Famous for its quirky copywriting, fruit-based puns and the occasional knitted hat for its adorable smoothie bottles, Innocent Drinks is often hailed as a shining example of food branding. That said, branding isn’t solely about what is visible on the outside of the product. Here, Miguel Campos, export sales manager at food packaging expert, Advanta, explains how primary packaging can also impact brand perception.
Today’s food and drink market is incredibly saturated. As a result, brand recognition is essential to success. Cadbury’s iconic shade of purple, the curvaceous Coca Cola bottle and the Toblerone triangle are all examples of successful branding, but harmonious branding is not exclusively about consistent design.
Branding should ensure that every aspect of the product meets the customer’s pre-defined expectations. Let’s face it, you would not expect to see a bag of Pringles or a carton of Pepsi, would you? Maintaining harmonious branding should be considered from the initial development stages of a product’s packaging, right through to the manufacturing and marketing of the product.
Product branding through packaging is often pigeonholed as the colours, fonts and imagery used on the outer sleeve of the product. However, branding should also consider the material, size, shape and quality of the packaging.
Consider this as an example. A food manufacturer is targeting affluent but time-conscious consumers with a new ready-meal product. The meal is gourmet, contains organic products and is ready-to-cook in its supermarket packaging. So far, it ticks all the boxes for a convenience-reliant customer. Graphic design has been carefully considered, copywriting has been pre-approved by focus groups and high-quality images are used to provide the appeal usually associated with luxury products.
However, before fonts, line spacing and logo variations are confirmed, food manufacturers should be considering primary packaging factors — that’s the functionality, strength and quality of the packaging.
According to research by Keenpac, 61 per cent of customers say that quality packaging makes a brand appear more upmarket. What’s more, 33 per cent of customers state that they perceive a company as unprofessional if its packaging is poor, or it looks like the product inside could be easily damaged.
With this in mind, a customer’s brand perception can decrease dramatically if packaging quality doesn’t meet the standards set by the graphics and design on the outside of the packaging.
Let’s say our affluent customer did purchase the gourmet ready meal. However, on removing the product’s all-singing, all-dancing, graphic-heavy cardboard sleeve, the customer found the ready-to-cook tray was flimsy and weak. There’s no advantage to marketing a product as high quality if the customer experience doesn’t meet this expectation. Regardless of the quality of its ingredients, there’s nothing ‘high quality’ about char grilled tomatoes leaking onto the kitchen floor. 
As a food packaging supplier, Advanta works directly with food manufacturers to ensure their packaging is not only fit for purpose, but also meets customer expectations of their brand. A common requirement is for packaging to be made from aluminium trays for ready-to-cook meals — products that are designed to be put straight into the oven without any preparation from the customer. However, selecting packaging for these products isn’t as straightforward as choosing an off-the-shelf tray.
For example, if the product contains certain acidic foods, you need to consider whether the tray material will weaken due to the acidity. Similarly, if the product is heavy or contains meat products such as ribs, the packaging needs to be strong enough to sustain the weight. Failure to assess these needs can lead to dissatisfaction from the customer result in reputational damage to your brand.
As well as delivering consultation on the right materials for packaging, Advanta can provide custom design to include specific brand colours and logos for food manufacturers. This customisation ensures that a product’s branding is harmonious throughout, from the primary packaging, right through to fonts, logos and graphics that consumers grow to know and love.
Clever copywriting and attractive graphics are a sure-fire way of grabbing a customer’s attention. Let’s face it, who can ignore those adorable bobble-hatted smoothies in the supermarket aisle? However, maintaining the same level of consumer confidence is only possible if every aspect of your product, including primary packaging, meets the same expectation.