Breaking down categories by brand perception is one of my passions. It doesn’t matter how big or small your brand is, this kind of analysis never fails to provide competitive insight. Recently, I had a chance to take a brand snapshot of a playing field in the domestic beer sector. In addition to the bench-emptying kerfuffle among hundreds of individual labels, it turns out that conflict also lies at the place in the market spectrum where “mass” and “craft” beer categories reach out to each other.

Another passion is baseball, and since the new season is here, I hope you’ll forgive me for structuring this post as a metaphor to America’s game.

Setting the Playing Field
For the record, the domestic beer market is controlled by a very small number of America’s breweries. About 93% of US beer production comes from just 56 breweries (that’s 2% of all breweries). The other 7% comes from the 2,360 companies considered craft breweries by the Brewers Association, the trade organization of craft brewers. (www.brewersassociation.org, April 2013.)

Domestic beer consumption dropped 1% in 2011, while the craft sector grew 13% in volume! Not surprisingly, the trend was maddening (and terrifying) to the two percenters. In 2012, there were about 200,000,000 barrels (BBL) of domestic beer sold in the US. You figure the dollars foregone.

The volume below which a brewery, including all its labels, is considered by the Brewers Association to be a craft brewer is 6 million BBL annually. If you’re looking to hit a grand slam (the next Bud Light?), this isn’t the sector to target. It’s appealing enough, however, that the majors have stroked a series of singles and doubles in its direction, any one of which could potentially exceed the craft barrel limit.

Batter Up for the Bigs
Gambling that there might be a large demand for something that tastes like a craft, the big labels are pushing what are often referred to as “faux craft” beers, like AB InBev’s Shock Top, and from Miller Coors, Third Shift as well as Blue Moon Belgian Wheat. Working the free agent market, they’ve also bought actual craft breweries like Widmer Brothers, Redhook, Goose Island and Leinenkugel. Finally, although this master brand naming approach removes them from the craft beer conversation, beers like AB InBev’s Budweiser Black Crown and MillerCoors Molson XXX are super premium extensions of flagships.

Faux Craft and Super Premium Packaging. Upscale, distinctive, and appealing.

The Brewers Association also takes the position that any label with more than 25% ownership by a major brewery is not a true craft beer. So AB InBev and MillerCoors can sell as much as they want, but they seem to have run up against a wall of perception regarding their craft legitimacy.

You’re Blind, Ump!
Hang on a gosh darned second. If it’s made like a craft and tastes like a craft, who says it isn’t a craft, barrel limits and ownership percentages be damned? That’s where an understanding of perception is involved. Managers who focus on numbers and fail to account for what ordinary people think about beer miss the boat.

It turns out that craft beer drinkers themselves care deeply about the distinction between mass-marketed beers and craft beers. They take pride in their ability to enjoy a wide range of tastes in limited production, often very local brews made with high quality hops, barley and other natural ingredients. In fact, and without the benefit of research that surely exists somewhere, I believe they control the public perception that this craft / non-craft construct is important. It seems to me that Americans accept the notion that, as with wineries, small makes better possible, while big means drinkable, reliable and reasonably priced.

The consultation that afforded me this sector snapshot was a review for market research firm Blueshift Research. A significant aspect was developing a POV, strictly from a brand perspective, on the infringement of faux crafts upon the traditional territory of Sam Adams brand labels. Sam is the most valuable craft in the sector (MVC?). The majors’ strategy must account first for him.

So let’s take a look at the brand identity issues involved.

Sam Adams, The King of Craft • 62 labels featured on web site (about 30 with formal Sam trade dress) • Brewed by The Boston Beer Co. • 3 million barrels (bbl) per year production • Respected among beer drinkers though some purists consider it “too big” • Founder and CEO Jim Koch is a fifth generation brewer

Scouting Report: Sam Adams’ Brand
Starting from scratch in the mid-1980’s, Sam Adams was the leader of the craft revival movement. Given its heritage in the craft brewing world, Sam’s is a pioneering brand identity, worthy of its historic New England namesake. It’s perceived as having integrity, courage and strength of character, in flavor as well as brand personality. Like the beers his great great grandfather and each successive male descendant in founder Jim Koch’s family brewed, it’s made with a craftsman’s touch. Sam Costs more than Bud, and an awfully lot of people buy it. Sam Adam’s brand identity seems well-matched to the craft beer sector.

Yet aspects of Sam’s identity resemble the national brands more than they do other crafts.

Its label hews to the principles of commercial graphic design, with consistent repetition of graphic icons, handsome and traditional typefaces, a helpful and attractive color palette, and more.

Craft Beer Branding. In contrast to Sam Adam’s more formal trade dress, many traditional crafts celebrate the uniqueness of their approach to brewing with highly expressive, sometimes even hand-drawn labels.

With a market cap over $2 Billion, the Boston Beer Co’s large scale (for a craft) affords it a more traditionally organized distribution system, including national coverage in multiple channels (liquor, supermarket, on tap, etc.)

It also provides a workable advertising budget (in 2010, about $30 million). It’s campaign effectively conveys Jim Koch’s obsession with taste and quality.

Sam gets the best of two worlds, the lucky boy! He’s found a sweet spot in the market that’s rooted in the craft sector, but delicately steps beyond it into the mainstream market without compromising its fundamentally “craft” identity.

On the Other Bench . . .
Threatening Sam’s prosperity, perhaps, is the emergence of faux crafts. What’s their brand identity? To true craft beer fans, the kind that care about the 6 million bbl size limitation, they’re not worthy. (See some reviews for Shock Top at beeradvocate.com.) But what about those on the rungs below, consumers who like a uniquely flavored, higher quality brew they can rely on for consistent satisfaction. How vulnerable is Sam in this area?

After all, real success for faux crafts depends on upgrading enough mainstream beer drinkers (of which there are tens of millions) to affect the bottom line, not stealing significant share from the smaller and more discerning craft sector. Early results are positive. In 2012, according to Nielsen (quoted here by food and beverage pundit Phil Lempert), the domestic super-premium segment generated sales of $2.1 Billion, with dollar growth of 29% year over year. That’s “just” a third less in dollar sales than the entire craft sector, which itself grew by 18% to $2.8 Billion.

I would argue that as long as the Boston Beer Co. plans to remain a true craft brewer, success for faux crafts is not a threat. The core markets are too different, as are the brand images. I think the bigger problem belongs to the makers of faux craft beers, which have to be perceived as superior to mainstream beers to earn price premiums. To communicate this, do they not have to reach out toward identity characteristics owned by the craft sector? Here’s a major source of their image problem. Authenticity is a critical brand element of most craft beers. Yet the majors do not even declare parenthood on their faux craft labels. A lot of people think that’s sneaky. And sneaky is the opposite of authentic.

Faux Craft Labels. These labels are craft-like, albeit slicker looking than is typical in the sector, suggesting distinct character and personality. Neither one declares its connection to the world's larges brewers.

Perceived Beer "Craftiness" vs. Sales Volumes in BBL (by label). There are hundreds (even thousands) of low volume but very crafty beers, dozens of low-to-moderate volume and non-crafty ones (the amorphous purple shape), and a few very large brands. The latter dominate mass market mind-share. Craftiness ratings are the author's. Volumes are approximated based on various published sources.

When Craftiness is plotted versus the size of the parent brewery, the market perception gap is even more apparent. As long as craft beer lovers prefer attributes like small and local, the majors will have difficulty luring them, no matter how craftily their beers are brewed.

Perceived Beer "Craftiness" vs. Parent Brewer Sales Volumes in BBL. The Perception Gap. (The size of each square represents sales volume by that specific label.)

Respecting Your Legacy

As a corollary, if The Boston Beer Co. is to remain true to it’s own brand, it won’t care about the success of faux crafts. An awakened taste in quality beers, and a continued migration upward toward “real” craft beers should be good for them and the craft sector as a whole. Also, the company is pursuing alternative beverage categories for now (hard tea and cider), a strategy that carries diversification value as well as the possibility of continued growth without compromising BBC’s craft brewery status.

The best news for crafts in general, at least those whose managers care more about quality than market domination, is that if they stick to their core identities, there appears to be plenty of room for continued growth, even in an economy that is still in recovery.

The Wrap
In EVERY category, brand identity analysis is a big league tool you can use to size up the competition. It’s not enough to know the current stats: sales, penetration, promotional spending. You have to establish a context for evaluating potential. I’ve written elsewhere about the fundamentals of brand identity (for example here and here), but the bottom line is that every brand has an essence that carries valuable genetic information about the strategies and tactics it can pursue to fulfill its destiny, as well as those it must avoid. If you understand the brands, you’re half-way home!

What are your thoughts on this line of thinking? If you’re in the brewing sector and have a take on the category, please chime in. And if you’re in another sector, do you see how these principles apply in your case too?

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A graphic designer named Ben Pieratt created a visual brand identity system for a non-existent entity he named Hessian, and he’s offering it for sale at $18,000. Wanted: one entrepreneur with an idea for “a restaurant, a startup, a clothing brand or more”, according to Ben’s website at hessian.tv. For that sum, you get the name, the URL, the Twitter and Tumbler accounts, designs for various logotypes, stationery, various app icons, Web site and app interfaces, and some tee shirts. You also get 30 hours of Mr. Pieratt’s time to complete the project.

Here are some of the elements of the system:

One of several logotype options from Ben Pieratt's system.

An app icon for Hessian.

A Tee Shirt Design

Letterhead and Business Card

Environmental Graphics suggesting a coffee shop, a bookstore, a clothing boutique?

Some in the design community were offended at this step toward the commoditization of their profession. But in his blog, Mr. Pieratt makes the point that as a designer, he instinctually understands brand models that may or may not exist, who their customers are, and how those brands should be positioned and launched. It’s an interesting point.

I think it took guts for Mr. Pieratt to step outside the box that defines brand design. Time will tell if his paradigm has value. But if you look at the big picture of brands and the branding process, his is a low-end solution more appropriate to managers who lack creativity and self-confidence than for those who have the vision and desire to engage in a genuine relationship between their products and their loyal customers.

What Mr. Pieratt has created is not a brand at all. It’s a set of symbols that, if he’s lucky, might be associated with a product and even come to embody it in customers’ minds.

He’s betting that, let’s say, a breakfast food manufacturer will see the possibility of positioning new Hessian Cereal as a vital part of a daily regimen worthy of “the Germanic warrior in all of us.”

The online publication Design Taxi very appropriately referred to Mr. Pieratt’s process as “Backward Branding.” (See also coverage on Wired.com and FastCoDesign.com)

This type of branding looks nothing like real branding, the kind that starts before the product even exists – when there is only an unmet need. Forward branding is hard stuff, much harder than blue sky, whatever looks good on paper imaginings. It’s not about what’s in your own mind, but rather finding a place in your customers’ minds: an opening, an invitation.

My partner and Creative Director, Lauren Gold, pointed out that there are successful brands, like Virgin, that do what Hessian does, routinely. Virgin took its existing brand along with the symbology that represents it, and applied it to new categories, moving from music, to airlines, to cola and beyond. And their “branded house” strategy is by no means unique.

I argued with her that this is different from dreaming up a new set of symbols that have no existing meaning in a market context and applying it to whichever category feels right for it. But I had to concede that Virgin was arbitrary and essentially meaningless at its birth, just like Hessian!

To visualize the challenge of backward branding, it helps to remember the difference between a product and a brand. This figure, reprinted from “Brand Leadership,” a very enlightening book on brands and branding by David Aaker and Erich Joachimsthaller, is useful.

A brand is a product imbued with higher order meanings and associations.

The brand includes the product, but imbues it with meaning in human terms. These higher order associations come from a shared process whose participants are you (with your brand manager hat on) and your customers.

A prefabricated design system like Mr. Pieratt’s can never encapsulate a brand identity. As a symbol, it’s just one element of the overall brand identity, the fullness of which emerges when you’ve generated sales and opened yourself up to consumer relationships. That’s when you’ll learn the true meaning of your product in peoples’ lives. When THIS occurs, you adjust course by it, rather than waiting for customers to adjust their attitudes to your vision.

So if like Virgin, Hessian is to thrive, it needs much more than an entrepreneur with $18,000 to invest. It needs a mission, a personality, a relationship with its customer base, a value proposition, consistent management, and so much more. And if that $18,000 is precious, it would be better to arbitrarily name the product on your own (“Cossack” will do)  and invest your money in other, more customer-relevant aspects of the branding process.

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At the end of the shopping day, it doesn’t matter what you think about your brand, it’s what your customers say that counts. How people interact with your product and what it means to them in their daily lives — that’s what determines your brand. Because brands aren’t born when you put your product on the market, but when these real-world, shared perceptions begin to emerge around it.

As all of us in the Food and Beverage business know, for every market leader there are dozens of competitors in most food & beverage categories. And it’s really not the quality nor even necessarily the price that differentiates them from their market leaders.

Challenger products, in addition to overcoming barriers related to economies of scale, capital investment, organizational development and more, must deal with the biggest obstacle of all, the brand. Every successful product, at some point, earns a loyal customer base that demonstrates continued growth potential. Only when this happens can the capital required to expand be obtained. And this, above any other consideration, is a branding achievement.

Unfortunately, many managers have learned hard lessons about capital preservation and allocation that simply prevent them from putting the horse before the cart. The brand is too intangible. We have to get distribution first, they say, and then we’ll worry about the brand.

Isn’t that a paradox? We don’t determine the brand, yet early stage success is a branding achievement? Brand managers have a very difficult job. Increasingly it’s about understanding and facilitating a conversation rather than controlling one.

People care deeply about what they put into their bodies. This doesn’t stop us from putting too much of the wrong stuff in there of course, but when we do introduce things to our esophagus, we like to know what to expect. If the marketing folks do their jobs and let worthy products thrive, we’ll crave that experience. We’ll demand it each and every time we crack open the package.

The key is getting out of the way and letting brands be what customers say they are.

You can learn a lot about how brands fail to recognize this by looking at classic examples. I’ve got two that involve big brand names, but that’s only because nobody remembers a small brand that had fatal defects. Size simply dictates a bigger trail.

The color of cola: Pepsi may have underestimated the importance of this product attribute in bringing this clear cola to market.

Crystal Pepsi was a “clear cola” introduced in 1992 and withdrawn in 1993. I’m sure there are various factors cited for it’s failure, but I don’t think I’m going too far out on a limb to use a term like “brand disconnect.” Cola, and especially Pepsi Cola, is dark brown! That’s the brand experience Pepsi fans want. Not Sprite that tastes like Cola!

In a similar case of brand derailment, Heinz introduced EZ Squirt ketchups in green, purple, orange, blue and so on. If enough kids pushed shopping carts this might have stood a chance. But Heinz should have honored Pepsi’s experience more deeply. Grown ups just think ketchup should be, well, red. Born 2000. Buried 2006.

Heinz might have had fans in the household, but probably not the ones who do the buying. Is purple ketchup really ketchup?

What essential features define your brand and make it important to people who vote with dollars? If product color is at the core of your brand’s identity, you would want to think seriously before messing with it. If you’re winning based on decent quality at an excellent price, you’d have to argue long and hard before shifting to a premium positioning. An abbreviated list of other attributes to weigh include country of origin, product form (is it ice or liquid water?), personality attributes, and social causes the brand supports. There are also many symbols closely associated with products: logotypes, packages, advertising messages.

You would no more mess with these than Haagen Dazs would toy with its perceived place of origin, Coke with its priceless package form, or Starbucks with its iconic siren (my bad).

No doubt Starbucks has considered changes to its logo very seriously. Its latest revision tries to lessen the importance of coffee to its brand perceptions. Many question the wisdom, or the long term value, of such a move.

As I said at the top, what your product means to people in their daily lives determines your brand. Large brands have no monopoly over positive associations in the minds of everyday people. And that’s why some small brands get a shot at the challenges of the growth phase, a period where manufacturing, sales and finance become as critical as brand in determining success.

But you have to invest in brand strategy and execution first. You have to understand what your fans consider the whole promise and serve it up relentlessly. For those who get this key differentiating strategy, the odds are shorter, as is the path to marketing nirvana.

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If you’re in the business of making or selling packaged food or beverage products, you’re keeping an eye on the emergence of online grocery shopping sites. I’d like to share some thoughts on the effect this channel is likely to have on the role of package design in the branding process.

Branding Packaged Goods Online. For now, packaging remains the strongest point of contact between consumers and CPGs, so manufacturers have naturally defaulted to using images of packaging to represent the products they sell electronically. But maybe we should take a closer look at that.

Every successful package is a symbol, indistinguishable from the product it represents. A hundred years ago, consumers became comfortable picking these convenient three-dimensional metaphors from the grocer’s shelf. Familiar colors, shapes, letterforms, illustrations and more assured them that the merchandise inside would be as expected.

Image © Goldforest2010. The Power of Symbols: You may not be able to read the names of any of these products, but chances are you know all the brands. That’s the power of packaging.

Today online, another abstraction occurs. A low-resolution, two-dimensional image of the 3D package is tasked with representing the product. “Real packages” are designed to achieve so much that these new “flat packages” can never do. Real packages in a competitive shelf set attract your eye at 15 to 20 feet. At body length, they help you differentiate key features. At arm’s length the good ones romance you and teach you about varieties.

What is shopping anyway? Much of the world defines the physical act of grocery shopping as the following collection of actions:

- Walking the aisle

- Navigating the category

- Evaluating competitive alternatives by price and perceived quality, and, with due respect for promotional offers

- Running the checkout gauntlet

Let’s not forget the cart, the bags, the transportation, the homecoming and storage.

Online grocery shopping changes pretty much everything except the storage. It’s growing at a rate exceeding 9% annually, according to a Supermarket News report on recently released market research from IBISWorld. Neilsen projects online CPG shopping growth at a clip of 25% year over year. Why should this surprise us? Click to shop eliminates many of the inconveniences of grocery shopping while still allowing us to browse by familiar categories and popular brands, compare nutritional and price information, apply coupons, and conduct a reasonable facsimile of what we traditionally consider our shopping experience. We can even schedule delivery at a convenient time (if we prefer that to local pickup). The groceries just, well, arrive.

Online retailers have created a number of mostly regional banners, each with its own uniquely branded shopping experience. Go visit a couple (and click your browser’s back arrow to return here):

www.peapod.com

www.shoprite.com (you’ll need to select a store and create an account to browse)

www.netgrocer.com

Did you notice how the product was displayed? Here’s a traditional aisle shown above an image of its online equivalent in the same category. As a consumer, which one looks more shopable to you? As a brand marketer, which one gives you the best chance to make your pitch? Your job online under these circumstances is pretty much limited to negotiating premium placement. But look at your package! It’s so small that  your logo is illegible until the customer enlarges the image. What are you really paying for?

Below are images of packages taken down from the online shelf. If you’re Annie Chun’s, are you proud of this presentation? If you’re shopping for instant rice, how readily can you judge which brand will best satisfy you?

Now put your brand marketer’s hat back on. Did you just spend a hundred thousand on a restage of your packaging? Because it’s clear that in the online environment, that’s pretty much wasted money.

Manufacturers who succeed in the online environment will evolve a new set of tools to prosper there. Traditional packaging will lose power as a communications tool. But that does not excuse us from our responsibilities as brand-marketers. Remember, the brand is not the package. The package is often part of the core or extended brand identities, but rarely is it the brand essence.

Online stores may not be a brand-building paradise, yet shoppers are using the channel and retailers are profiting. Alec Newcomb, Chief Strategy Officer for MyWebGrocer, a successful provider of white-labeled online storefronts for grocery chains nationwide, believes the natural market share for this growing channel is 15-20%. He bases this on actual performance in certain markets, including Europe. He thinks a lot about the brand implications for packaged goods. Which is why I called to get his impressions.

The Future. Alec says that “the opportunity for online brand-management is overlooked by all but a few manufacturers. P&G,” he says, “is one exception. They have a team that is dedicated to promulgating accurate, up to date packages that automatically update online through API’s [automatic software feeds].”

I suggested that this is a terrific solution to a digital asset management problem, but it doesn’t necessarily address the branding deficiencies of the online experience. Alec was ready for that. He sees opportunities for marketers to customize their package presentations online to specific retailers based on customer demographics and shopping imperatives. The Amazon customer seeks different benefits than the Walmart customer, for example, and bespoke 2-D package representations for each channel could emphasize different aspects of a brand’s value proposition.

You can extrapolate this line of thinking. Why shouldn’t brand and product messaging be based on individual purchase patterns derived through loyalty card programs or other data mining methods? As long as such tracking methods are legal and ethical, they will be used this way eventually.

The Death Knell? No, online grocery channels are not the death knell for package design. As long as there are physical storefronts, there will be a need for thoughtful and strategic packaging. But online, the long-term solution will inevitably move beyond the façade of pseudo packaging and incorporate channel-dependent strategies to invite, educate and reassure a growing breed of shopper. What an assignment that would be: designing a new online unit that recognizes the limitations of the LCD screen and connects products to consumers as meaningfully as packages on a shelf did 100 years ago.

Online shopping seems here to stay. As its market share increases, so will investment in relevant brand asset management strategies. Brands that fail to keep pace will be fine in the short term, but as long as consumers seek, or accept, meaningful relationships with real brands, our brands must evolve and learn to communicate at every shelf, including the ones made of 0’s and 1’s.

I’d love to hear other ideas on where we’re at and where we’re headed. Please share your thoughts!

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You’re ready for NASFT’s big show, aren’t you? Of course not, but then exhibitors of every shape and size are scrambling this week. This is after all, a once-a-year runway strut. And once the shouting is done, we all know that the difference between long-term success and failure is the brand.

So here’s a last-minute check list from a brand consultant’s perspective. A perfect score is 10.

2 points. Your booth tells your story so that a complete stranger will “get it” in the 5-10 seconds it takes him or her, blank stare and all, to pass. Your story is built around a phrase that uses words like richest tasting, perfect for, solves, outperforms, healthier, safer, most convenient. It’s your RTB: reason to buy. The exact words may not appear on your booth, but visuals and supporting information make your positioning 100% clear.

2 points. Your story relates directly to or is consistent with your brand’s essence. Whereas your brand’s story evolves, the brand itself is rooted and fixed. It’s why customers are loyal even as your product evolves to meet their needs. Your brand essence may be authenticity (a concept you own in your category), but your story relates to what consumers (or trade partners) perceive as a current need. This year, for one example, a lot of brands will be telling stories about convenience, nutrition and economy.

2 points plus bonus. Every element of your presentation, from your booth graphics to your elevator pitches, collateral materials, clothing, giveaways, and other details, is consistent in message. Take a bonus point if you manage to do that with variety and texture across the elements, illuminating multiple aspects of the message.

1 point. Because how you do business is critical to brand image, you’re open for business at 10:00 AM on Sunday morning. Pricing is firmed up, promotional plans set, shipping dates realistic, logistics organized. Don’t beat yourself up if you’re still doing the soft shoe. As long as you’ve already booked at least 4 points.

1 point. Marketing support has been planned for the coming year, and your program has value to the retailer. Couponing, coop dollars, social media promotion, public relations, trade discounts and brand advertising can, if strategically sound, give buyers the extra edge of confidence they need to commit.

1 point. Your game face is ready. You have clearly stated goals for the show and a plan how to achieve them. You’ve cut your hair and polished your shoes. Your smile is backed by confidence and determination. You’re a tiger! Caveat: too often game face is the exhibitor’s last hope, when it should be nothing more than a starting point.

Grade Yourself
9-10 points: Congratulations on the great show you’re about to experience!

7-8 points: Success is within your grasp

5-6 points: You’ll need an angel to take up your cause

Less than 5 points: Try to enjoy a few of the national monuments while the Fancy Food Show is still in the nation’s capitol.

These are harsh standards. There are always surprise winners at a show like this, and sometimes the exhibitor stumbles into success. But sweating the details is a superior strategy. If you’ve fallen short, it may be worthwhile to engage a brand consultant to help get you over the top the next time the opportunity rolls around.

See you in Washington!

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The holy grail of package design is interactivity. If your package makes shoppers stop, and, joy-of-joys, handle it for closer inspection, it’s a guaranteed moneymaker! I’ve looked critically at thousands of food and beverage packages and few of them break through the barriers to shoppers’ consciousness.  The ones that stand out aren’t just eye candy. Their designers have thought through some of the tough challenges to engagement.

Here are five relatively simple things you can do to boost the engagement power of your own packaging.

Visibility Sells. In the olden days, which means before you and I can remember, people routinely selected their foods, both dry and fresh, on the basis of visual inspection. One of the drawbacks of packaging was that it precluded this critical dimension of consumer interactivity. It gave rise to branding as a marketing science to reassure the customer on quality, appearance, and taste without the need for actual inspection.

The fish-shaped die cut and wave patterns in the window are not only engaging, but help convey the message that this manufacturer is not hiding anything from its customers.

In some categories, for example produce, pasta, grains, beverages and sauces, clear packaging has evolved that still permits us to admire our foods before we purchase. In others, we have become used to the opacity of the prevalent packaging forms. Yet now and then a marketer figures out how to differentiate from his or her competitors on this basis by changing the packaging structure to allow visual access.

Above is a terrific example of packaged seafood where not only can you see the end product, but it’s presented in an arresting and relevant context.

Transparent film in the shark's mouth area shows a jaw full of colorful fun! That's cute and engaging for kids of all ages.

Candy is often visible in its packaging; even so, this manufacturer has gone a step further by using the package as a demonstrator of sorts, to emphasize the fun and carefree nature of the candy experience.

By presenting Tostitos chips in a serving suggestion context, this clever package design invites visual engagement.

Finally, the Tostitos chip package manages to place the product in a visual context that is one step closer to actual consumption! This is simple but very exciting stuff and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts the sales impact has been positive.

QR Codes have gotten a lot of buzz over the last year, but in spite of their potential, it’s still hard to find really good examples of their use. These codes are cheap to create and place on packages, and ridiculously easy for consumers to access with a smart phone. The problem seems to be a lack of planning in giving shoppers a reason to bother with them. Hint: it’s about overlaying your needs as a marketer with value you can provide customers.

(Need a QR Code reader? Download one quickly from the iTunes store that works for iPhones and iPod Touch. Here’s one that lets you specify your phone and gives you a compatible app.)

For example, if your goal is to induce trial or respond to a competitor’s offer, two very good reasons for traditional couponing, you could offer a mobile coupon via QR code. This publication by the Mobile Marketing Association, though a few years old, is a very good reference on mobile couponing.

On the other hand, if your category is hard to shop, with significant and substantive choice between varieties, a QR code could pay off with category information that can’t be provided on pack due to space limitations.

Below is an example of an otherwise boring looking package with an excellent QR payoff in a site full of recipes and nutrition information. Go ahead and scan this code right from the screen image below!

Go ahead and scan this code. It's not a waste of time.

And here is one I find a waste of time as a consumer. It takes you to the brand web site where you are free to browse for recipes. Do they really expect customers to search through a web site while standing in the supermarket aisle? This approach does not respect the customers’ interests and is likely to turn them off from further use of QR codes.

This package employed a QR code without having fully considered customer engagement issues.

In addition to couponing and web site linking, QR codes can be used to show videos, promote contests, download pdf documents and more. Regrettably, a recent study showed that only 18% of those who scanned the codes found the information from them useful. Fortunately, consumers are still adopting QR reader technology and there is time to turn these tags into a valuable tool for engagement.

Multicultural Awareness. We’ve all heard that by 2050, Hispanics will outnumber non-Hispanics in the US marketplace. But you don’t have to wait till then to start inviting this burgeoning ethnic minority to your brand party. Hispanics already wield over a trillion dollars in purchasing power with a per capita spend that’s up 108% over the last decade (compared with 49% for the mainstream majority segment).

Depending somewhat on their country-of-origin heritage and generational status, Hispanics are known to be adventurous in their taste preferences, and to consume a wide variety of foods in addition to culturally traditional dishes. They are also known to respond strongly to communications in their heritage language. At a minimum your package might provide product name and flavor/variety information in Spanish. If you’re serious about this segment you can invest considerably more in a Hispanic packaging strategy.

It's not hard to show your awareness of Latino culture in the marketplace. But beware: it's easy to offend when you proceed without genuine understanding. Cultural traditions and basic Spanish vocabulary vary widely from country to country. Although it is tempting to rely upon a bilingual employee for advice, a Pan-Hispanic approach requires expert guidance and translation.

Be forewarned: if you provide any of the FDA required package information (including name, ingredients, nutritional information etc.) in Spanish, you must provide all of it as such. Don’t tell anyone you heard it here, but if you look closely, you’ll find this requirement is often overlooked.

Health Oriented Claims. By law, food packages must be truthful. But there is significant leeway in the interpretation of a number of health-oriented label claims; the result is that less healthy products can sometimes be made to seem more healthy than less aggressively marketed competitors.

As a product marketer, it’s your job to know the limits of the claims you are allowed to make before doing your final copy edit, and you’ve got to make those decisions in the competitive context of your own category.

For example, if there is the least bit of whole wheat added into a refined flour recipe, some manufacturers will legally claim their product is “made with whole grain.”

Not just whole wheat, 11 grams of whole wheat!

Wheat Thins brand crackers, on the other hand, make the more substantive claim that there are 11 g whole grain in every 31g serving.

Fat-Free is defined by the FDA to mean less than .5 grams of fat per serving with no added fat or oil; therefore a small serving size of oil (by definition, a fat) can be advertised as “fat-free.” This is a favorite strategy of faux-butter products and spray on pan lubes.

There are definitions for comparison terms as well. To make a claim of “less” in regard to the nutritional content of one product vs. another, there must be a 25% or more differential in the content of the reference nutrient.

And if your product contains 20% or more of the daily value for a given nutrient per serving, you may legally claim it is high, rich in, or an excellent source of that nutrient.

The rules are complex but clearly enumerated by the FDA, and readily available online. Especially if you are a small manufacturer, know them well to find your competitive stance!

And if your product is truly a healthy one, consider referring to the government’s new MyPlate guidelines. Remember, fruits, vegetables, grains and proteins all play a role in a healthy diet.

According to the US Department of Agriculture, a healthy diet is built on fruits, vegetables, grains, protein and dairy. Does your product support a healthy diet?

Engagement 101: Good Design and Compelling Copy. It’s shocking how often manufacturers overlook the traditional foundations of packaging that sells, especially smaller firms that can’t rely on a half dozen or more facings to create a brand block on a crowded shelf. A professional package design firm knows how to maximize your shelf presence with color, graphics, typestyles, and more. They’ll test their concepts in a competitive environment to account for rival packaging strategies. They’ll make sure the eyeball’s landing point and scanning pattern is productive. And they’ll craft messaging that differentiates the brand, communicates personality, and incentivizes engagement. This is not a job for your marketing coordinator, your secretary or your sister the English major.

Great product name. Strong graphic design. This is a compelling proposition on shelf, especially in a crowded category.

We love the above tea package for its quirky but friendly brand name, it’s plain but tea-serious imagery and honest type. It seems everything a tea package should be, yet looks like no other tea package on the shelf!

You'd have to be blind not to notice this package.

Try ignoring this coffee package, I dare you! Bold and atypical, the designer of this package distilled the critical elements down to a minimum: the brand name and descriptor (Joe Coffee), and the common category color of red. Pour me a cup now!

Here’s a new brand identity and packaging for a snack food from my firm, Goldforest. I think it’s fair to say that this package will help shoppers quickly understand that Apple Rumble offers a crunchy, flavorful and healthy snack time experience.

I hope you’ll agree that these ideas are simple enough to implement but have the potential to impact sales of your product. There are many other tactics you can employ. Feel free to comment with your own ideas and examples!

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Marketing to niche segments cost effectively has always been tough. The challenge is similar when your market is broader but your budget is limited. Social media, because of its scalability, is an economical tool with a huge upside for building consumer engagement. To demonstrate that point, I’d like to share some bottom line results from a social media program my firm developed for a new snack food.

This Facebook sample request page garnered 20,000 'likes' in one day!

The brand, Raisels®, is a sweet and pucker-up sour product made from golden raisins, natural fruit flavors, citric and ascorbic acids and a light dusting of sugar. It gets big thumbs up from majorities of every demographic (including folks who don’t really love raisins). In addition to developing brand positioning, the Raisels name and package design (click for details), we built an internet presence including Web site, Facebook and Twitter pages, and set goals for fans, followers and interactions.

Next we sent the brand on a Mommy Blog Tour, providing product samples to over 200 Mommy Bloggers, along with background information and postable images of Raisels’ logo, packaging and characters. Within six weeks we had generated over 1 million online impressions as a result of the posts (almost all positive) that our Mommy Bloggers wrote. A Google Blog search at the end of the promotion indexed more than 35,000 results on the word Raisels, more than many national brands of snack foods that enjoy more significant marketing budgets.

Hundreds of posts from enthusiastic Mommy Bloggers with a collective audience of over 1,000,000 followers raised awareness of the brand and paved the way for our Facebook sampling initiative.

This awareness level gave us a terrific platform for a sampling program. We developed a Facebook application that allowed visitors to request a sample in return for a “like”. Sampling is critical for new food or beverage products. And Likes are terrific social currency. When someone likes your Facebook page, they are allowing your future updates into their news feed. Various studies have shown an actual financial value to each like received.

On the day of the giveaway, we posted links that were spread virally until we shut down the promotion around 6 PM, having garnered over 20,000 likes! That’s more than the California Raisin Commission and other major brand dried fruit manufacturers have. In the weeks since, our fans have stuck with us. Our next step must be to engage with them on a meaningful level that engenders increased good will and purchase intent.

Comments received on Facebook are overwhelmingly positive. Interestingly, critics are often addressed directly by other fans who tend to be appreciative of a brand's social participation.

By the way, when fans gave us their addresses and contact info, it all went into a database. We must be responsible and judicious in our use of that data, but properly curated, it has marketing value. As do the data on fans’ favorite shopping venues, an optional field on our sample request form that most respondents completed;  this info can help us demonstrate consumer demand to retail buying executives!

Every social media program is different in intent, scope and execution, but if your brand could benefit from this kind of one-to-one consumer interaction, chances are social media has something to offer you.

Michael David Gold, a founder and principal of Goldforest, has 20 years experience creating and communicating about brands. To discuss your branding conundrums, call him at 954-929-7790, or write him an email.

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Late in 2009, National Raisin Company — a Fowler California grower / packer responsible for one out of every three raisins sold in the United States — engaged Goldforest to develop and execute a brand strategy for an innovative new snack food product. National’s R&D department had developed a unique process of flavoring raisins with natural juices from other fruits, adding citric and ascorbic acids and a light dusting of sugar (about 10% of the sugar that naturally occurs in raisins), to create a sweet and sour taste profile that more resembled candy than dried fruit.

Goldforest's key marketing insight was that Raisels could be used to reposition raisins from healthy but "boring" to healthy and exciting, while cookies and candy could be made a bit healthier but would never be perceived as "as healthy" as Raisels, which are, after all, real fruit.

Raisels come in film-wrapped bricks containing six 1.25 oz. paperboard cartons each.

Though preliminary research indicated that people of all ages loved the taste, Goldforest proposed a kid-focused strategy in order to compete directly with cookies and candy as a healthy, real fruit alternative to sugar-based snack foods. Mom might buy the product for her kids, but in the end, it would be consumed by anyone with a sweet & sour tooth.

Each Raisels carton is illustrated with a Raisels character interacting with another fruit. Here Ozzie Orange shoots his pal Flying Otis from a canon!

The brand platform Goldforest proposed was fun, friendly and responsible; the Hollywood, Florida brand consultancy developed the name Raisels to communicate a relationship to raisins but at the same time to differentiate the new product. The colorful, energetic packaging features a series of illustrations, one for each flavor, of Raisels characters interacting with other fruits.

Raisels achieved national distribution by the end of 2010, six months after introduction.

Goldforest also developed Raisels’ Web site, and social media presence (via Facebook and Twitter pages), and a brand introduction marketing strategy. This included retailer and media sampling kits, a very successful Mommy Blog tour and a Facebook promotion that netted 20,000 “likes” in one day.

National Raisin Company is America’s largest processor of raisins for private label and industrial sales distribution.

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With the Produce Marketing Association “Fresh Summit” just around the corner, it’s time to take a look at the state of branding in the produce sector. What’s most remarkable on the surface is how few true consumer brands there really are!

Beyond fruits from Dole, Del Monte, Chiquita, Sun Maid, Driscolls and a few others, most consumers would be hard-pressed to name any brands in unprocessed fruits and vegetables. (You might point out that California raisins, Florida oranges and Idaho potatoes are brands. But beyond their respective states’ endorsements, what commonalities do individual growers, and therefore their crops, share?)

Little PLU stickers like these are ubiquitous on fresh fruits and veggies but - except for a few well-known brands - how useful are they at communicating brand information to consumers?

I used to think the paucity of brands in this sector was a result of the small scale of most produce farms. After all, how can a small grower afford the investment it takes to build a brand with any significant reach. And why would they want to? The crop would run out before the customer got to his local market anyway.

But there are far more major produce operations than consumer produce brands. And there’s nothing to stop growers from branding cooperatively, a la Welch’s or Ocean Spray in the beverage sector.

Is there a lack of ability to differentiate meaningfully? On what basis would a manufacturer do so? Freshness, taste, care in handling? All would be legitimate brand foundations if the practice could approximate the promise. I just think that these attributes are too costly to build into the product in the first place. You can’t sell consistently superior quality produce in mass distribution anymore. Most shoppers just won’t pay for it.

Sweetango Apples, brought to you as a brand and differentiated on the basis of genetic variation (and great taste!).

Professionally designed and promoted, the Sweetango brand logo actually looks good enough to eat!

One brand dimension in which we’re seeing some activity is variety. Consider Sweetango apples (www.sweetango.com). A cooperative of apple growers named Next Big Thing licensed this recently developed hybrid from the University of Minnesota, gave it a trademarked name, and is working to build recognition and distribution. Bravo! (My thanks to Dan Bolton, Editor of Natural Food magazine for pointing out this effort to me.)  (http://www.naturalfoodnet.com)

Another recent development is the rebranding of an entire category: baby carrots. Brought to you by forward thinking ad agency Crispin Porter + Bogusky, the baby carrot has recently relaunched as a sheep in wolf’s clothing, with the goal of competing with junk food. This effort is a noteworthy branding effort, but it’s not about differentiating one manufacturer’s baby carrots from another. It’s about repositioning baby carrots in general.

Baby carrots are being repositioned to compete with junk food. Do consumers care who grew or processed them, or are they just "baby carrots?"

So what’s up? The truth is that most produce branding is oriented toward the wholesale buyer. Brands at this level are built upon reliable delivery, standardization of quality and other best business practices. The consumer for the most part has learned to rely upon her retailer to select produce brands for her. The brand sticker on many fruits and vegetables is more of a nuisance to remove than a signal of differentiation to her.

With this as background, I head to the PMA Fresh Summit looking for evidence. Is there brand life in the produce sector? If so, I hope to identify and report on it here.

Of course, you can save me some time by leaving a comment. Tell us about your produce brand and what you’ve done to communicate it to the wholesale or retail buyer. And if you see me at the show, feel free to offer me a sample! I’m coming hungry for fruits and vegetables, as well as knowledge.

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If you’re a packaged goods manufacturer, you need to know more about QR Codes. That’s short for Quick Response Code, a symbology developed in Japan in the 1990’s. Here’s why I’m excited about their potential marketing implications.

A QR Code looks like a jumble of squares inside a bigger square. This type of symbol can encode a great deal of information, but all you need to read it is a smart phone and a simple downloadable app. (I found a dozen such apps for the iPhone on i-tunes. A free one from Tap Media worked great but included embedded advertising. One that costs $1.99, called quiQR, has a richer feature set and no advertising.)

Creating QR Codes is even easier because there’s nothing to download. At qrcode.kaywa.com I created the code shown below in a jif!

Try it now! If you want to invest a minute to download a scanning app, you can scan my code directly from your computer screen and see the surprise I’ve embedded in it. (Hint: if you “like” what you see, feel free to express yourself.) All you have to do is aim your smart phone at it. Depending on your phone and your app, it’ll either go to work automatically or you might have to take a picture of it.

Easy to generate, easy to scan. Once you start playing with them, QR Codes become enticing little gems you just have to check out!

The app then takes over and, in my example, translates the code into a Web address. Alternatively, it might contain a photo or an SMS message.

So why is this big news to packaged goods manufacturers? With a QR Code printed on your package, you’ll find shoppers scanning it right there in the aisle or in the privacy of home. Either way, they’ll automatically receive a message or be taken directly to a Web page with your product or brand related content. Here are just a few ideas of what you could do on such a page:

• Play a video for them
• Offer them a coupon
• Provide nutritional facts
• Show the range of product sizes and varieties available
• Suggest a recipe
• Invite them to become fans on Facebook
• Give them a chance to enter a contest

Here are a couple of twists my partner and I thought of:

• Send them a coupon that can be displayed on their mobile phone and scanned at the register. Instant gratification!

• Use variable data print technology to vary the code that appears on each package and randomize the insertion of multiple prize levels

• Send an SMS message inviting the user to receive periodic promotions via SMS

• Or why not just riff off of the technique being used to promote gulf restoration following the oil spill. A cooperative effort of a number of organizations, it includes giant a QR code on the Thomas Reuters billboard in Times Square linking to a web video and a petition demanding action. Which CPG firm will be the first to use this technology for their own brand building purposes?

This QR code posted in Times Square could just as easily activate a CPG promotion.

The possibilities are limitless, and the end result in every case is a broader, more fulfilling shopping experience for customers who are open to it. That’s an experience brought to them by [insert your brand name here]!

Because QR Codes are a sort of trending phenomenon now, there is a growing curiosity and willingness among shoppers to try them out. But we’re not just interested in early adopters. The smartphone market is growing rapidly. According to a December 2009 article on Cnet.com smartphones are expected to increase to 37% of the cellphone market worldwide by 2014 from their current penetration of 16%. That’s 1.8 billion phones capable of scanning your QR Code. Therefore NOW is the time to exercise leadership, explore the medium and be first to engage!

What do you think? Have any of you used QR Codes? Think I’m wrong about their potential? Feel free to call me out!

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