Food Packaging Design Strategy for F&B Brands

[00:00:00]whether you knew it or not you just landed on episode two of a multi-episode series all about marketing food and beverage products and in this installment we'll be talking about packaging throughout the numerous interviews I've done with career food and beverage marketing experts packaging unsurprisingly came up over and over again so to make sure we got you the absolute best advice on the subject we brought the Father and Son Duo behind the multigenerational creative agency dep Persico into our own studio in haddenfield New Jersey after 46 years 46 years in the business these guys no packaging so in addition to walking through some case studies demonstrating before and after projects the team at the Persico are going to share some incredible insights with you we're going to cover things like how to keep your on package messaging as concise yet effective as possible some insights on the do's and ads of making certain claims on packaging brand advocacy brand brand positioning and best practices for positioning lines on packaging what human psychology and philosophy can teach us about persuasive messaging I know Mr aurelus would be into hearing about that and what a 45-year-old packaging agency has to say about getting onto the shelves of retailers Who would know better than these guys partial spoiler alert has a lot to do with effective sell sheets are you stoked for episode two of our food and beverage product marketing series do you want more amazing Niche content just like this I know you do then you know what to do smash that like button hit subscribe don't forget to comment and get ready for this next installment of the niche marketing podcast with the perso creative in [Music] Philadelphia and we're back with another episode of The Niche marketing podcast I'm so delighted to have our guests in from just over the bridge in Philadelphia where you guys where you guys from in Philly Westchester yeah Westchester so right between Philadelphia and Lancaster Midway Point fantastic and we have James and Paul from derso deers dep Persico creative right pronunciation wrong emphasis okay very close and we're stoked to have you we have you guys are going to be part of our food and beverage experts marketing series and you guys eat sleep and breathe packaging design yep and today is also our first episode with a co-host we have my colleague Steven Panza also in the mix today Stephen welcome to the show oh thanks for having me look at us on this side of the table usually we're on opposite side but now we're on the same side I'm digging it it feels good man yeah thanks for the invite yeah glad to have you here and and since we're gonna be talking about packaging design today you know Stephen has an in-depth background and in the area of branding design creative messaging and so really couldn't do the episode without you I appreciate it let's go all right so James Paul again excited to have you guys could you tell us a little bit about how you got started I know it's a family business and it goes back some ways yeah yeah we were Incorporated in 1977 but the business was actually started by my grandparents even before that just like out of their house but Paul can really speak to the the early days of the business CU I was you know much later wead 1977 we incorporated uh rented a place kind of grew after that my wife signed on in the business you know we were married and um you know a year or two later and um you know we've had my mother worked in business my sister lots of them and uh anyway it's uh it's been a long road in 1989 uh my parents retired from the business I bought the business from them and uh and then James started I don't know 10 years ago or something yeah probably about 10 years ago right out of college as I was in my last year of college we have my sister also works in uh she's creative or a creative family and we all like food uh our chief designer is uh my nephew or son and uh we just had a baby so shout out to Nick he's on eternity leave right now yeah they very excited they actually just moved into their house last week and then had a baby this week wow is that the next generation of the agency right there yeah we thinking the Next Generation the generation after that baby yeah hopefully so uh so that's that's about it I mean that's our history of getting started we've always been food and beverage we love food we're big Foodies James and I are both cooks are chefs in our own right awesome that makes four of us yeah great yeah we're big Foodies we help develop a lot of like when people come to us they they say new product I want to develop can you help me and a lot of times we get in there it's like product you know comparing it to the other tastes in the market you need a little more hit here you need a little more our first step is always try the product because it's something that you know it's it's fun working in food and beverage because we can do that and we can try the product it's not like you know if we were doing package design for like women's razor blades or something like that it's like well we're not you know maybe we could try it I don't know if I'm going to get the same kind of in but if it's like pizza or a barbecue sauce or something yeah absolutely eat it for a couple of meals and and then give them some feedback and say you know maybe you could sweeten this up or maybe you could make a little spicier or something like that yeah we usually try to coach them because we basically what we do well and what we're known for is we get people to try the product when it goes on the Shelf it's we ins Inspire trial yeah so they see stuff on this thing and people first it catches their attention and then it creates by looking at the package and having the package tell a story it creates that desire to try it after they try it it's all on you know the packaging helps with some but it's really the product is going to you know fail or succeed if people will come back and become loyal users tell their friends about it use it buy it yeah that's what we always tell clients is that we'll get you the first sale and then it's on your product to be good enough to get all the repeat purchases that makes a lot of sense there's a little sense in US designing a really great package get that first sale and it never gets sold again that that brand will never grow we'll never do more business yeah then it makes us look bad because then it's like oh the product ended up failing and it's not our fault it's because the pack the product wasn't good enough so we always try the product try to if it's not if we don't feel like it's where it needs to be help them refine it and then once it's in a place where we're like now if we do a really good job on this package this is really going to take off that's always you know where we want to be is we really don't money on a product that's not that we know when we taste it is not going to succeed in the marketplace have you worked with products that you loved and that you got the trial but then it still flopped because of bad marketing or bad customer experience never well I can't think of anything I mean people have there was one product retired and given up on making it yeah exactly that's what I was going to point out there was one product that we actually have an example of here that's called yummy Health the brand was called yummy Health which is a great brand name because with food there are so many regulations on what you can what claims you can make like the word healthy or health good for your health or anything like that is so regulated that you really can't put it on things you for using yeah like maybe if you were selling like straight raw broccoli maybe you could get away with it but like but this was a like a snack product so you certainly could not put Health on there but kind of the loophole if it's part of your registered brand name then you're okay you can put it on there so they they got away with the brand named yummy Health which was great um but the problem with that was that was a company that was kind of like a a pet project of the wife of like a a very wealthy lawyer and then she you know went through the whole process of Designing it and then she kind of was like I'm on to my next pet project and then gave up on it it had no funding and then disappeared which was a shame because it really could have been successful it was a cool product But but so that happens other than situations like that when we design something we know it's going to taste good that that it's going to be able to compete in the marketplace they don't fail yeah your end strengths are pretty good in that regard well so let's take a couple steps back and start from the beginning if I'm an aspiring food and beverage brand got a consumer product good and I want to get it on the shelves before we even talk about successfully getting on its shelves which I know is its own challenge for sure perhaps the biggest challenge what do you guys need from me or my team to do what you do I mean and to be clear for the audience uh you guys specialize in specifically the packaging part of things so for you to do your job kind of like here's a little slide that has there's five core things that you have to do perfect and this is the right order so you see the package design is actually the last stage yeah so kind of the thing that our clients need to come to us with is basically just they need to know their product and they need to know what their goals for it are um and then we can basically help them from there uh because the very first thing that they need to well they need the actual product but once they have that then the first thing you need that kind of starts as the foundation for everything is your positioning so how you want to present yourself to a consumer so we often think of the first couple of stages as positioning which is what you want your consumer to understand about your product and your brand and then your creative strategy which is how we're then going to to convey that message positioning is what's your unique selling proposition how are you special how are you better yeah if you're a barbecue sauce there's a lot of barbecue sauces out there what makes you special are you you know are you Smoky are you from a really old school Southern tradition are you you know a mustard-based sauce which is you know combining honey and mustard and ketchup in a way that's you know unique and not something else out there in the market so we always want to kind of focus in on how are you going to differentiate yourself amongst a sea of competitors because there's so much out there that you're you're usually entering a pretty competitive space no matter what product you have we've worked with a couple of clients that where their product is so unique that the challenge is not differentiating yourself from your competitors it's saying look this is this is what I am because my product is so unique we have another example in this uh in this deck if we get to it of something that's totally radical and and that was more of a situation where we had to explain to people what even is this part of of educating right exactly yeah and how it was it was a a product where you kind of had to take a couple of steps before it was edible so you really couldn't eat it right out of the tin but it was sold along you know next to cream cheeses and things like that but if you tried to use it like a cream cheese it would really be pretty undesirable um so you had to take a couple of steps so it was a the tricky thing was getting enough information onto the face of the package that people could get an idea of look don't just don't put a scoop of this on your piece of toast and just eat it straight up because it's really going to be an unpleasant experience you have to you had to spread it onto your toast and then melt that like in a toaster oven or something like that and then it was really phenomenal but we had to get that across on the package so that's kind of an an unusual case but most of the time it's a product that people are already familiar with like a seasoning you know a spice Blend or something like that so how do you differentiate yourself amongst mccormic and durys and all the big spice Brands we have another slide here that's of spices and kind of how we did that how we differentiated those and made them really unique you want to pull that up while we and are you guys creating or is the brand usually coming with an idea of the product positioning or you making recommendations are they all varies varies yeah some some have a pretty good positioning in mind some have a really good product in a really terrible positioning yeah so we got flicker got Flicker and are you often times like adding on like reasons to believe onto the packaging as well like to strengthen that positioning yeah so that package has to kind of basically you're going to tell a story with the package design it's going to leave people with a certain feeling you know that desire to try but it needs to tell a story and it has to be in the right order and has to flow so many times you'll see packaging and you got something in this corner something in that that's it down here you know it's all over the place like little Islands you need it an eye flow where it's just going to be gracefully your eye goes top to bottom left to right and so this is one that has a lot of information on because there's nothing to show in seasoning so this is this is an example of of kind of what we were talking about as far as like a really crowded Market seasonings and how do we want to differentiate uh some of that reason to believe that you talked about uh Stephen was you know for example just a little thing like all all of these we have it labeled by Chef Henry yeah so like immediately you're already thinking like okay so this is put together by someone who kind of knows what they're talking about this these are seasonings developed by a chef and then one of the things that we noticed was kind of lacking in a lot of the seasoning space was a lot of seasonings tell you just what they are but not really give any kind of flare or give any kind of details on when do you want to use me or anything like that so you know if you look at something and it says like lemon pepper seasoning you kind of are like okay well I guess I could put lemon pepper seasoning on chicken maybe and and you hold their hand a little bit and show them the way we want to yeah so we gave these some some additional information you know this unique seasoning and Herb blend gives Meats a mouthwatering Savory taste everyone loves yeah just to like oh okay this is this is it BEC a no-brainer like Savage seasoning like if I want to get a little Savage tonight I'm going to you know let's get vicious I'm going to I'm going to go there and I actually love like that kind of secondary messaging down there cuz like John you were saying I kind of it makes it idiot proof you know what I mean like you know what you're getting out of it stories yeah exactly helps them get the best out of it too right which is critical you talk about you had mentioned earlier that you help get the first sale it's kind of up to the product to get the second third and fourth sale well I can see how this would help aid that second third and fourth sale you're getting the optimal use case out of it right yeah exactly yeah and and when on the shelf right with mccormic and with you know just generic red pepper flakes or whatever right this is going to it's going to stick out like Backyard Barbecue I want to have a backyard barbecue I think I need that yeah exactly seasoning you know that that is something you're supposed to put on Seafood you you could put it on a piece of chicken if it was just called like you know lemon pepper you know sweet seasoning or something and you try it on a piece of chicken and maybe it' be all right it wouldn't be great you put on a piece of fish and now all of a sudden it's like oh now that is something I to come back for and for the listeners in case you didn't see the sliders pay close enough attention it's seasoning that's right yeah yeah with some wave design in there we going to really differentiate each of individual the client and for you guys to know that Chef Henry secret the one in the blue there in the front absolutely awesome best season I've ever had I use it all the time okay made out of you'll never huh what what what are the what's the ingredients there is something that's unusual I don't know well it's gonna be on the green news panel yeah there's oregano and a couple different combinations not something you there's Mexican sage in there too just gives steaks and stuff such a it's unbelievable oh yeah we order it constantly have it in my RV I have bottles of it everywhere the Second Step was around like the the Strategic territory right and and and is that something that your team is coming to the table with like some unique insights to try to like land like something like that big idea or they do client usually have it occasionally a client will have something that they want to do in particular but generally that's on us yeah um especially with smaller clients or more starup clients or people that are not already succeeding you know sometimes clients come to us and they just want to tick the needle up a little bit but a lot of times people come to us when bigger clients want to small just just make me look good marketing job but especially when it's a smaller client or someone whose product is is really not succeeding they rely on us to help come up with some of that strategy and a lot of that is about how to take that positioning that either they don't have that we develop with them or that they already have in mind and figure out how to best communicate that like on those seasonings where we added that by Chef Henry's to give that kind of ethos I like to think of I went to school for English and philosophy so I had a lot of classes a lot of education on rhetorical speaking rhetorical communication and using rhetoric in speech is all about trying to convince someone of a point basically trying to persuade someone over to your way of thinking and that's essentially what package design is doing it's saying hey let me convince you that my product is the best thing on shelf so a lot of the same techniques are useful in package design as are in any kind of rhetorical speech so I like to think of different points that we're including on a package as the classic pathos Logos and Ethos your emotional appeals which I kind of in food include like the gut reaction which is often times appetite appeal it's that just kind of natural like oh that makes me hungry and that's under the wit I can consider that pathos kind of the emotional appeal and they were again pathos Pathos Logos and Ethos so pathos is your emotional appeal which is either like o that's something I feel good about like if you see on a package you know farm raised you know pasture raised chickens or something like oh okay I feel good about that yeah or this fighting hope may never tasted so good because it they give to orphans in Africa yeah it's hard it's harder to see on this screen because it's white on yellow in this on this first one um but yeah it says providing hope never tasted so good and the and then that story is expanded on the back where the owner of this brand has uh he builts orphanages in mosan Beek so it's that's kind of your pathos appear here like okay I feel good about buying from this brand or sustainability messages for example are a pathos appeal where it's like yeah I'm happy to buy this brand I'm happy to support that things like small batch or homemade can often times be that too like I'm I'm helping a small company I'm not helping you know a major corporation logos is those logical appeals like low fat or you know things like you know keto friendly no hose corn syrup things like okay I get why this is is actually going to be something I want to have you know based on what I know based on knowledge not practical yeah exactly maybe the speed at which like a caffeine or energy ining ingredient kick in this Cooks quickly you know this this pizza is made in four to five minutes like or functional and then ethos is kind of a little bit some of the more ambiguous thing but that's like establishing your reliability like that's kind of the reason to believe like why should I trust what you're saying uh and and some of that is like that by Chef Henry like okay so I get like okay this is coming from a chef like they've curated these ingredients or that's often times I think a lot of Brands will include this without really knowing why but like you'll see like established 1975 that's an Ethos statement okay I've been around for long like your firm right been around since you know the Regeneration they must know a thing or two exactly yeah that's an appeal to that eth instin credibility or trust Factor social proof too the same thing I love that we're getting a great social media sound bite out of that that's for sure so back to here this the creative strategy is after you figure it out you know we've had our meeting with the client we've really asked a lot of probing questions just to informally find out where do they want to be in five years what where how do they feel about their brand what do they want what kind of persona do they have personally do they want to be part of the brand themselves personally or are they planning on just building it and selling it you know to some big company shortly we kind of get all that background information because that will help drive you know a good positioning for them get them in a good place so then we develop the position which we already talked about once we know where we want to be like here is the goal here's here's we want to end up here's our destination then creative strategy is like what are all the elements you can use on the packaging to get there you know to convince people and that's the creative strategy part so it's like we used let me jump in there could you elaborate on what are the elements of the package I feel like we could unpack that a little bit okay well there's the logo the feel of the package is it is it the physical the physical feel no no like that pathos element like when you look at it what is the first thing like oh that's a really high-end product or like oh that's a really value oriented product I'm getting a lot for my money that's a natural yeah like oh that must be organic even can't say organic we can look organic we can look like we belong in Whole Foods even if the nutrition facts and the ingredients don't necessarily support that we don't have the ability to put a organic bug on there or or or not when I say bug I mean the little icon the FDA standards to actually put but we can certainly make it look organic and apply that you know without them having to pay and so that's what mean when we say the feel of your of your package so the logo the feel there are other elements that words that go on any elements on the package and when we say when we talk about later in in this of the five core needs that you have to develop the package we include creative Linguistics which is actually a term that we got when uh the marketing manager of Kelloggs came to us and asked for some what she called linguistic creativity they didn't actually want to do anything on their package design they were just asking us for copywriting help essentially to come up with the the right WR words and statements that they could use and then we liked that term so much linguistic creativity that we kind of co-opted it and flipped it around and called it creative Linguistics rather than just calling it copyrighting because we felt like different that that almost undervalues it whereas the words that you're you including on the package are so critical they they really need to be brief and piy and poignant and make a strong point without expanding a lot because you obviously don't have the space especially in the front of a package or the attention span right so yeah exactly yeah you really have like four to six seconds to convince someone to at least be interested enough to to pick up your product on shelf so you we include that as part of the creative process just as much as the the feel and the design and the appetite appeal the the creative Linguistics verage is super important yeah yeah and that even includes how does word sound is it a soft sound is it you know depending on what your product is you don't want a crunchy sounding word if you're describing something on a very smooth you know soft product like a a cheeseball bite or something you know you don't want to use yeah or even something very aggressive like you wouldn't come out with like Kraken yogurt or something you know it kind of has a strange kind of counterintuitive and It ultimately all comes back to that audience Persona too right if it's yogurt for the Al male maybe Kraken works good but if we're trying to appeal to the nuclear family and and and sometimes going super super out there can be the core of core of your positioning like this not a client of ours but it's it's you know kind of big right now is the water brand liquid death right you know they they obviously that's their whole thing is being very counter to what you would assume about water you know they their liquid death is super obviously like like dangerous sounding their whole theme is like looking like it's some kind of toxic chemical and then it turns out it's just SP water but but it is it's interesting that they they've gone completely the opposite angle but that is their whole positioning is is going in that opposite direction yeah they zagged out can occasionally work but only if you yeah you know I can't imagine it would work for many things other than you know a plain sparkling water where you you don't really have to explain the product in any kind of way number three on identity we put say identity rather than logo development um right because it really incorporates everything the logo is just part of it but it's the feel of the package the color of the background and with logo as part of your identity that goes kind of beyond your logo and is at the same time kind of part of it we almost always like to include what we call a positioning line some people say a tagline or a slogan but we think of those as kind of separately they they can exist on their own whereas a positioning line is almost always locked to your logo and it's just something that is a really like maybe it's five to maybe seven words Max that starts to get a little long that is an encapsulation of as much of your positioning as we can get in a really short piy single statement three to five words yeah that's going to stick with your logo so you know we love a brand where the brand name is going to carry a lot of weight on its own like we have a uh we worked with a client where their brand name that we came up with for them was this is the example was same day filt it was a frozen fish product so it kind of it already starts to do a lot of work just with that brand name but then we included the positioning line caught cleaned and flash frozen in hours to kind of further encapsulate like what is different about this what's the positioning of this and the it was that these fillets you know they were caught they were frozen on the boat before they even made it back to shore so that you're getting and it and then retained Frozen that entire time so you're getting it as fresh as it could possibly be so we always like to include a positioning line even on something where the the brand name is doing a lot of weight but especially on things where they're not like if your brand is called douglases or something like that that's your brand you could be you know douglases could be selling you know pizzas or it could be selling air fresheners and there's no way to know so having that positioning line there locked to the logo if you say Douglas's you know fine Woodfired pizzas or something you kind of immediately get a sense of what you're doing every time you see that logo and that positioning line just lives with it if we get the opportunity to help the client come up with the logo name uh which I'd say we do would per like 70% maybe probably about that um I think it's a lot better because we make sure that the logo then does some heavy lifting yeah the name sub communicates right exactly communicating is something good and sometimes you can really get away you could do some powerful things with the logo like that yummy Health do I even have yummy Health on there you do have it on here the naming is huge I've been involved in a few of those projects myself and the amount of work by the way that can go into choosing the right name can be uh pretty tremendous oh yeah as in I love that you drew the distinction Paul about you shy away from calling things logo and you refer to it as identity you know all true brand marketers know the amount of work that goes into a visual Identity or a logo or color scheme or fonts can be a tremendous amount of work you know that's right often overlooked by folks that try to do it themselves and that can ultimately cost them today's episode is brought to you by the agency guide are you frustrated with an underperforming marketing agency 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 over promising 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 TX experienced marketing consultants have been providing Pro Bona 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 dubdub duub the agency guu.vn to day you know even right around where I started about 10 years ago um but even before that especially where logo design was often done in isolation you know that would be like the first step is like okay create the logo let's run that up the ladder let's get approval from everyone on the logo and then let's develop the package design and what we've realized like I said about 10 years ago and going forward is we almost never do that anymore because that is so key as your identity not just as a logo in isolation that when you develop the logo on its own and then go to try to create a package design you're kind of creating these artificial constraints on yourself where now you have to design a package around a logo you have to make a package that's going to fit an already established logo looks like a slug in like Drop logo here you know and like could be you've already established you know cut you know is it a really rigid font is it a soft font is it using serifs or or not using seraps you know is it encapsulated in some kind of shape some kind of Marquee shape or is it in a circle is it an oval is it a very vertical or horizontal logo and then you go to work on the package design and you're like okay now I have to figure out it I have got colors established I've kind of got a a look established already that I need to work into the package design and it just doesn't make sense to do it that way we've realized that the identity is so core to theack package design that it really needs to be developed at all at once so we create our packages and our logos all as a cohesive hole this is an example of identity I put this slide in as opposed to the logo this is made by you know cheese butter this client it's the same client and it's this is a different name this is by Chef Henry but you can tell that the look is if the you saw these it's it's all in the same family and cheese butle is also a third product line they have they all have a kind of a cohesive feel to them it's a branded house I believe right yeah so you can tell they all have these little uh icons in the background and uh you know that's their it's more than just the name this is the name is very small on here the logo cheese Butters there these are sub branded cheese bolt bites but the feel is cohesive I see you made that conscious decision actually to minimize the logo and emphasize what the product is yeah yeah exactly because cheese butter was their original product and it was also their their brand name so that's the thing that has the the registration on it and it was exactly what the original product was that product was cheese butter it was a butter and cheese mixture that was that was actually the product I was referencing earlier that's kind of confusing how do like spreadable yeah the butter kind of congeals when it's cold and refrigerated so you have to melt it and then the cheese melts in with the butter and it becomes a really great product this is still under the cheese butter brand but there's no butter involved in here at all this is purely a seasoned cheese with inclusions so we wanted to minimize cheese butter we still wanted The Branding on there but we wanted this to really kind of stand on its own as a cheese ball bite because it's like your traditional like cheese ball that you would have like at a as a centerpiece at a party or something you know full of like fruits and nuts and things like that but smaller miniature bite-sized with you know a blend of cheeses really robust inclusions so we wanted to say you get people the idea of like okay you know it's by cheese butter but there's no butter in here this is a think of this as a cheese ball but as a bite I'm getting hungry guys this well we just actually had if you want a snack I definitely recommend checking them out if you got any of these on hand make sure you leave some behind yeah four of these things they're great for like staving off the hunger also is an example of the client had just the pure just the cheese balls different flavors think he had five flavors or whatever but we looked at them to this could be big this could be huge because it's a little portable pack tear off you could take them with you it's a great Stave off the hunger if your din n's running late or whatever you could take them on the road with you camping whatever uh I said this is so I said to him geez you know could you combine put some little meat in there like a beef jerky in with the cheese have a Sherie collection yeah because shy is so big right now that's very trendy right now shy plates cheeseboard plat we always keep an eye on what are what's trending well maybe we should talk about that a little bit Trend analysis and is that simply just you know like first person what you see when you're out there or is there more it's pretty it's it's fairly osmosis space just kind of being in the space seeing what people are talking about you know if things are big enough online we're going to encounter them and that's like the case with chutery plates and cheeseboard plates and things like that where those are really kind of they're kind of hot right now so the idea of being able to give people an opportunity to you know have your easy atome chery plate where all you have to do is buy this package open it up and dump it out and boom you've got a shuy plate ready to go normally they're you a pretty expensive thing like high-end restaurants and things like that but we wanted to we said to the client like hey this is really big right now I think you have the capability of doing this why don't you give it a try and see how it comes out and it it turned out great he had to buy one piece of equipment for it but it ended up being worth it that was hugely successful the the truty option and uh and it became one of the the better selling of the of the products he also said cheeseboards where you don't have the meat there's a lot of people that don't eat meat or but you've got fruit and nuts I mean of which is it's a great combination so you see like on the right on the blue in there those are cheeseboards there's fruits and nuts that go with them and they're in a pack they're in a separate little thing so it's really great it gives you a nice a more full snack the cheese balls themselves or you have to go online and buy some because once you have try them you'll always buy them let's talk about getting on the Shelf and standing out on the Shelf sure so what advice can you give aspiring food and beverage cpg creators makers think small business now I'll tell you the thing that nobody will tell you the stores won't tell you you're going to get it here folks on the niche marketing podcasts what's here at Paul we can't wait the stores will tell you trying to get your product into a store and it's struggle you can't get it in they put it on a they won't put it in a good spot they tell oh we've got no room for you right now we're already filled up with this product sorry and whatever what they're not telling you is like they won't ever say you have an ugly baby there it's a lot of the reason the stores want to make their shelves look their store look good and their shelves look good these different category managers in the stores they want their store to shine and if your product doesn't look good they're not going to tell you that they just not going to give you the space so that's that's really interesting on a number of level right I mean I think the general premise of okay we want the packaging to look good that's that's not a surprise right but the fact that a buyer is thinking aesthetically about how their store looks at the collective whole literally how the visual of their shelves present and that they might make a de decision on what products to stock simply based on like how you appear on their shelves amongst the other products they have is really interesting and I think it's worth repeating at this point that you know this is from Decades of experience that you guys have right Decades of experience have shown that the buyers want their shelves to look as good as possible okay you I'll show you one here this C best um the left hand side is the four uh they had that the product did not change so they had that they had the shrimp they had like five products they were trying to get in the Northeast quor up and down the state we only work in the US market we don't really do Canada and any other countries anyway they say well we can't get into you know we don't know what's wrong we put restaurant quality really big on the package M and we can't get on the shelves they just don't want our product we said well you know I think we see the problem ugly baby ugly baby which we didn't tell them we will show them you know there's a difference so instead of saying restaurant quality we made a package design that looked like a a cool Boutique type of restaurant we made this the logo more of like a a signage like you see like a sea seafood restaurant sign we put restaurant quality is much smaller so the word didn't have to be big it just had to have the right feel yeah we have a little Seascape in the top almost like you know you're sitting out on the patio of a of a seafood restaurant you're looking out on the water it's plated up like it would be in a restaurant uh you know very clean table like you would have at like a higher-end restaurant almost kind of a white tablecloth thing to basically if we're going back to that logo's path ethos thing that restaurant quality really wants to be a pathos it wants to be the feel of restaurant quality but they almost treated it like it was a Loos argument like practical yeah they they they wrote the word restaurant quality and were hoping that that kind of gets to people but that's it really can't be a logical thing restaurant quality is like what does that even really technically mean that can be subjective yeah it's more of a feel so you need to treat it like it's something that's pathos that's a feel so that's what we transferred it to on the new design we did the editorial plate type and there you know old little subtle things but putting that plate at an angle instead of just straight on giving it an editorial kind of like recipe book type feel to it just all the little things work together so they went from five they got all the five products in the stores all over the east coast and uh and then they just like because of that success and and the stores were buying the stuff they added 39 products when they I 39 they totaled 39 so it's 39 seven Whatever It Is Well done a lot of other product so really put them on the map a fun success story and a fun didn't change and any other advice because I I know from the other interviews we've started to do in this Niche how critical this getting on the damn shelf is and like how hard it is so and I know you guys are designers that's your focus but any other just inside baseball inside knowledge about how to get on a shelf well it's this is a little outside of package design but it is something that we almost always do with all of our clients is it's important to have a really effective sell sheet that's kind of your main intro piece of material when you're going to a buyer in a store because I mean it's great if you can get a trade show and the buyer this the you know the chain buyers are walking around they may be oppressed whatever but they're going to forget you got to have a good sell sheet that's going to remind them and so much is also done digitally these days and and Telecommunications and things like that where it's awesome if you can get an in-person meeting you know actually in front of a store buyer and let them try the product and and have a conversation like that but so often usually always try the product even just mail it to them they'll taste it but so often you can't get an in-person meeting or you need an in to even get to that point and the cell that's where the cell sheet comes in where when we develop a sell sheet it's it's using a lot of the same components as the package design obviously the look of the brand is still the same we're showcasing the actual product and the package of the product on that cell sheet but the communication is tweaked a little bit because now it's not a story of this is why you as a consumer are going to really enjoy this product now it's a story of this is why this is going to be so successful on your in your store shelves this is why your consumers are going to like this and this is what it's going to do for your store and telling that story in a really in a concise space just like we do really concise Communications on a package face is so critical because now we're we're shifting who we're selling to but we're still doing that same sell right totally so can you give us some tips on how to appeal to those buyers on those sell sheets yeah um so one thing you can do is is if you have something that's targeted a specific demographic that's something you could speak to uh if you have something that's targeting something that's trendy like shter plates and things like that store buyers are also super involved with like what is hot right now because they want to stock those things so they'll you know if shakery plates and and cheeseboards are hot right now they will know that so if you can speak to that and kind of nudge them in that direction like hey look we have something that's really popular right now or sourdough is really big right now you know if you have something like sourdough component or you're utilizing fermentation that can be something you kind of nudge them in direction of like hey this is this is trendy right now or in the same way as you would tell a consumer like hey this is why I'm so unique talking to the the buyer about this is why you don't have anything else like me on the Shelf here are the unique facets you know you probably don't have anything else that's you know a seasoning that's as Smoky as this seasoning like the smokiness of this seasoning is at least worth you giving a try because this is really going to be something that people are looking for right now Smoky flavors are really popular right now and there's not a good option in in the dry seasoning section people have to go to you know Liquid Smoke and things like that but here I've got something different include me on the shelf and all of a sudden now people will be in your seasoning aisle when they wouldn't necessarily be if they're looking for something SM make the store look good make that store's category look good by being an attractive thing and like that maybe some other store the next door down the road doesn't have so that that's important and um here's an example example of of that you know if you were in a grocery store and this is the uh you know the area the bit the in store bake area and stuff and there's a product and they just have a little label on here and it's a big clamshell and all the food looks basically the same it's some kind of pastry with a bunch of white icing on it clam shell that people aren't aware is just is that plastic enclosure yeah sure there just a sticker on here that holds a chut and tamper resistant and we said well you know you don't it's not giving something different so we said yeah it's not making the store look particularly good this is this is in the in store bake section so it's like the the store is kind of putting its you know trying to present it like it's Unique to that store like you know it's something that they're they're putting out there and it's really not looking like anything special with just in a plain clam sh a little sticker on there so we said let's really make this let's answer the questions that consumers have and really make this something special let's you know it's still going to be in the clam shells they don't want to change that they'd have to change their equipment and everything but let's get a cardboard sleeve on there so we have some more space to communicate about the product a window on the sleeve so you can still see it doesn't block it too what is the main stumbling block that people have with picking up a pastry because all the pastries they had like at least a dozen different kinds of pastries and they basically all look the same top down you know they look like you've got a white glazed icing and then you have a product name so the question is what's in it what does it look like what what am I actually going to experience so including the crosssection cut of the Pastry as an image on there to give people an idea of like look this is the amount of filling this is kind of the robustness of the filling here the the lemon or the raspberry or things like that uh as well as giving it a little bit more of a creative name a little bit something more interesting like wild wildly okay what does that was that Paul yeah and it says wildly beon Danish instead of just saying Aon Danish or cheese danish to give it a little bit of more of a fun Twist little flare like that really help enhance it make it more fun and indulgent and giv the brand some personality as well right exactly yeah which is something they were really lacking before that's also why we completely converted the logo into that identity into to something that was you know he named it after himself Jay Skinner and if you're going to name it after yourself give it a little personality you know make it look more like it's his actual signature yeah who the hell is Jay Skinner right right so let's give him let's give him a voice yeah and if you're going to present yourself as a baker then get some personality in here so I can believe in you as the baker of these products I love it we only have about five minutes left guys and so with the last couple minutes could you show us uh any other designs that you think have specific story behind them that would be valuable to our aspiring food and beverage cpg product launchers okay um you want to do sandwich things that's a pretty fun one all right this will be an example of when you do successful positioning and products are positioned right and the rest of it it can be very successful this was a product they they they had well this slide will tow it yeah eano bakeries was the largest B in the world but up in Canada they had a product called Burger first it's just a thin so Burger first was which was like it was doing okay bimbo is mostly in the US and it's you would know it mostly by its brand names not by bimbo they have one brand that's called bimbo but they also own you know half the bread Isle they're Arnold they're strowman they're Thomas's English muffins they're they're huge in the bread ey but everything is branded something else yeah wow timan shout out to Local Company timans at least they they were local but owned by bimo Bakeries USA located out in yeah out in ham and then out in Texas as well and then ultimately owned by a company in Mexico City oh yeah so they they eat up all of the all the little guys but this was one of their one of their products um under their brand Arnold and it was only in Canada it was called Burger first and it was doing middling so they came to us and said hey we want to launch this in the US but it's not doing great in Canada can you help us fix it can you make it help us make it something that's really going to be successful and we work with a brand manager kind of brainstormed together and um she liked our creativity we said let's give it a healthy positioning uh call it sandwich thins cu the whole point of the of it is it's a very very thin like bread substitute like bun substitute basically I'm sure you've probably seen these products all over the place now well these were the first ones that ever came out so they started basically a new category so that's with the package basically looked hardly any advertising they didn't put any advertising behind it was just the packaging yeah it's rare that we can and they had a little bit of like opposition lines on you know some point of sale so this was the main thing the positioning we created a new shape to help you change yours we're not saying this is a diet food we're not saying but you know we Chang the shape to help you out it's really good guys that's a really clever and and it was hugely successful it was it it really hit the market of what people were looking for it was not you know it wasn't body shaming it wasn't like saying like you need to cut down on your calories or anything like that it was just yeah just a subtle message of hey you know if you're looking to you can still have your burger you still have your sandwich that's another thing instead of positioning it for burgers which are a little bit more of an unhealthy thing we moved to sandwiches the appetite appeal we showed was a turkey sandwich with some lettuce and tomato more healthy direction so for people certain people wanted a burger on it like goes against the positioning right they did with the burger but then I said let's let's at least do one variety with the turkey sandwich you know get be a little more healthy and and that then they switched everything got didn't put burgers on any of it switched all the healthy sandwiches but it went to 89 million in the very first year just on the East Coast after that they rolled it out to the West Coast same product just roll up the west coast and went up to 250 million yeah and then inspired yeah there's you know now that now thin buns are a whole category that then this was the first you know Venture company makes a thin bun of some kind yeah that's a fantastic success story and a great one to end on I could chat with you guys all day this scratch the surface I got 50 slides here well so for somebody that wants to get in touch with you and get the rest of the 50 slide presentation Paul how do they get in touch with you guys yeah so our website is a great place to go as kind of a first stop depo.com uh d p RS I I know we're a little bit of a complicated name.com yeah and and uh and from there you can you can email Paul directly paulo.com you email me James deo.com uh and you can call us directly and we pride ourselves on we're the ones who answer the phone we're the one who respond to the email we're your first point of contact you know will'll do the designs with artists and and thing you know copywriters and things like that behind the scenes but we want to be involved in every one of our projects we don't want to pass you off to some account manager or something like that so you reach out to us and you get us directly and we will the on be the ones to reach back out to you we will have those conversations we'll with you through the whole product we don't we don't we don't pass people off to an account manager we used to do that yeah we don't do that anymore someone directly yeah someone that represents almost 300 different marketing agencies I can say with certainty that that owner operator account management model makes a massive difference in customer satisfaction and ultimately the the output so that's fantastic guys well that phone number there is my actual personal my desk phone so but if you call it and just leave a message because I could be on the phone with another we do a lot of stuff on screen and if you call it you'll talk to both of us cuz our our desks actually are a buted up right against each other and the phone sits right in the middle so someone calls us we hit speaker and we're both talking to them so you always get both of us two for one deal screen sharing and I can speak from first person experience that's how you guys operate well thanks so much guys we're excited that you came and and and gave us all a primer and thanks so much we'll talk to you we'll see you soon on the next episode of The Niche marketing [Applause] [Music] podcast