The Right Label is Articulating and Delivers a Simple Brand Promise

Our staff chipped in on this quick read regarding a Simple Brand Promise. Read on …

Articulating and delivering a simple brand promise can be difficult when you are trying to establish your company. You want to feed a need and satisfy a desire at the same time. This is something most customers are looking for when they make a purchase. 

Keep Focused

As companies and organizations grow, brand promises may become diluted and distract from the original idea. Not only is this dangerous territory, but it tends to confuse your customers. It results in lost profit and decreased visibility. 

In many cases, these problems arise because the business is trying to capture a wide range of markets instead of concentrating on their core audience. Always keep your main products in mind in order to stay focused on your promise to deliver quality. Whether you create craft beers and hard ciders or wines and juices, look at your labels closely to make sure they carry the right message to your customers. Hiring specialists for the job can help you hit ground running. 

Simple, Effective Labels 

An effective brand stewardship delivers your message while presenting it to your customers is an entertaining format. Keep it simple and direct, this will prevent your ideas from getting lost in busy labeling. Professional designs can embellish everything from your cans to the tap handles. They will get your message in front of customers in a variety of locations. 

The easiest way to meet your brand promise is to make the message clear with direct labeling on your website and in your marketing tools. Everything from your swag and sign to the napkins and placemats should work together to identify your product and your message. This identifies you the minute they see your logo.  Contact us to discuss how to keep your message from wandering and deliver on your promises.

Paying Attention to Packaging Can Drive Up Your Sales

Hey!  Wake up.  Sandy Gates wants you to pay attention to your package design.  Read on.

Have you ever perused the beer aisle when BAM a six pack of a beer you are unfamiliar with grabs your attention? You may know nothing about the brewery, the taste, or if you will actually enjoy the beer at all. But the packaging is just so interesting and has lots of eye candy. Loads of graphics, a funny little story about the owners of the brewery, and the labels on the bottles have a different, famous person on each one. Not only are the people famous, each photo has a theme. One bottle has a politician riding a bull, another bottle has an actress watching a silent movie. Before you know it, the six pack is in your cart, and you are heading for the check-out line.

We are a visually stimulated society which is an important factor in your packaging. From a tap handle to a website, your packaging content can drive sales forward or keep sales flat. And you may be the most talented craft brew master of the tastiest beer in the area but if don’t have an eye for packaging, it may be time to bring in the professionals.

The MAD House is a group who knows branding and marketing, loves to work WITH our clients, and at the same time have fun doing our job. Affordability is of course important to us, but a unique packaging design, along with our well-known reputation can make your new brew come full circle. When you walk through the doors at The MAD House or make the call to one of our representatives, you can be assured we will service your packaging needs and more. Please contact us and let’s discuss your needs.

Three Key Aspects of Unique and Purposeful Packaging Design

This week, MAD Contributor-Freak David Caissie gets wrapped up in some package design ideas.

Fiction: Most consumers make very informed choices during a shopping trip, having studied competitors and analyzed the benefits of each product very carefully. They thoroughly weigh the pros and cons of each brand and make the best choice suited to their individual needs.

Fact: Life is insanely busy for the average consumer! Most have stressful jobs, families, kids activities, social engagements, and plenty more on their plate literally every single day. There is simply no time to read labels in depth, analyze facts and figures, and make a fully informed decision on every product you buy. Studies prove that people actually do very little of this when they go shopping and usually make purchases based on things like color, style, and instinct more than anything else.

Properly understanding this level of consumer purchase behavior in itself is key to creating unique and purposeful packaging. Below you will find three more key aspects of this concept that contributes to overall better branding.

1. Keep It Simple – We’re leaving off the last word to this classic marketing adage to not offend anyone out there with potentially thin skin. Simple design normally wins out over cluttered packaging and flashy symbols, colors, and other marketing jargon. Many package designers make the mistake of thinking they need something flashy to catch someone’s attention, but in reality its simplicity that customers desire most. People get yelled at often enough at work and even at home for the most part. They don’t need their products to be doing the same thing.
2. Create Differentiation – It’s easy to confuse simplicity with conformity. There are simple ways of creating differentiation that don’t offend anyone and don’t come off as loud or confrontational. The use of cusps here is an excellent example. Cusps are clearly defined, sharp images around brand logos and other package shapes that tend to stick out in a customer’s mind. They are clear separators that people tend to remember as opposed to rounded, smoother images that eye tracking studies have shown people to merely gloss over without any sustained recognition.
3. Emotional Attachment – Unique packaging creates an emotional attachment. It has something iconic or memorable in its design. There may be an image of a person with a particularly engaging smile or direct eye contact. The truth is that people gravitate toward the product they see as more of a reflection of their personality. Use this element in your package design effectively to create a unique bond with them.

“The Mad House” helps to build brand image and unique packaging design with a wide variety of clients. We value your business and offer a unique blend of refreshing creativity, decadent design, affordable pricing, and elite customer service. Please contact us today for more information.

Knock Their Socks Off With Your Packaging

by MAD Contributor-Freak Sylvia Cochran

You do not have a lot of time to turn shoppers into buyers. Even if you have the greatest craft brew on tap, you will join the 85 percent of annually failing products if your packaging does not deliver a Siren’s song that proves irresistible. Much is said about providing consumer education at the point of purchase to show product advantages.

Are You Selling Diapers or Beer?

Does it work? Sure, if you are selling diapers. New first-time moms are notorious for agonizing over decisions involving diapers, baby shampoos and teething rings. Craft beer buyers, on the other hand, are an adventurous lot. They want to be wooed, not schooled. They are looking for the adventure of a taste and a taste bud tickling voyage into new experiences. This is where your packaging needs to promise to take them.

Intuition Ale Works, Jacksonville, FL Easy on the Eyes Session IPA can design – Derrit Derouen, The MAD House photo: Intuition Ale Works

Delivering on the Difference

So, what sets you apart from the other brand on the shelf?

• Relevance. Your product appeals to a certain demographic. Do not try to be Paul, and be all things to all men. Rather, embrace your targeted demographic; coddle it. Masculine colors appeal to … well, you get the picture. But be relevant in other ways, too. For example, eco-friendly containers are a huge selling point. So go ahead, if give your customer something to feel good about.
• Innovation. Mind you, innovation is not just that you use a better ingredient. Rather, it is the mindset of your company. When your customer buys your product, she or he is reaching out for that innovative entrepreneurial spirit that allows the buyer to share in your success. Of course, this only works when your packaging delivers the invitation.
• Trendy. Tapping into what is hot and avoiding what is not is a major factor for success. A couple of decades ago, when the green algae craze hit every store shelf in a variety of forms, anything having to do with the fad could not fail. Today, you probably would not be able to give the stuff away. Does your packaging tie into today’s trends and avoid yesteryear’s fiascos?

If all this is making your head spin, just contact us at the MAD House. Packaging? We got that!

Top 3 Branding Mistakes You Are Probably Making Right Now

– MAD ContributorFreak Sylvia Cochran

Branding is the art and science of creating a corporate or product image that elicits a semi-Pavlovian response in the consumer. The shopper sees your brand among competing products, drools slightly,  and becomes a buyer. Ask any entrepreneur about the importance of brand building, and you are likely to receive enthusiastic agreement. That said, there are three branding mistakes that even the most well intentioned business owners sometimes fall into. Are you one of them?

1. Forgetting the Package Appeal of the Brand

Although your brand is largely represented by  the logo displayed on your craft beer bottle, for example, it is far more than just a one-dimensional image. It is also the artwork that hints at the quality of the content, the website address that connects to a completely different world of marketing messages, and the small Facebook icon that encourages consumer interaction with your brand on social media.

2. Focusing on a Select Consumer Group Only

Advertising your brand to a targeted demographic is good and well, but when you narrow down your audience to such an extent that you exclude the majority of consumers, your brand will not receive national attention (if that is your intention). Sure, you may build a dedicated following of a niche, but when these consumers age out of your demographic profile, you may not be able to sustain the brand appeal even there.

3. Failing to Put Together a Strategy

There is more to branding than ordering a logo design and commissioning graphics that become labels. You need to have a strategy to position your brand advantageously in the market. A few ways (and there are many) to achieve this feat:

• Seek out a certain type of spokesperson (perhaps a celebrity)

• Invest in cohesive point of purchase displays and other in-store marketing pieces that give your product a preferred shelving setup

• Find a way to create an emotional attachment to the brand that then translates to the products that carry it.

If all this talk about branding has you wondering what you can do to step things up, contact us for more information on the process. Our experts look forward to partnering with your business and helping its brand succeed.

Cheers!