With pressure on marketing budgets and the increased presence of home brands, now is an important time to shift your packaging communication focus to brand values over product attributes.
With increasing financial pressure on consumers as well, now is the time to measure your brand voice and assess if the message is reaching your consumers - loud and clear.
Some revealing questions to ask are:
Is my brand different enough to justify the price difference?
Is it a product that customers could replace with another brand?
Does my brand communicate something more than just a simple product idea?
Does my brand build a connection with consumers in order to drive loyalty and trust in a transitional market?
We ask these questions as these are the subconscious questions consumers try to answer everyday when they evaluate their choices. This is due to them having less money in their pockets and an increased focus on saving.
At Passport, we look at the current climate as a unique opportunity to strengthen a brand’s voice. Not only are consumers’ needs shifting, brands should also be looking for their packaging to achieve more on shelf, as they try to maximise their reduced marketing spend and stand out in a crowded market.
To overcome these factors we have enhanced our process to better maximise our creative and strategic support to clients in order to unlock the brand message and promote the product story through more engaging brand design.
Passport recently applied this process to a new brand that Nestlé launched into the nutritious snacks category – Uncle Tobys Fruit Fix. The challenge was to combat the pre-conceived expectations of the category players. A simple message would bring a refreshing sense of credibility to snacking in order to build trust with mums.
This was a project that made us challenge our own process as we tried to break the rules and upset the category language. Using an insights led creative strategy not only helped map out new territories to explore, but it also helped align key stakeholders early on, which paved the way for fresh thinking to enter the conversation.
Following this up with a consistent brand message, from packaging through to point of purchase, which continually spoke to the innocence, authenticity and core of the brand. Graphic executions then followed this thinking, like under-designed elements, a muted colour palette and printing on natural card with uncoated finishes, which all helped bring truth to the brand story.
As we move into a new era of marketing we’ve challenged our own process and strategies as we push to drive relevance in a transitional market. We encourage brand managers and marketers to approach projects differently and to turn up the volume of their brand’s relevance to consumers.
