had always been interested in art. So, when I went to college at Connecticut College, I majored in studio art. And within that, you pick a concentration. So, my concentration was graphic design.

[2:46] And that’s how I got into that. I did a, they had a really cool program there where you intern in New York City. So, you live in New York City for a semester and you, you just, you’re just basically interning full-time for a creative, the creative industry of your choice, basically. So obviously mine is graphic design. I ended up with an advertising agency, the in-house advertising department at Bergdorf Goodman, which is the big Fifth Avenue retailer.

[3:14] So that was a really, really cool experience for me to just live in New York City as a college student and just work full-time and just immerse myself in everything, kind of how an agency works and what they do and just to kind of get coached and trained by the people who work there. So that was a really amazing opportunity. And it was for college credit.

So, it was great. Yeah. So that was really great. That was probably the highlight of my college experience. And then when I graduated, I worked in the Boston area for a couple design agencies. Actually, the first one was an advertising agency.

[3:53] And it was not that glamorous, but it was a great first job. We designed primarily help-wanted newspaper ads, which sound so cool. I’m dating myself. Um, but there was, you know, there was so much to learn within that. So not a very exciting, um, job, but it was a really cool place to work.

They had; they were super busy. Um, they had a ton of work, and I learned a lot. I worked under a wonderful creative director, um, who was essentially, I called her my mentor. Um, and I just learned so much there. So, my second job after that was working on a design, a little design studio.

[4:34] They primarily were designing things like direct mail. Again, this stuff sounds so old because people don’t know what it is anymore. But you know, it illustrates your pedigree and how you’ve been involved in all aspects of design, marketing, design, things like that. So, I think it’s very prudent.

Jenn David Connolly’s Background

[4:52] I was just eager to soak up whatever experience I could get at the time. And even though, so like I said, even though it wasn’t maybe the most exciting job or exciting work, it was, it was great people, great place.

And just the work that I did, I mean, I think like everybody who worked there as well, just, you know, upheld that to a high standard, right? So even though it might not be the most, you know, interesting thing that we’re designing, like we did a lot of real estate direct mail too, it, you know, you, you just bring your best to it and you learn from it and, you know, you’re helping, helping these clients and, So that was, you know, it was, it was good, good starting experience.

[5:30] After that, so I was a couple of years out of college at that point. My husband and I decided to uproot and move to San Francisco, just personally. We were kind of tired of cold winters and humid summers and landed in San Francisco. It was 2002. The dot-com bubble had just burst. So, nobody was hired.

[5:51] Great timing. yeah, but I found that there was just a ton of freelance work because people weren’t hiring employees, but they still needed work done so I was just taking whatever I could get um I designed um like album covers for CDs um I’m trying to think of some of the other stuff I did it’s a lot of random stuff um and then I ended up working with William Sonoma and that’s really where I got into food, food design, food packaging design.

So, I worked with them for, I think it was maybe two or three years and just got a ton of experience from that as well. So, you know, designed everything from food to kitchenware, the, you know, with the, the packaging. So that was, you know, again, just a really, really cool experience. And you’ve been out on your own, operating under your own company ever since? Ever since, yeah. well, done, Jenn. Never look back. It was something that I never planned to do. You know, when I was in college, I thought for sure I wanted to go back to New York City. I want to be a creative director at a big ad agency.

[7:07] And, you know, life didn’t take me that way. And it was great. I was totally fine with that. You know, you think you want something and then kind of you live your life and then you figure out, you know, you want something else. Um, but you know, then people would see my portfolio and they’d see all the food work that I did, and they’d want more of that. You know, they want me to do that for them. So that’s really how I got into, um, food packaging design and food branding design. Um, it just kind of happened that way. It’s not real, anything I planned on.

Um, but that’s, that’s what happened. And it just took off from there. That’s fantastic. And you’re in San Diego these days, correct? I’m in San Diego. Yeah. I’ve, um, I’ve been kind of all up and down California and landed in San Diego. Um, it’s where I like it the best. Yeah. Yeah. So, before we get into the content as a Bostonian originally, is that correct? That’s right. Do you have any favorite food or restaurant shout outs for people that are visiting Boston? Any recommendations in the Boston area? You’re putting me on the spot here. What’s the one in Harvard Square? Oh my gosh, this pizza place is in Harvard Square. Why is it not coming to me?

[8:20] Ah, Pinocchio’s. They make it, what is it? Sicilian style pizza. And it’s just the most amazing crust. It’s the most amazing pizza. It’s just this little hole in the wall place, but I think it’s pretty well known for the area. Nice. That’s a good one. Always been my favorite. I think they’re still around. Haven’t been there in a while, but hands down my favorite. That’s terrific. I’m Sicilian, so you certainly piqued my interest with that one. All right. Awesome. Thanks for that, Jenn. So, moving into the objective for today to review some case studies of your work and again, help our listeners understand.

Agency Specialization in Food Brands

[8:56] the process you go through. One thing that we didn’t really get into is your agency, essentially. Could you tell us a little bit more about the agency itself? Yeah. So, at this point, you know, for a long time now, we’ve specialized only in working with food brands. So, in the beginning, like I said, I kind of just took, you know, anything I could for experience. But as I did more and more in the food industry, I realized this is something thing I really love. I always loved food and really love helping food brands. And I just think that designing food packaging and food brands is the most, it’s just the coolest thing to me.

[9:30] It’s so fun. It’s, you know, I mean, who doesn’t love food, right? And, you know, you want to get this person to pick it up, you know, pick it off the shelf and buy it. So how do you do that, right? There are so many other things to choose from, competitors. So, I love that challenge of that. and even online, right? It’s the same thing as in the store pretty much is how do you get them to click on that and choose that, you know, when they’re searching online for other stuff.

So, we work with any type of food brand pretty much from startups to large corporations to everywhere in between, work on all types of food, frozen, shelf stable, refrigerated, you name it, and all types of food packaging as well. I really just love being in this specialty industry.

[10:18] And you know, the more content I have with marketers in space and some brands in space as well, I’m starting to fall in love with it. It’s so cool, fun, just exciting. I mean, like you said, who doesn’t love food? And it’s also, you know, it’s really competitive, right? And so, there’s a certain charm to that.

Easy for me to say as the new guy, right? But there is a certain charm to kind of like up leveling your game to be able to hang with, you know, some of the best marketers arguably in the world and see if you can do what needs to be done to separate you and your clients from the pack.

So, something I kind of like about the big-league nature of it all. So that’s great. Thanks for sharing that about the agency, Jenn. And so now let’s get into some of the content. You have some case studies you’re going to share with us. We’re super excited to see those. So, do you mind sharing your screen and we’ll get into it. Well, let me get to it. Hello?

Introduction to Case Studies

[11:13] Oh, you took too long. All right. So here we go. This is an assortment of our work here. Now I’m going to interject right off the bat. So, before you get into it, for this one and each one we get to, could you start by telling us the challenge that the brand was facing originally and ultimately, you know, of course, the steps you took to solve those challenges? Yeah, yeah, for sure. So that’ll come through in the talking that I do.

Awesome. Okay, so let me get to the first one. So, the first one is called Cooper Street Cookies. They had been around for a long time. I’m not sure exactly at the time we started working with them how long, but they’ve been around. They were a seasoned brand. They were, I think they were regional, like a really widely, you know, regional.

I want to say they’re covered like half the country. and they were it’s still family owned and run as far as I know and it’s named Cooper Street Cookies because the mom was baking cookies they lived on Cooper Street they grew up on Cooper Street mom would bake cookies kids would come over after school they loved it so eventually turned into a business and the sons eventually got into it as well so it really cool you know, they were at a really great point, but there, so this is where they started at when we started working with them.

[12:39] You could see it’s, you know, kind of all looks the same. They’ve got two product lines here. One’s like kind of like a biscotti on the bottom in the pouch. It’s kind of like a, like a granola bar, but it’s soft. It’s almost like a cookie. So, they call it granola cookie bakes.

[12:54] And, you know, a lot of information all over the place. Not particularly stand out when you see it on the shelf. So they knew they knew it was time they wanted to keep doing lots of growth going forward in their business and they knew it was the right time to kind of reassess the brand make some improvements and set that stage for going forward so here’s our starting point um and then here’s where you know this is starting in with the design concept so whenever we start working with a brand.

We go through a lengthy strategy process and really just gather all the information that there is to gather at the start. Everything from brand history, product competitor set, retail audience, all this kind of stuff. And then the objective is.

[13:46] You know obviously in this one it’s hey we need to refresh the brand it’s kind of not working for us anymore like it got us this far but it’s not really working for us so this is an evolution here um we’re not because you want to you don’t want to alienate your uh audience in terms of oh it’s a totally brand new look I don’t even recognize this brand you know so um so we do varying levels of that right so here we’re just looking at the twice baked cookies the biscotti type cookie but you can if you look at it Jenn biscotti thank you john um so if you if you look at it from here to here you know there’s a jump so this one’s a bit of a more of a departure evolution uh but basically we are cleaning up the information right there’s just there was information all over the place you the eye didn’t really know where to go up and just making it more impactful on the shelf. So, one of the objectives was to bring more color to it for sure.

[14:49] So this, this is, uh, I’m going to kind of walk you through a series of concepts here where this is just like, we’re exploring different, uh, different avenues here, right? Um, the difference here is what about the logo color? They have this kind of light blue color, which I didn’t feel was serving them very well. It’s not appetizing. Um, it’s not that bold. It’s kind of washed out. Um, it seemed arbitrary.

Do we keep that? Do we lose it? Here’s what we’re exploring within these. What does it look like with yellow? Those are all one concept. Yeah, I see you alternated between the headline or the sub headline, which should be bigger.

[15:31] The cursive font in between there, and ultimately the next slide you have the yellow now incorporated. Yeah. So, we play around with these, you know, minor variations and I’ll usually show them to the client, whatever is viable, right? That, that comes up in the process.

So, we can just consider kind of maybe they, they, you know, like this design, but they like the, the more, you know, the second line bigger than the first line kind of, you know, these are things we talked about is what makes more sense to do. Right. So, and we don’t know until we try. So, we explore all these things in the process. So, some other concepts here, again, you know, just a little approach.

[16:12] And this is the same product, right? Same product. Yeah. So, we’re going to run one of them, this is the more prominent product line there too. So, this is what we focus on first. And, you know, this one, it’s got the cookies bigger, bleeding off the edge. You know, what does that look like? We’re often working with just kind of stock images. You’ll see little watermarks in here because this is just concept work, not final. So, we’ll just kind of throw in some stock images, see what that looks like. In the end, maybe they shoot custom, maybe we go with stock.

These are things we decide along the way. But just kind of between the two concepts here, there’s a lot of different things. This one highlight more of the cookie. This one highlight more of the name of the cookie as well. You know what I mean? So just kind of exploring these different nuances, right? So, then this one is more of a departure.

So, we talked about this being an evolution, but one of the things we want to do is explore, hey, what if it’s not really an evolution? What does that look like? Just to make sure we got all our bases covered. So, this one is more of a departure. We got full color in there.

[17:25] And there’s, you know, there’s not a whole lot that’s an evolution really other than the logo and the images are the same. So, so, you know, different, um, if I recall correctly, everyone liked this, but, you know, ultimately we came back to the evolution, um, just, you know, for that reason, because it already had such a wide, um, audience and, and area coverage, you know, it had a lot of brand equity and we wanted to maintain that.

Okay. Was there anything, any specific, I don’t know, psychological reason for doing the full color or just, hey, let’s see, let’s try full color and see what it looks like. A lot of times when I’m designing in my process and, and I don’t recall if this was, uh, you know, the client and our team together said, hey, let’s explore something that’s totally different. Um, it just came up in the process. So, a lot of times when I’m in the design process, um, I don’t know, I don’t know what it looks like until I try it. Right. So, I have the idea of just, hey, what if we just throw in a full color background in there? What does that look like? You know?

[18:33] It’s, and even sometimes it’s, it’s like, hey, what if, what if we go too far in the other extreme? Right. And then we know kind of where the limit is. Right. So, on a smaller level with, for example, the, the cookies we, I think it’s on one of the concepts and let’s see if I can go. So, if on a smaller level, even, for example, on this concept, we took the cookies, right? And what does it look like if we just make them really big and bleed it off the page? You know, you don’t know until you try these things. So, it’s kind of about finding the boundaries of where we work within.

Okay. And I think in a lot of ways, it’s just like, hey, let’s explore all options before we get married to any one specific approach. Approach exactly and there’s one thing I love about the creative process is there’s nothing that’s not reasonable to try in my opinion if I have the thought to do something I’ll just try and see what it looks like so even in what I’m showing you uh there was probably I want to say at least another 20 iterations within each concept where I’m just kind of going step by step and like okay change this what about this what about this and I just keep creating new iterations until there’s one that really just hits it, hits the mark on every level. And that’s what ends up making it into the concept presentation. Okay.

[19:59] So this was another design concept. Ultimately, this is one that, the one that we went with, actually this one, not this exact one, but this was the concept that got chosen to fine tune. Everybody just loved the way the logo was kind of highlighted in this big box so it really highlighted the brand um the white background even though it’s got a lot more color was that evolution we were looking for and the information you know we fine-tuned it from here but it was getting on the right track of the call outs and information kind of this is this is working you know so.

Design Best Practices

[20:42] In looking at this, there’s probably some elements of what you did here that to you are like obvious best practices, but maybe let’s just take your, your bootstrap startup that might want to give a run at trying to do this themselves, or just as trying to understand like how you ended up with the elements, size and proportions and, and structured the way you did. So, like, are there any just kind of almost 101 best practices to someone like you that might not be obvious to an outsider on why you enhance things where, how you did or why you highlighted certain elements when and where you did?

Yeah, great question, John. I’m actually going to move to the next slide because I think this is the before and after. So, this one on the top here is the final design and we can kind of compare it to where we started. Perfect. Perfect. I need you up. You see how I did that? I knew it was coming. Thank you. And it’s a great question. A lot of times this stuff just, you know, I’ve been doing this so long, it just kind of goes intuitively and it just, you know, it’s in the background of the decisions I make when I’m designing.

[21:48] But I’m not always, you know, I take for granted that everybody understands this stuff. So first and foremost, it’s got to pop off the shelf. So, if you look at the before and the after, the cookie images are the same. The cookies were great. Nothing about the product changed. We’re only changing the packaging. The photography worked. And in part of keeping that, that’s also an evolution, right?

So, that’s the consistency that we keep. The logo is the same font. It’s just changed color. And now it’s in a box. It’s in a different location. Where they if you looked at it before the first thing you see is cooper street what does that mean to you if you don’t know the brand yeah pretty much nothing right you can see cookies but what is it is it a mix is it actually cookies ready to eat is it something favored like a cookie you just don’t know so first and foremost when somebody sees this they’ve got to understand instantly what it is right so the large title if that’s what you see first maybe you see the cookies first it’s debatable as to where the eye really goes first but I would say the cookie image captures your attention it’s bigger it’s prominent um it’s front and foremost.

[23:04] And then you see the big text. Oh, okay. It’s, this is the favor. This is what it is. It’s a twice big cookie. Um, and then moving beyond that. So, the brand, you see the brand, um, but it’s there, but it’s not really, um, distracting from anything else. So then, then you kind of move on if, if you’re interested, right? If this is resonating with you as a, as a consumer, then you see the call outs, right? So, nut free, dairy free, that’s pretty uncommon for a biscotti. Did I say it right there you go you’re getting better.

[23:38] It’s pretty rare that it’s going to be nut free and dairy free they’re they were really you know proud of their calorie count per cookie because it’s um you know as we’re calling out up top deliciously crisp and guilt free so these are the these are the big selling points right so those are highlighted it’s big but it’s not distracting from anything else on the on the front and then moving even beyond that okay now sell me a little bit more right so with real Michigan cherries and indulgent white chunks with I’m gonna try and zoom in here with decadent semi-sweet chocolate and a twist of cinnamon with real mean blueberries and a fresh burst of lemon so yeah that’s great um there’s a little lag on the screen share um you know so you see it, captures their attention, informs as to what it is, sells them with a selling poise, and it entices them further with a little bit of description, right?

So, if the process is going according to plan, at this point, you would have picked it up and maybe you flipped it over and you’re reading the back of the package.

[24:46] So these are all the things that go into the design thinking and the strategic thinking behind the reason we do what we do. Love it. So, if I move on, so he, so speaking of the back, so, uh, before, and this is just a screenshot of the fat is the best I had to work with for, for showing the before of the back. Um, again, information everywhere, um, just kind of feels like a spattering of information all over the page. Doesn’t really feel that cohesive.

I don’t really know where to look first. Yeah. That blue is not very legible either. Right. Right. And so the after, um, it’s just better organized we bring the style from the design concept to the back as well I just I mean I think every part of the package is just as important um and one of the things that I really love is you know the back isn’t just oh it’s okay we got the front the back is kind of whatever we just got to put their technical stuff there the required information it sells just as much as a friend so if you’re you know you’re the consumer in the store you picked it up you’re.

[25:49] You flip it over and then, okay, sell me more. Why should I put this? Am I going to buy this? You need to sell me more of this. This strikes me as clearly as the potential prospect is further down the funnel, so to speak. They’re further in their buyer’s journey. And the textbook way to approach that is you’re going to lead a little bit heavier with emotional appeal higher in the funnel.

And as they get further down the journey, you’re going to start to bring more practicality to helping them make the decisions. And that’s why I think that you’re, you know, clearly why you’re highlighting some more of the calorie benefit, low salt, and then at the same time, looks like leaning more into the story. So go ahead and take it from there. Exactly. And, and, and that’s a great point about it being similar to a marketing funnel. There’s probably just one difference though, is that there is still the emotional connection, right?

As you go down. So, if you’ve gotten this far, you want to know why they are doing this? How is it different from other cookies out there? So, giving that context and explanation, I don’t think the back of the previous package explained what Cooper Street was. We really want to know, right? I really want to know what Cooper Street is if I’m looking at this package. So, we explained that. We explained that it was her family’s 100-year-old cookie recipe. I forgot about that.

[27:10] So, and just kind of, you know, so it gives more context to the brand, who they are and why they’re doing what they do, why they’re making this. And then, you know, it’s kind of just goes on with the description of selling it in a really enticing way.

Awesome. There are so many great things to call out about this product. So, it was the challenge of how do we keep all these great call outs without it being busy? So, we came up with this banner to kind of tie everything, all those call outs on the back together and cross sell to the other favors down here. Got the website nice and large, got more cookies on the back. And then your required stuff just goes over here. yeah, that’s uh in a nutshell that’s that one well it looks fantastic Jenn really nice job on that.

Creative Liberty in Brand Evolution

[28:06] It’s kind of show you uh so from there uh we then then we roll out um you know all across the brand right so we came up with smaller size pouches um for a couple of the favors and then remember they had that second product line so we wanted it to look not identical like it was before to the other product line but this is its own distinct line within the family so it feels like the family but it feels like its own line so in this one there was more room for, change on this one a departure on this one because it wasn’t as widely distributed as the other product. So, we went full color on this.

And again, you know, the same, same approach applies to this big enticing product, granola cookie bakes. People aren’t really going to know what that is, right? Cause it’s a cookie and it’s a granola bar. What is it? But you can clearly see, and it tells you what it’s made of. It’s got the call outs on the side panel here. We did this cute little, you know, what it’s made of. Ooh, nice. Highly visual too. I see. Can you zoom in on that a little bit for us, Jim? And it’s just fun, right? Sorry, it’s a little too big. It’s great. Let me see. That looked great.

[29:24] How’s that? There we go. So, this side, it’s just a fun way of displaying the information. So, if it’s, if it’s, you know, when I’m designing, if it’s fun and interesting to me, then it’s going to be fun and interesting, I think for everybody, you know, so that’s kind of what I keep in mind is we’re not just presenting information, but we want to make it fun. We want to make it interesting. We want to get people excited about this product and just when, when they see it to just think, oh, this is different.

This is interesting. Even if they’re not consciously thinking those things, I think a lot of what happens in the food purchasing process of CPG food is subconscious. And it happens so quickly often. If you think about somebody, I’m going to use the traditional retail store example. If someone’s walking down the aisle, they’re busy, they’re distracted, unconnected.

[30:21] They’re just kind of looking for stuff and, oh, this grabs my eye. Okay. What is it? Okay. Read, read, read, toss them in the cart. Or if it doesn’t connect with them, put it back on the shelf. But that happens so quickly. You know, I think a big misconception is that, you know, you design in a vacuum, right? You think that people are going to, you know, spend lots of time looking at your package and really read everything that’s there because you put it on there that’s definitely not the case and I think if you think about how we food shop I mean a lot of people are buying groceries online now but similar very similar things apply is you know you see all these things how
do you pick it out what is it you know click on it add to cart and, you still want to get them through those steps.

So, yeah. Well, it looks awesome. And I want to double back on something you just quickly mentioned. Tell me if I heard you correctly. You said that because this line wasn’t nearly as widely distributed as the initial biscotti product that we looked at, you took more artistic liberties in being a little bit more adventurous and coloring outside the original line, so to speak. Is that what I heard? Today’s episode is brought to you by The Agency Guide. Are you frustrated with an underperforming marketing agency?

[31:42] Who isn’t? Are you unsure about what marketing channels to invest in and who to invest with? Maybe you’re just fed up with the overpromising and under-delivering of marketing agencies. Fear not. You need to contact The Agency Guide. The Agency Guide, or TAG, represents a vetted pool of 200-plus vetted marketing agencies and consultants.

And they will matchmake your brand’s specific needs with these trusted marketing professionals, for free that’s right for free you don’t need an expensive agency search firm you need the agency guide for over 10 years tax experience marketing consultants have been providing pro bono consulting and matching brands with vetted agencies based on needs budget timeline location, even your personality they’re marketing professionals they’re agency matchmakers,

They’re the agency guide. To learn more, visit www.theagencyguide.com today.

Yes, and that was a decision that we made together with the client, if I recall correctly. So, they were already on board with that, and they were ready for a greater change in this one. Okay. Yeah. And just to confirm what I’m interpreting between the lines there. And so, it’s on that first product.

[32:57] You maybe want to walk a delicate balance of if they have a lot of existing customers, making sure that they don’t feel like it’s a totally new product or something different or that they don’t even recognize it on the shelf. You still want them to recognize it for what it is, but at the same time, give it a completely refreshed look.

Is that about, right? Exactly. Yes. And I would say not to the point where you don’t want to keep anything that’s not working. So, for example, that light blue brand color, which you see here, which was very prominent throughout all their branding previously, was certainly something that tied the brand together as a baseline, but it just wasn’t working. It’s cool. It’s cool in terms of like cold.

[33:40] It’s not warm. It’s not welcoming. It wasn’t there for any particular reason. And so that’s something that we just felt was appropriate to drop. Awesome. So, what’s next? So just continuing on, just to kind of show you that once we’ve got these designs, then we apply it to all the other packaging. So, they’ve got display curtains here. And these I’m going to kind of roll through quickly because it’s really just an example of how the brand build out. Takes place where, you know, it’s, it’s a different package, same product. So of course you want these to be, um, very similar, right.

Um, to the packaging we just looked at. So very similar to this. So, these are the displays. I love these clamshells. These are my favorite clamshells I’ve ever designed because of clamshell packaging, and I don’t do a lot of it, but it’s not particularly glamorous. Right. Um, and then the, the labels that are on it are usually pretty rudimentary, pretty basic.

So, these, I just think are, I mean, I just think are beautiful. I’m a little biased, but I just think it’s, it’s a really good map. Yeah. And these would be, for example, and I think these were in the bakery section is where you’d see these, whereas the other ones would be on the shelf primarily. And the reason they have this is because some retailers prefer this as a way, you know, when you’re when you’re again, our process doesn’t involve getting it into stores other than just the work that we do to position them to do that.

[35:10] But the you know the uh the store buyers are the ones that they are talking to get into the store and they have different preferences right depending on the store um some prefer like they can you know we’d love to put these in the deli can you give us a clamshell so that’s something they offer I think it’s very unlikely that a store would have both I don’t think that’s ever the case but that’s the reason that you see these in a clamshell yeah you know now that this so this This is my second run through with a packaging expert. And I think I’m starting to really understand how you guys think. So, a few things I noticed. The brand, look, it’s there. It’s the first thing you see. But on balance between a visual of the actual product and a description of what it is you’re about to get, it’s much smaller.

[35:55] There’s plenty of room so you can see the visual of the project to help get people salivating a little bit. But at the same time, it’s like, well, maybe they don’t know what this is. And that’s why the biggest thing you see is granola cookie bakes. That sounds exciting, but what kind? And that’s where you get into, you know, of course, you know, oatmeal or pomegranate or whatever it is.

And then that little additional selling you put underneath just to make sure just to nudge them over the edge if they’re not quite there yet. And oh, by the way, these things are pretty good for you or certainly not bad for you. Does that sound about right? That’s great, John. I couldn’t have said it better myself. There you go. I’m coming along. You guys are teaching me a thing or two.

[36:32] Excellent. So, let’s see what else I have here. They’re displays before and after. I love this transformation because before they had all that blue and it’s just not impactful. It’s not really selling. You know, it doesn’t stand out.

We decided to embrace red as the primary brand color for the display, which just super stands out. It’s an appetizing color. And then the products within that just coordinate really well. So, you know, we could have done something that was more of a, you know, kind of a color that just blends in with the brand. But the red is kind of like just really stand out and provides a nice complimentary contrast to the packaging that goes within it. Looks fantastic.

[37:15] Yeah. And then sell sheets. These are, you know, typically what they show to store buyers. So just before and after just including this, because I love, I love doing sell sheets once we’ve done the brand, because these are so important to these are typically with store buyers to sell them.

Embracing Change

[37:32] A lot of people think, oh, this is not a B2C item. You know, it’s not consumer facing. But the store buyer is just as much your consumer as your end consumer because they’re basically the gateway between getting your product to the end consumer in a store. Because if it doesn’t pass the buyer, then they’re not going to have it in your store. So, this is a really important document. And they were doing okay before, but again, it’s just so much more impactful and just visually, I think, interesting on the after.

[38:07] Yeah. Again, another recurring theme. I think every single food and beverage marketing expert, regardless of what aspect of it they were talking about, at some point, the sell sheet came up. And I’m really learning how critical that is. and you can see those little details you made on the, on the after really help make the whole thing look more cohesive, put together. And I’m also kind of gleaning that, you know, again, across multiple episodes that, that that’s part of, of look, getting into retail is huge, right?

A lot of, for many brands, like that’s the goal and scaling that retail presence. So how do you impress the buyers? Well, part of it, it would seem if I were to distill it down to its least common denominator is like, really look dialed in, have your brand dialed in a certain degree of professionalism, but also clarity on who you are, what you’re about and what you’re trying to lead out with helps not only sell the customers, but the buyers as well.

And I think your sell sheet clearly does that. Exactly. And it just shows that it’s a strong brand in the end. You said it was great,

John. Yeah. I also just want to point out a small detail. If they have these, before they were using these icons here, I’m going to see if I can zoom in on them a little bit, to call out there, sorry. No squirrels.

[39:23] Right so I see this a lot is uh brands will be using icons and you know for their call outs which can sometimes it works really well but it’s got to mean something to the to the customer at a visual level right so double-edged sword hey right so no squirrels well I hope squirrels did not eat this product before it made it to you right what is this no water you know I don’t know yeah right now I kind of get this the beaker with the chemicals but you know it’s they really weren’t adding anything so we ended up just going with text you know kind of varying it with the with the emphasis point on each call out and um just you know tying it all together in the band there so ultimately um you know that that works much better than these icons that don’t really mean anything for sure trans-fat I wouldn’t have known which one of those was that? Yeah. Yeah, exactly.

[40:21] So, um, and then here again, just back of the, um, the, uh, the box, uh, here kind of similar to the back of the pouch, we just cleaned it up. Um, and the way they were doing these callouts here, these little, um, include, you know, grains, grain piles, um, as we saw before those ended up being on, on the side, um, you know, you know, done in a more interesting way.

So, and then I think this is the last thing is the website. So, this was there before our website. And we literally just re-skinned it with the new look. So pretty much everything that worked was the same. The structure was the same. But we just kind of cleaned up the parts that needed cleaning up. And this would be the desktop version and then the mobile version on the right.

[41:05] Looks fantastic. And I will say this is one of my favorite types of projects where we’re working with an existing brand where they’ve got a great start. They’ve gotten really far over the years. They’re ready to position themselves for kind of the next chapter. And we really just go through the brand in every level. Right. So, all their products there, you know, as we saw their marketing stuff there on their website. I just love it when it comes all together.

[41:37] And then just to recap, so the ROI, because this had been done a few years ago, was a huge success. They expanded their distribution. They have got new retailers.

[41:48] They secured into Costco and really just positioned them for the future growth for the next couple decades probably would be my guess. I don’t think I’ve ever craved biscotti as much as I’m craving it right now. So, you’re doing something right. That’s for sure, Jenn. I will say also the products are great.

I mean, not to plug the client, but I should, right? Because the products are great. One of the things I love about the clients that we work with is they make amazing food. It tastes great. It really is different in a way from the competitors. And they’re just doing a really cool thing. And to be able to help them amplify that is really just something I’m very passionate about.

[42:32] Fantastic well job well done okay so this next one uh la tiragelle is they make artisan oils we actually started working with them they’re a French company so they were already around in Europe for a while um but they um circa early 2000 uh they um they came to the US wanted to start here and that’s where I started working with them to design their US branding and packaging.

And so, this is, this is going to be about the evolution that we experienced about 16 years after that, because we’ve been, we’ve been partnering with them ever since we started working with them. Oh, wow. So, this is the, before, this was the original design that we did. They started with four products, so this is, but then they, they quickly grew. So, these are just a few of them. And these are just screenshots of the fronts.

[43:22] Kind of a sort of traditional yet modern look, kind of a nod to their heritage. The footage and everything here were with significance and strategy and reason. But I’m going to focus on evolution because this, like the first one was an evolution, the first case study, this is an even more subtle evolution. And I love it because it’s small, even really small changes can make a huge difference. So, this looks very familiar to me too. I think I’ve seen this before on the shelves. What is the product in the box?

[43:53] It’s Artisan Oil. So these are actually um screenshots of the label that wraps around um sorry I didn’t have I didn’t have final product images of the before to include here but it’s a tin can so the label wrap around the tin can um it’s artisan oils like um just roasted you know artisan um like walnut oils hazelnut oils a lot of nut oils but they also have a lot of other specialty oils as well right yeah so this is the before this is what we originally designed you know in the early 2000s and then as this is around 2019-2020 that we did this this change so here’s the before on the left and here you can see the tin can say that that before image is not great so here’s a tin can uh you can see the image is kind of small a lot of text starting to look dated right so they knew it was time for a change um to position them again just like cooper street cookies for the future growth that they wanted you know wanted to have for their brand so this on the right was our initial concept, this isn’t the final, but this is where we started, where we’re, you know, just changing the fonts.

They went from Artisan Oils on the tagline to Artisan Made because at this point, they were much more than just oils.

Evolution of Design

[45:07] They have dressings and, you know, stuff that they’re using their oils to make. So, they wanted to change to Artisan Made.

[45:15] We simplified down here to just, you know, succinct uses and then a heat. Because with oil, a big, you know, point of differentiation within oils is how they’re used, right? So, some are for like a finishing oil, like drizzling, not a high heat oil.

[45:33] Others are, you know, are high heat or they’re low heat or this one’s medium high. So, we just really streamlined all the info. Okay. And made the illustration considerably larger. Yeah, a little bit sharper, a little bit larger.

[45:47] And this idea of helping the customer understand the use cases is, again, something that has come up because I think it’s a really important point. As soon as there’s any potential confusion or you worry that that customer might just be reluctant to make the purchase because they’re not totally sure how or why they would use it, hold their hand. Tell them how. You’re going to sauté. you’re going to dip; you’re going to drizzle. Any of those will work. So, it makes sense why you would do that there, but it looks like this was only the initial concept. So, it progressed from here.

Yeah. So, uh, so we looked at, I’ll try to zoom in on here, but we looked at just a bunch of different subtle changes on, I mean, you can hardly even tell the difference on some of these, but they just give a different feel, right? So on the, on the fonts primarily, and, um, go back to the next page here so again just to kind of keep things moving along I’m just going to kind of skip through these but you can see just playing around with different nuances here oops and again they just look almost the same but we’re just exploring on a really micro level, of just some different type treatments here and again with the logo same thing so we went from this kind of dated looking font to just checking out some different ones and how does that, each one imparts a different feel, see what resonates most with the client and just take it from there.

[47:13] So ultimately, we felt that this was too much of a change. So, we kind of went, and this was that initial concept that we looked at. So, we kind of combined the two and ended up with this hybrid one over here. And then I think the next page has the before and after. There we go. So, if you don’t, if you kind of like, you know, squint and look afar, they almost look the same, right? And that was the goal with this because they didn’t want a big departure.

They wanted to be able to seamlessly roll this out kind of as they needed to reorder, you know, reorder packaging, reorder labels. They didn’t want to have to kind of do everything all at once. And, you know, so that was the goal is to kind of have a seamless rollout of this one. Looks like a mission accomplished to me. very clean but you accomplished that modernization and um you know like the utility of the of the packaging design yeah and then let me um let me just kind of show you a little bit more so this is the back so previous back a little busy kind of crowded a lot of information on the right just really cleaned up we just drilled down to well what information needs to stay what needs to go and the information that stays how can we make it more you know easier to process right so we came up with this little chart here and some call-outs here, all the technical stuff, and there you go.

[48:33] Yeah, it’s funny how some elements of good, clean, modern web design and conversion rate optimization have started to trickle into packaging. And maybe, frankly, I have it backwards.

Maybe it’s elements that were good for packaging that have found their way onto the web. But just this idea of explanatory icons, certain use of bordering or ordering of elements. I mean, good conversion design is good conversion design, regardless of the medium. And you can see some of that incorporated here. Exactly. And I would say, John, it’s probably more about just design in general and how we’ve evolved and communicating visually and information structure. But if you think about it, you know, we’re more and more distracted. We have shorter and shorter attention spans.

We don’t want to be made to work at something. So, we’ve got to make it easy. A lot of times we’re not even reading. It’s just kind of scan and, oh, yeah, this looks good. This resonates with me. Let’s go. Yeah, that’s right. We’re also just busier.

[49:31] We’re busy. That’s right. So just continuing on, here’s some of the final. They’ve got, I don’t know how many products, too many for me to count. But so, these are just a few. It’s funny how there’s something to be said about seeing them all next to each other is like a completed set. One almost somehow enhances the look of the other. I don’t know. It’s a real kind of sexy look when you see them all lined up.

They look great. I get so excited about it, John, because to see them, like, just look at the way the colors work together. I just, I mean, and then you see them on the shelf like that, or you see them on their website like that. To me, in isolation, it works great.
Family of Products

[50:13] But as a family, I mean, it’s just, to me, it’s a showstopper. So, I’m not crazy, right? There’s something to be said about putting them all together, right? Yeah, it looks great. Definitely here’s a few more and oh and then we added this on the bigger cans we added this side fag which was just more about the environmental aspect of why they use a tin can because there are reasons for it and just kind of explaining that to the consumer it’s not really a selling point but it’s something that a lot of people are curious about like what’s with the tin can, So to re-explain that there. And I mean, at risk of stating the obvious, consumers are really curious about all things environmental, sustainability.

[50:51] So it makes perfect sense that you would not only address it, but kind of call it out. They’ve been doing amazing things with sustainability, you know, I think all throughout their longevity, but even just in recent years. If you’re not familiar with this brand, I highly recommend you check them out. Their oils are amazing. Juana Oil is my favorite, but they’ve got really great, great other ones as well. But they’re doing some really cool stuff with sustainability, for sure. Can’t wait to try it out. Yeah. So just to recap, the ROI on this one is the seamless rollout was a success.

You’d see the new ones and the old ones on the shelf next to each other and almost didn’t know the difference. Yet if you look closely at the new ones, they just felt fresher and more vibrant. And again, it was just the right time for them to make this change, to kind of position themselves for, you know, the next 20 or so years. Looks fantastic. Yeah, they landed Shell Space at new retailers. They’ve been rolling out new products since then. And just, you know, again, that position for future growth.

[51:57] Looks good. You have one more for us? I do. All right. Fantastic. All right. So, this one is… Wait, is it coup de gras or coup d’etat? Oh, I thought it was coup de gras. Yeah. It was actually a rhetorical question. I looked into this, right? The coup d’etat is a takeover of the state and a coup de gras is like the final death nail. So, while I wouldn’t, I doubt this has anything to do with a death nail. I think this is the big crescendo. So, let’s get into it. And how is this pronounced? You’ve got nothing but difficult to pronounce products and brands today. How was that last one pronounced? Latarajel. Natura Gel. Natura Gel. Okay. And this is Vivant? Vivant. Vivant. Okay. And I would call this the icing on the cake or the cherry on top to use a food-related pun.

[52:50] I see what you did there. Thank you. Oh, yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So, this one’s a little bit different from the other two case studies in that this was a new brand. So, it hadn’t been out before, new product. Vevan, they’re making plant-based cheese, cheese alternative, I guess you technically have to call it. So, this was, you know, starting out the vegan cheese category at that point was already, you know, there were a lot of major players in it.

Vevan is made by actual artists and cheesemakers. So, the same creators of dairy cheese, they’re the ones who designed Vevan. And they designed it to be totally different from every other vegan cheese out there in terms of like melt, stretching, and flavor.

A lot of vegan cheeses, I think maybe not so much anymore, but maybe still. It’s been a while since I’ve had competitors. But they would leave this kind of funny aftertaste or just have this funny taste to it. Viven, you almost don’t know the difference. Like it’s so much liked the real

Rebel Branding

[53:58] thing. It could pass. It could pass. So, so Veeamon’s a bit of a renegade brand. So let me walk you through.

[54:05] So here’s, we’re looking at the competitors to start. And we do this with any brand. What I’m showing you for the process of these case studies is a little bit different for each one, just taking snippets of each one. So, we do look at competitors, you know, at the start of any project.

But so, I’m showing you this one. there’s a lot of white light clean minimalist kind of look here nothing too exciting uh in my opinion, but you know that’s kind of was the look for the category so the inspiration for viven was the opposite of that pretty much lets you know this cheese is totally unlike all the other cheeses it’s so much more like real dairy cheese that you don’t have to settle this is like authentically really good plant-based cheese. Yeah, it’s almost like the competitors with their collective mood board, if you will, were almost saying like, don’t worry, this is safe. You won’t hate it. It’ll be perfectly fine, right? That’s kind of what like the takeaway, like it’s fine. It’s good. It’s clean.

[55:12] It’s good to go. Nothing to worry about. Whereas immediately what I think I’m getting from this is, oh no, you’re going to really like this. You’re going to enjoy this. We’re going to bring some favor, some energy, some excitement to what you might otherwise think of as a letdown from the real thing. Does that sound about right? Oh, exactly.

Exactly. And I think a lot of times people who are newcomers to a category assume that, oh, well, this is what it looks like. We want it to ft in. We want it to look like this other successful brand or these other successful brands. That couldn’t be the more incorrect approach because you blend in at that point. You don’t stand out. And if you really want to make a difference, if you really want to just disrupt a category, you’ve got to stand out.

You’ve got to take a bold stand and be different. Awesome. So, these were kind of the inspiration images for this brand. Here’s some more, just like raw creativity, bold color, more of the lifestyle aspect of it. Whereas if you’re eating plant-based cheese for whatever reason, maybe it’s preference, maybe it’s dietary needs, I think you’re used to just settling for an alternative, right? Well, it’s kind of like cheese, but it’s not cheese.

As we all know it’s not cheese. But again, this is a totally different experience. So, we wanted to focus on the lifestyle aspect of just, you don’t have to settle for this. Yeah. Once you throw a hippie van in there, you know, it’s about lifestyle, you know?

[56:38] Love the hippie van. Love it. So, let’s move on here. So, the naming, this one, we participated in the naming. We came up with the name.

[56:48] I can’t tell you how many names we considered for a very long time. Ultimately, we came up with the name Vevan. It was a hit. The way I came up with that name was I was just taking kind of words that were related to the brand and swapping out a letter and seeing what happens. So, that’s how we ended up at Veevin.

We played around with having that line over the R because, you know, the beginning, as you said, is it Veevin? It’s Veevin, but ultimately, we decided not to have it. So, we’re looking at just a bunch of kind of logo exploration here, just type treatments, what resonates, what doesn’t.

These aren’t, I wouldn’t call these logos, but these are just kind of the lettering exploration. Ultimately, this one circled here is what stood out the most collectively to our team and the client’s team. And we decided to pursue that approach. Coming back to that raw creativity, right?

It’s just kind of, and with this new type of plant-based cheese that is so much like regular cheese, you can create the things that you love to create with dairy cheese that you no longer can have maybe because of restrictions or just your dietary preferences. So, we love this approach. It’s kind of starting to come together here.

That led to this being the custom hand-lettered logo. I threw in 100% awesome as just kind of like a, like, I mean, I think it’s 100% awesome. So, I just put it in there because it was fun.

[58:13] Figuring that it probably wouldn’t fly in the end with a client, they loved it. And that’s the tagline. Well, correct me if I’m wrong, but it gets back to that natural hesitation around these plant-based substitute products. Like, am I actually going to like it? Is this going to be a letdown from the real thing? So that’s probably what you’re trying to really push and communicate here.

Like, no, this is 100% awesome. Yeah. And that, again, was the thinking behind it. It’s kind of just inherent in the decisions that I make. So, I don’t always think to call out those things. But thank you, John. Yes, that was the definitely the intention behind it is, hey, this is this is 100% awesome.

Try it. See it for yourself. You’re going to love it. You’re going to love it. But if you say you’re going to love it, then it’s like, am I like, let me figure it out. You know what I mean? And so, you’ve got to be really careful and strike that right balance of being different, clearly communicating, but not making assumptions. It’s a little car salesman-y, right? To be like, you’re going to love it. I promise. Just pick it up today. Yeah, yeah.

Subtle Rebellion

[59:14] Nothing against the car salesman out there. I’ve got a family of them, actually.

[59:19] So moving on, this is the design that we ended up with for their shredded cheese line. Um as I like to say it it’s just unapologetically disrupting the category it’s uh you know we’ve got these paint backgrounds in there it’s just full of texture the idea you know everything’s pretty much handwritten or handwritten style the idea with this is that kind of like I said create your own right take this and create what you want with it and you know that that’s really just that raw creativity, and bold favor, bold color. This is how we arrived at that. Yeah, and you used the word rebel earlier.

That’s coming through in a subtle way. I love the idea of rebelling through substitute cheese, but there’s really something to that. Going against the dairy industry is a rebellious thing to do. Yeah, and a lot of the other competitors in the category, for legal reasons, you can’t call it cheese. Right? But what can you call it? Cheese alternative, cheese style. I love it. Ched Shred. That’s cool. That’s fun. Pete Mac.

[1:00:28] Yeah, it was great. So, these were, um, you know, in, in partnership with, uh, with the client, these names were developed and, um, I just, I mean, I just love how it ended up. So, I’ll walk you through a little bit more of this. We got the Meltz line. So again, they’re good places, but you know, called Meltz just to have a fun name to go with Shred.

They rolled out some snacks a little nut cheese plant-based cheese uh fruit things and they came up with un creamed cheese which is I will say also amazing um it’s really great if you can get your hands on some of these I highly recommend it now on the cups we for parameter reasons we couldn’t do the paint background so we ended up just doing a solid color and works just as well.

What I love is that you get some of that texture in here, like the texture we had on the packages with the paint background. You kind of have that same texture here with the way the un creamed cheese is spread around.

So, it is a bit of a connection. But you have to make these decisions as to what will work in print and what won’t. So, there’s a lot of technical requirements that come into play as you kind of roll out among the different packages.

[1:01:45] Images. Looks awesome. Yeah. So those inspiration images that we use for the brand development, we ended up putting those on the website just to communicate.

Website Extension

[1:01:56] the lifestyle aspect and just fun, different, complimentary. When I’m building out a brand, I always love to start with the packaging and branding as the face of the brand. And then everything else around that I see as an extension of it. So, the website, you don’t want it to be cookie cutter. You don’t want it to look exactly like the packaging.

[1:02:17] If I’m checking out the brand, I want to go to the website. I want to be surprised. I want to see something different; you know? So again, it’s that element of just being different, the element of surprise and delight, and just building out a varied and interesting brand, but with a reason. So, these are literally the images that we use as inspiration for the design, they also tie into that lifestyle aspect of, and the favor and the creativity and just, you know, living your best life. That’s all coming through in the design. It really is very engaging, and sub communicates all the right things.

Kudos to you for pulling that off. That looks great. Thanks. I got a few more. So just kind of showing some more of the variety in the banner images on the website. What I love is when you get to the product section, its color coded to go with the color of like the chedd is green we get the p-jack red so it’s kind of each one has its own favor so to speak of the visual it’s a bossa blue.

[1:03:16] It works too. I can’t even explain why. You probably can, but there’s something about the flavor of a mozzarella that brings that calm, cool element to it. There’s something about a pepper jack, or in this case, a pea jack that brings a little pizzazz and excitement to it. That explains the red. But again, the art of sub-communication, you’re clearly a master, Jenn. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. And then the last thing we did for this brand,

Social Media Impact

[1:03:43] And we did all the sell sheets too, but I didn’t include those here. But social media, which was really fun. Again, just kind of a different take here, using some of the similar images from that inspiration, that lifestyle stuff, but mixing it with a lot of other stuff in here. And social media kind of has its own vibe going as well. It’s like its own little branch of the brand. So, this was a lot of fun, a lot of fun to build out.

[1:04:08] The ROI for Vevan is it quickly became a national brand. You can find it in a lot of stores nationwide. New products immediately followed. So, this set a great stage, a great entry point for them to roll out additional products, additional favors. It was a hit with store buyers, and they got into Costco, which I think every food brand wants to get into Costco because it’s just huge, you get a huge audience from that. Yeah. That’s like the ultimate point of aspiration, getting into Costco. It’s amazing, we call it adult Disneyland in my family.

[1:04:42] So that’s great, Jenn. Well, we really appreciate you taking the time to share those with us. I think our listeners, the viewers, will find that extremely helpful. And clearly you do beautiful work. So, before we sign off here, if anyone wants to get in touch with you, what’s the best way to do that?

And what’s the best way to follow along with, uh, Jenn David design? Yeah. So, I mean, go to our website, jenndaviddesign.com, two Ns in Jenn. Um, you know, you can see more of our work there, learn more about us. We have a lot of, um, you know, I’ve read out a lot of articles, uh, they publish their helpful information. So definitely check out our free resources. Um, we do have social media accounts. I’m going to be honest.

Uh, we’re not that active. We try to be, but a lot of times we’re just so busy helping clients and working on these great projects that, you know, it kind of falls off to the wayside. Um, same with the website. We have a new website coming out probably in the next few months. So, um, and you can, uh, this, so just check the website. You can find different ways to contact us there if you’d like.

Awesome. Well, Jenn, thanks so much. That was a really fun and unique addition to the niche marketing podcast. We really appreciate your investment of time and thanks again. Can’t wait to have you on again, sometime. Thank you so much, Sean. It was a pleasure. Thanks for having me.

[1:06:07] Music.