Creating Your Branding

Part IV of a Four Part Product Series (Part I / Part II / Part III)

“When I was getting started, it felt strange to invest such a big piece of my startup budget into the brand and packaging, but a premium product needs a premium look. It boggles the mind how some of these food producers work for years to refine their recipes and insist on using only the finest, organic ingredients … only to brand it with a logo they designed in Microsoft Word and printed at home on store-bought labels. It’s like sending your kid down the aisle to get married in a burlap sack.”

— Eli Mason ¹

Your brand consists of your name, logo, and packaging design. Well-executed branding does at least three things at once:

1. It catches the eye of your target customer (especially effective when you’ve placed your product in a store that your target customer shops at).
2. It distinguishes your product from the competition.
3. It emotionally conveys your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).

All this must come together in that critical moment when your target customer is poised to make a purchase. In her book Good Food, Great Business, Susie Wyshak cites that, according to Packaging World magazine’s Labeling Playbook: “a whopping 70 percent of purchase decisions are made in the store, and 35 percent of purchases go to the products with the most eye-catching packaging.” ²

Your price point, your retailer list, and the quality of your product are also closely tied to the consumer’s perception of your brand.³ “Brand equity” is concept in marketing that refers to the value your company derives from consumer perception of your brand name, rather than from your product itself. In other words, if your branding is strong, you can fetch a higher price for your product than your competitors with weak branding can. Coke has strong branding, so they can charge a lot more than a generic cola can. That’s brand equity at work: the product itself isn’t the only thing that is selling a can of Coke.

Brand equity also creates loyal, repeat customers with fond feelings for your product, who will be great ambassadors for your brand.

Returning to our product now: if you’re just tuning in, we’ve been creating a beer that appeals to seniors at Iowa colleges and universities, both male and female, who want to drink better beer, but who are poor and whose palates are accustomed to bland macrobrews.

What shall we call this thing? We could name it after something specific to Iowa, like Hawkeye Hooch, but that would limit our potential to grow beyond this initial niche, should the concept prove to have legs beyond our target market.

How about Adjunct Professor? Not bad! It connects the style of the beer (American Adjunct Lager) with university students in general, not just in Iowa. Better yet, Professor Adjunct. Professing the merits of this distinctly American lager. Maybe your customers will take to calling it Professor for short. And it gears well with our tagline/USP, “Graduate to Better Beer.” Perfect, let’s run with it.

Settling on our name is one big step in creating our brand. What about logo and packaging? For these, you’ll definitely want to hire a professional graphic designer, lest you end up, as Eli Mason put it, “sending your kid down the aisle to get married in a burlap sack.” Even if you happen to be a graphic designer yourself, you still want to get an outsider’s opinion. But let’s walk through the process anyway, just for giggles.

Physically, we’ll package our beer in cans, and sell the cans in 6-packs and cases (or “Case Studies,” har har). For novelty appeal, maybe we’d offer a 2L Party Size bottle as well. Graphically, we want to appeal to an Iowa college senior’s instincts for what better beer looks like, but without giving them the impression that they could be in for bold and unfamiliar flavors. If you consider macro beers, their look is generally pretty simple, subdued, and classic. A designer might suggest keeping our look similarly simple, while at the same time drawing a clear line in the sand between us and the macros. Nothing too wild, yet hinting visually at our identity as a craft brewer. This, paired with a price point that appeals to their wallets, should make our target customers feel confident in their decision to spring for something a bit special, but not so special that it’ll break the bank (and potentially leave them with bitter, ultra-hoppy aftertaste in their mouths).

Now, I’m no graphic designer, and admittedly, this looks suspiciously like the aforementioned burlap sack. But you get the idea:

I’ve chosen a font for our brand name that is reminiscent of the cursive fonts of classic American beers like Coors, Budweiser, and Miller. Ours maybe even looks a tad like calligraphy. Professors make me think of pipes and tweed jackets, so let’s have a corn cob pipe for a logo (duh!), and put some tweed jacket accents along the top and bottom of the can. Our tagline communicates our USP, and our selling points draw a clear line in the sand between our adjunct lager and the macro adjunct lagers. Embedded in our seal is a little joke that any college student familiar with the works of René Magritte will appreciate, and that further differentiates us from the macros:

On the back of the can, an elbow patch will tie in with those tweed accents, and it’ll tell our story and a little bit about the history of this style of beer and how we brew it better:

Conclusion

“Great branding is like sending up a flare. It gets the attention of people who already have favourable ideas about your kind of product, helps them to find you and makes their decision about buying your stuff really easy. But here’s the important bit. That flare is not for everyone. If you try to create branding that appeals to everyone, you end up reaching no-one. Products that blast out Hello! messages to everyone with a pulse just become part of the noise of modern life. We tune them out. For branding to work, you have to be really specific about who your product says hello to. …When you’re clear about who your product is for, everything gets easier. It’s easier to sell it to customers. It’s easier to sell it to retailers. The right partners become obvious. You’ll spend less time searching for potential stockists and less time pitching your work to retailers who aren’t interested in it.”

— Clare Yuille ⁴

So there you have it. We’ve cruised through the steps involved in defining your target customer, identifying your UVP & USP, and creating a niche product and brand that stands the best chance of hitting your target. Whether you have an established brand or you’re just starting out as a small wholesale producer, having all this in place will create a sturdy foundation for all of your future sales efforts, and ensure that you’ll get the best possible return on your time and energy. Focus your vision, reap the rewards.

This is actually so fundamental that it will inform all of the articles that will follow. So kudos to you for reading through to the end.

In case you’re wondering, having such a narrow vision for our market doesn’t mean that, in the case of Professor Adjunct, we’re not open to markets outside of Iowa college towns. Our branding doesn’t limit us to a location, so if Professor Adjunct proves to be a winner in Iowa, we can branch out other college towns across America. Conveniently, students visiting their friends in other states will be our brand ambassadors. So bear this in mind: you can always dabble in other markets and sales channels in search of inroads — just make sure that you’re main focus is on your target market, at least until the time seems right to redefine your target market.

¹ https://www.smallfoodbiz.com/2014/05/15/entrepreneur-spotlight-eli-mason/
² Good Food, Great Business, Susie Wyshak, Chronicle Books, 2014
³ ibid
⁴ From The Joy of Wholesale, Clare Yuille, downloadable here: http://www.indieretailacademy.com/freestarterkit/