Brand strategy can go beyond a simple action plan to address the things a specialty food business is passionate about and position its voice and visuals to make a product shine on the retail shelf. Steve Redmond, principal and creative director at Rival Brands and Victoria Ho, co-founder of Sherpa CPG, will discuss how a brand can influence various aspects of its business, in a Brand Studio education session on Monday, January 16 at 1 p.m. at the Winter Fancy Food Show.
The session is part of the Maker Pass, a one-price ticket that costs $99 for SFA members, and $199 for non-members, which grants access to sessions that are designed for both new and running specialty food companies.
SFA News Daily spoke with Redmond about branding.
What factors are crucial to consider when developing effective packaging?
Many of the elements required for effective packaging are the same ones required to be an effective brand. My top three packaging considerations are knowing your target audience, knowing the competitive environment that you will be selling in, and using design to express your brand visually and verbally. They all work in tandem. Rarely can one factor compensate for poor execution in the others.
Another factor that applies to each of these is that there are professionals that can help you get packaging right. These experts bring an objective view into the process that can be critical. Don’t rely on what you think you know and on how good of a design you think you can come up with yourself. The more performance you want out of your brand and its packaging the more your hunches need to be turned into facts and design execution needs to be at a high level.
Are there areas you feel specialty food brands tend to underutilize when creating a brand strategy?
I build out three pillars of awareness when working on a brand strategy: the company, consumer, and competition. Of those three, the consumer and company pillars are by far the two that get addressed the least, and yet they are so critical. It’s intuitive to want to know who the competition is. In most cases, my clients know the gap in the market they want to fill. But if they don’t fully understand who they are (think purpose and culture), how they should show up, and how they will relate to and provide value to the customer looking for what they have, then the strategy being pursued is murky at best.
Of these two pillars, “the customer” gets neglected the most. Again, in some cases producers can take a pretty good swing at who they are from a purpose, mission, and values standpoint. However, the consumer is unpredictable. Producers can be very subjective when it comes to what they think makes them unique and important. I’ve been in focus groups where the respondents delivered feedback that was contrary to the assumptions that were on the table. Data wins.
What is one mistake you often see specialty food brands make when starting their journey to the retail shelf?
The biggest mistake I see is “winging it.” There are a lot of producers out there foraging around in skillset territories that they shouldn’t. I get it though, not everyone has deep pockets to go around hiring a professional for everything they can’t do. And there’s a spirit involved in entrepreneurship that can be very captivating. For some, it’s a badge of honor to say, “I did it all myself.” The mindset shift I talk about when I recommend hiring for a skill you don’t have (and I do this with my own business too) is to think of it in two ways: 1) it’s an investment that has a long-term ROI and 2) it’s an investment that reduces risk in your business. I’ve seen too many packaging designs that looked like they should perform well but didn’t. And it is because the design didn’t communicate the brand effectively or the messaging didn’t resonate with the customer or define the positioning well enough. I heard a saying early in my career, "If you don’t have the time or money to do it right the first time you won’t have them for a second time around."
I have a lot of love and empathy for specialty food producers. They’ll bring about the change in our food system that the larger monolithic producers never could. That’s why I want to serve them and help them learn as they grow. I find myself teaching my clients during the process of collaborating on their strategy and design. It’s a “teach a person how to fish” philosophy that I think is vitally important.
Are there any brands that you feel are standing out in the specialty food space today?
There are so many brands doing really good work that defining singular fulcrums to judge is nearly impossible. I’m drawn, personally, to those that are creating differentiation through innovatively tackling issues within the food system—whether it be diet, ingredients and/or their sources, manufacturing, or sustainability. I’ve been slowly falling in love with a lot of what True Made is doing with simple items like condiments. Purcane came along and addressed something as simple as sugar. Other brands that I saw at the Summer Fancy Food Show that drew my attention were Jaime’s Farm, Wise Mouth Tea, Little Pickins, Queen of Hearts Superfoods, and Saba’s Sauces.
The one trend that I love that’s gaining more and more attention and mainstream buy-in is food that introduces and shares other cultures. Eventually, the “ethnic” aisle has to recalibrate or go away altogether.
What would you like attendees to get out of the session?
First, I don’t think that my industry does a great job of helping business leaders understand what branding is. So, for the context of my discussion, I will always provide that clarity as I see it. Anytime I get to speak with producers, no matter the specific angle about what I do that I’m being asked to speak about, I will always take a few steps back from the topic and make sure attendees understand the idea and concept of “brand” as it applies.
Second, I want attendees to understand how “brand” works within their business. I’m not saying that everyone will get it 100 percent but I think most producers can understand more than they give themselves credit for. Great leaders don’t have to know all the answers. They simply must understand the direction where the answers can be found. That’s the level of “brand” awareness that I think every producer needs and is likely capable of.
Related: Industry Voices: 2023 Leadership Award Winners on Business Hurdles; Buyers From All Channels to Attend Winter Fancy Food Show