Branding Archives : Page 14 of 14 : Persona Design

Surviving & Thriving: Innovating Through Recession to Success

February 21, 2011/0 Comments/in Award Winners, Award Winning, Branding, Entrepreneur, EProducts, Innovation, Marketing, Packaging, Packaging Design, Publishing, Winning Exhibits /by Lorraine Carter

Innovation, that oh-so-elusive yet desirable trait touted as the engine for economic growth by our hackneyed politicians, is actually the life blood of any business but never more so then in our current economic market.

Fresher, smarter thinking is critical in business for ongoing growth and prosperity. Product and service development is a constant, iterative process to respond to competition and market demands.

New products, methods and ideas are about constant change which for some can be uncomfortable and stressful while for others it’s the essential variety on which they thrive.

Take the humble egg, largely overlooked and seen as a commodity purchase with generally poor packaging, weak brands and negligible consumer recognition. Clonarn Clover, a small Irish family artisan egg producer has launched a new brand, O’Egg, to market with white eggs in a pink box ! They are the only artisan free range producer of white eggs in Ireland, said to be far superior for lightness in baking, and sold at a higher price to the common brown egg.

The O’Egg white eggs are packaged in an unlikely bright pink box, ensuring on shelf impact, targeted at a female consumer. Also the O’Egg brand is supporting “Action Breast Cancer”, with the logo for same prominently displayed on pack which also resonates with their target market. Product, brand, packaging and marketing inventiveness on a modest budget to shake up a sector which has seen very little ingenuity in a quite a while.

In this period of economic fluctuation, armed with the immeasurable online resources at our finger tips, we are actually presented with multiple opportunities unlike any generation before.

A great online example is EBookFling, a startup that creates a virtual e-book swap, facilitating lending of e-books between consumers using lending features enabled by Kindle and Barnes & Noble Nook.

Borrowers upload titles of what they own and can swop with anybody signed up to the service for a temporary swop enabling them to “try before they buy”. Readers get exposure to try new authors without the risk of up front expense and the author gets a type of exposure not previously available. It’s a win:win with a service facilitating more fluid transactions between buyer and seller.

Some might say our economy is in the toilet but Poo-Pourri is a fantastic example of entrepreneurship and product innovation. In a little over three years this start up business has grown to a €3 million enterprise. Poo-Pourri is made from a secret mix of essential oils sprayed into the toilet bowl and used to mask the smell in the bathroom before the deed is done, rather then after, like traditional deodorisers. Its far more effective and eco friendly ! Today the range consists of more then 60 products successfully selling in five countries.

It is essential to become a fast discoverer with low cost, swift experimentation, prototyping and piloting, all of which leads to new insights and opportunities. Successful innovation (product or service) requires key ingredients some of which include:

• Ideas which solve important problems for your customer whose needs you must understand intimately

• An ability to get to market quickly before the market changes or your customer needs shift

• A fully integrated branding, design and marketing strategy focussed on your target markets needs

• Knowledge of barriers, adoption cycles and inertia within your target market

• Adequate resources and funding

Start with the end in mind. If your solution solves a problem that real customers have, your chances of success are increased. If your innovation is easily adopted by your target customers, based on a thorough understanding of their needs, then you have a much greater chance of success.

Country Crest is another Irish food manufacturer turning the highly competitive ready meal market on its head with innovative packaging and added pack functionality to meet their customers needs with its From the Orient range. A “collectibles” range of complete meal solutions in a NY style deli box, which is very different and distinctive on shelf compared to its competitors (all in trays and carton sleeves), the food is a “grab and go” solution which can be heated in 3 minutes and eaten from the box.

When you produce something really successful you can’t afford to slide into complacency. Your competitors are aggressively assessing the market looking for the next big thing or how they can topple you or take a chunk of your market share. Even when you’re on the crest of the wave your business must have a proactive strategy to relentless innovate, develop and search for new opportunities to stay ahead.

Most importantly though you have to get noticed to sell your product or service, capture your target markets imagination and create excitement through powerful branding and great design.

Do you have a great new innovation ready to bring to market ?

Is there an area of your business or market, tired and overlooked, crying out to be reinvigorated and transformed?

Drop us a line or give us a call.

We’d love to help you make your brand the next big success story.

T: +353 1 8322724

E: [email protected]

Top 10 Tips To Get or Keep Your Brand On Track

January 24, 2011/0 Comments/in Branding, Customer Engagement, Customer Service, Graphic Design, Marketing, Online Marketing, Packaging, Social Media /by Lorraine Carter

1. Understand and know everything you can about your ideal customer. What makes them tick. What they love and what they hate. Have a bulls eye focus to meet their needs. Then tailor your brand to be irresistibly desirable to them. To be their number one product or service of choice.

2. Is your brand distinctive, different and memorable ? Does it really stand out from the crowd or is it just another “me too” blending into the morass of mediocrity ? Does your brand have meaningful individuality with the same values that stand for something important to your target customer ? Stand out within your market and align your brand values to your customer values if you want to get their attention and sustain it.

3. Have you reviewed your brand strategy, or action plan to put your brand to work ? This is your brand communications system that provides structure and guidance for all points of contact within your business, both internally and externally with your customers. It needs to be monitored, measured for effectiveness and regularly updated to meet the changing needs of your market.

4. Do you have a brand social media strategy to directly communicate with and exchange opinions and ideas with your customers. Develop your online marketing strategy to communicate with your customers in the channels in which they predominantly use. Deploy your tactics consistently. Your brand’s customers are talking about you even you aren’t participating. Be actively part of the conversation. Influence discussions, give your customers reasons to return to you.

5. Learn from your customers feedback, opinions and preferences and then innovate your brand and develop your new product offerings to meet their changing needs. Drive your NPD creatively to meet their preferences, pleasantly surprise them, keep your offering fresh and relevant if you want loyal customers and raving brand advocates.

6. Be prepared to engaged your brand with your customers in multiple channels both on and offline. Mass marketing is largely a thing of the past. Your brand needs to fluidly and congruently communicate with its market at a much more focussed and personal level, almost one-to-one at times, using parallel tactics on and offline (through traditional and new media) where appropriate.

7. Is your brand identity design fresh and “up-to-date” pertinent to your brands market ? Does it have longevity and reflect your current brand story ? Make sure it looks current and contemporary wherever it sits on the scale of appropriateness and relevance to its industry category and target customer.

8. Keep your brand designs looking fresh and relevant be they product or service. Is your brand collateral moving with the times or, better still, a leading innovator in your brand category. Reappraise all your brand design materials critically and objectively e.g. web site, Facebook page, LinkedIn presence, ezines and newsletters, packaging design, brochures, leaflets, vehicle livery, exhibition stands, branded power point presentations, movies, video and showreels. Do they reflect your brand story and deliver both on the aesthetics of your brand design and in their functional effectiveness ? Are they delivering perceived value ?

9. Are your customer facing staff enhancing the impression of your brand ? Are they behaving and communicating in a way that consistently supports and amplifies your customer brand experience and brand personality ? They are your brand ambassadors and how they dress, talk and present themselves in person or on the phone has a significant impact (positively or negatively) on your brand. Choose the right people carefully and support them with regular training and incentivize them to enrich your brand promise.

10. Never overlook, under resource or under estimate the importance of your brand customer service. Your customer service experience can make or break your brand. Todays customers are highly mobile and sophisticated.They can and do very quickly talk publicly about your brand and their personal experience with it. Ensure you have an outstanding brand customer service strategy for meeting your customers needs at all times.

These brand tips are by no means exhaustive so if you have anything you’d like to add or feel deserves inclusion please don’t hesitate to come back to us. We’d love to hear your thoughts and comments.

All the very best in growing your brands into even more profitable and thriving power houses in the year ahead.

Great Ideas – Solving Problems & Building Economic Prosperity

October 5, 2010/0 Comments/in Advertising, Branding, Graphic Design, Publishing, Wayfinding Systems /by Lorraine Carter

I had the good fortune to attend Offset 2010, the annual conference for the creative industry, in Dublin this weekend and suffice to say it exceeded expectations.

The back-to-back programming over the three days included a rich and varied choice of very high calibre speakers, many of which are international icons in their chosen fields of expertise. As an event intended to excite, inspire and challenge those of us who work in this industry, it definitely achieved that on a variety of levels.

The three speakers who most impacted on me included Scott Dadich – Creative Director Wired Magazine and Executive Director Digital Magazine Development Condé Nast, George Lois – an Advertising Executive and Designer widely regarded as being one of the greatest innovators in advertising and Lance Wyman – a inspiring Designer who is credited with helping define the field of graphic design, and is a specialist in branding and wayfinding systems.

A brief bio on each of these individuals and their achievements, will give you some insight into why it was such a privilege and inspiration to hear them speak.

Scott Dadich oversees the design, photography and production for Wired Magazine coupled with being the lead executive responsible for the building of digital editions of Condé Nast titles for electronic reading devices like iPad. A global publishing entity, the Condé Nast stable of publications includes household brand names such as Vogue, GQ, Vanity Fair, Epicurious, Condé Nast Traveller, Reddit and The New Yorker to name a few.

It was intriguing to hear how he’d worked with the creative team in Wired Magazine to adapt the publication for electronic delivery, all of which was initiated long before iPad came to market. Wired’s reader app for iPad, when introduced in May 2010, became app of the week within days of its release and was downloaded approximately 100,000 times !

Dadich is among the foremost speakers on contemporary publishing and technology and one of the most dynamic creative directors in the industry. He’s the only magazine professional to have won both the National Magazine Award (NMA) for Design and the Society of Publication Designers (SPD) Magazine of the Year award three consecutive years in a row: 2008, 2009 and 2010. He’s also received more than 100 other national design and editorial awards, including 50 gold and silver design and photography medals from the SPD.

George Lois with a career spanning five decades, is widely regarded as a pioneer, innovator and advertising genius, the superman of Madison Avenue, to quote New York Magazine ! A larger then life character and legendary profanity spewing ad man (which he more then lived up to on Saturday) George Lois has a visceral instinct for communication, with messages that are delivered in a nano second. The atmosphere tangibly sizzled with the passion of his delivery at 18:09 on Saturday evening. Its fair to say we were riveted to our seats and the hour past far too quickly.

He put MTV on the map with “I want my MTV” campaign, brought the Tommy Hilfiger brand to the international stage and renamed/relaunched Stouffer’s frozen foods as Lean Cuisine. He’s best known though for his near 100 covers designed for Esquire Magazine which are regarded among the most memorable propaganda imagery in any medium and certainly the most provocative in the history of the magazine industry. He’s also author of nine best selling books.

Describing himself as the “crossover guy” who’s successfully leveraged as much from graphic design as he has from guerilla advertising tactics, even now he’s still an undiminished tour-de-force. In his 79th year and an unconstrained figure of roaring fire and sharp humour, it’s difficult to imagine what it really would have been like to work full time with such ferocious energy when he was at the height of his career.

Lance Wyman is another man with an incredibly distinguished career spanning over four decades and a winner of countless awards too. He’s a prolific graphic designer best known for his work in brand design, packaging and wayfinding systems. Wyman is most noted for his design of the 1968 identity, entire stadia and communications collateral for the Mexico Olympics, which although designed to be of the moment (groovy minidresses included), remains one of the most enduring icons of 20th century graphic design.

Lance Wymans branding and wayfinding systems also includes work for Washington DC Metro, the Royal Saudi Airport in Jeddah, the LG Arts Center in Seoul, the American Museum of Natural History in New York and pedestrian skywalks in the cities of Calgary and Edmonton in Canada. Time magazine listed his work for the Minnesota Zoo as one of the ten best designs of 1981.

A warm approachable man, he was unassuming and gently humorous as he shared insights into his work and some of his most remarkable projects with us. Lance Wymans many awards read like a roll call in design “Oscars”, including from the American Institute of Graphic Arts, Society for Environmental Graphic Design, Art Directors Club of New York and the Milan Triennial. His work has also been published in the New York Times and plethora of magazines including Life, Time, The Architectural Forum, Progressive Architecture, Graphics, Print, ID and Communication Art to name a few.

So having listened with rapt attention to each of these iconic individuals speak, generously sharing their insights, experiences and opinions, what did I take from them individually and collectively ?

Each man has powerful individualism, both in their characters and work ethic, which is clearly demonstrated in the results each has achieved. None would settle for mediocrity or plagiarism or “group grope” as George Lois so aptly put it.

To have a future you must have a healthy economy and to have a healthy economy you must have great ideas and imagination, a message perhaps more potent in our current climate then ever before.

Exceptional graphic design is the transformation of an idea into an amazingly big message, which communicates in a nano second to its target market. To quote George Lois, and I did mention his language was consistently colourful, “If you don’t get it immediately, its a piece of s–t !” It must have “culture busting creativity”.

Professional designers across all their different disciplines are innate problem solvers, contributing their communication skills, knowledge and expertise to help make money, given the freedom to do and the will to make it happen.

Visual and verbal expression are indivisible and design that really works must:

• catch the eyes

• capture the mind

• warm the heart

• have lasting impact

Without doubt, real creativity can solve virtually any problem and each man, in telling his story, mentioned challenges which may have floored less creative, persistent or resilient individuals.

Great design can be an engine metabolizer for economic prosperity, driven by laser sharp ideas which support new developments and change, resulting in tangible benefits both now and into the future for the greater good.

Own Label Powers Ahead – Growing Brands & Engaging Consumers

September 27, 2010/0 Comments/in Branding, Marketing, Own Label, Packaging, Private Label /by Lorraine Carter

The battle for the supermarket floor between “private label brands” and “branded goods” has never been more competitive then in recent years. Economic pressures have encouraged consumers, who were previously much more loyal to branded goods, to discover the quality of, and buy, private label brands because they’re invariably cheaper.

Private/Own Label << versus >> Branded Products

Own label brands have become a lot more sophisticated, moving beyond the early ears of perceived poorer quality “me too” copy cats, thinly disguised from their branded counterparts, to stand alone quality brands in their own right. Indeed the private label sector is now distinguished by sub-brand segmentation with a variety of offerings such as value, mid-tier, premium, organic, healthy, speciality, allergenic, vegetarian and child friendly etc.

Private Label or Own Label in Ireland still holds a smaller relative market share of approximately 20% then the more mature UK market of over 40%, but it is growing rapidly. With profit margins up to 25% higher and prices between 10-18% lower, private label proliferation is a very strong economic motivator for retail groups. Amongst other things it is a very compelling vehicle to grow retailer market share through consumer loyalty to their “brand”.

Private label brands are very much in the lime light in the UK at present with both Asda and Sainsbury’s relaunching or launching new own label brand ranges motivated by the need to increase their market share. Asda’s, the UK’s second largest supermarket group owned by Wal-Mart, has relaunched it’s entire range of more than 3,500 own label food products and invested over £100m in a drive to improve product quality without impacting on prices. The Asda own brand ranges, “Smart Price”, “Chosen by You” and “Extra Special”, account for close to 50% of group sales with 85% of that accounted for by the mid-tier range “Chosen By You”.

From a branding perspective the Asda own label “Chosen By You” range, while price positioned as a mid tier offering, has sought to really connect with the hearts and minds of their consumers. No other retailer to date has visibly endeavoured to so actively seek both the counsel and consent of the very people who buy and eat their products.

http://www.asdachosenbyyou.com/

What better way to engender positive brand sentiment, trust and loyalty ? Their dedicated “Chosen By You” website is totally focussed on engaging with their customers at multiple levels in a very tangible way to really demonstrate they care about what their customers want, and most importantly, what they think.

What does this kind of private label brand challenge mean for “branded goods” ? Retailers have a significant impact on what brands get to shelf and stay on shelf. Shelf facings are a premium but ultimately it’s the decisions of consumers that decide whether brands survive and thrive or disappear.

Consumers buying decisions directly impact the bottom line. If a brand sells it stays on shelf. If consumers care about a brand it sells. Their choices are made at both rational and emotional levels.

Branding is about winning and keeping customers. It’s about influencing choice. The onus then lies with the brand custodians to really connect with their customers, build enduring relationships and really give them a compelling reason to try and continuing buying their brand.

What do you think ?

Winning Exhibit with ICOGRADA Galleria International !

September 21, 2010/0 Comments/in Branding, Graphic Design, Illustration, Packaging, Packaging Design, Professional Photography /by Lorraine Carter

The new Country Crest Recipes From the Orient meal range is a Winning Exhibit with ICOGRADA Galleria International, the world body for design founded in 1963.

Launched this month as part of the Superquinn 50th Anniversary Celebrations this delicious range is available nationally in all leading supermarkets and independent stores.

Read the Case Study here

The Critical Product Ingredient

June 21, 2010/0 Comments/in Branding, Graphic Design, Marketing, Packaging /by Lorraine Carter

Lorraine Carter, Persona Design, writes in Irish Packaging Magazine, about Brand Packaging Design – The Critical Product Ingredient. Dare to be different, distinctive and memorable or get lost in the crowd.

To read the full article published in Irish Packaging download here

What your packaging says about your brand

January 12, 2010/0 Comments/in Branding, Marketing, Packaging /by Lorraine Carter

Lorraine Carter, Persona Design, writes in Food Ireland Magazine about “What your packaging says about your brand” and how branding is one of the most significant contributors to a products ultimate success or failure.

To read the full article published in Food Ireland download here