You are a Director of Marketing and your boss asks you to investigate design agencies that specialize in product packaging design services among other marketing solutions. How do you decide?
Since you do not have a lot of experience with product packaging design services, you set out to do some market research. Spending a little time on Google you find packaging design marketing agencies, but what should you look for when determining if these firms are experts?
What Are Your Goals And Objectives?
Every marketing firm you will likely interact with will tell you they can do everything or that they have won many awards. That’s all fine and good, we’ve got a couple ourselves, but ask them to outline their packaging marketing plan. As they respond you should start to hear concepts like conducting market research, competitive analysis, and willingness to review the current marketing strategy or budgeting considerations.
If they really know their business, they will also talk about focus-groups research, in-store A/B product testing and a whole lot more. If they are an experienced firm, they should be asking you about your brand specifications and any multi-lingual requirements. Distribution channels and merchandising to support the product should also be considered.
Ask For References
This is pretty obvious and most firms under consideration will gladly give you a list of the clients they want you to call. In this instance, you need to press them for specific situations where a project presented a barrier to overcome. Here, you are looking for clues about their experience, or how they work together as a team. Be wary if the same client is referenced often in their examples.
The firms being considered should act confident. Not over confident in their approach to discussing new potential work but confident in their ability to deliver.
Tour Their Design Studio
Ask for a tour of their working environment. See how it’s set up. See what they are currently working on. While there, meet their staff and, since you are considering hiring them, interview your points of contacts.
Review their qualifications and ask for examples of their design work. You want to go with a firm that is well-balanced to cover just about any packaging design requirements. If they are experienced they can design your packaging no matter the product stipulation.
About Us
We have over 40 years of professional experience in retail packaging. We have successfully done work with corporations like Brown-Forman, Papa Johns, Vermont American, Brown-Williamson, Dometic and many more.
Over the years we have put together packaging development guidelines to share when we first meet with prospects. From our perspective, we arm them with information that is extremely helpful in converting shoppers into buyers. As an agency, here is our general methodology for determining a packaging design plan. We hope this will be something you will consider as well.
Our Methodology
Our strategy for any packaging or merchandising project is as follows:
- Research the marketplace where the product is to be merchandised, the competitors and the trends in the market.
- Review the successful advertising campaigns as well as the not so successful ones.
- Determine the reasons why the successful ones are being successful.
- Prepare a marketing strategy, components, budget and complete plan for execution.
- Discuss techniques of measuring ROI and the different ways to promote the product.
Conclusion
We have been in the big games before and we too have won many awards along the way. We have even been tasked with creating prototypes of products that have yet to be built for some of our clients (and we’re a marketing and branding agency!) Experience is the most important consideration when determining the right merchandising design agency.
We invite you to stop by our headquarters, check out what we are working on, come into the production area, kick the tires or share a Bourbon Ball with our team. At the end of the day our partners are our greatest asset.
If you can’t get to Louisville, then check out our website where you can view our design work, meet our team or subscribe to our blogs.
We hope our insights on product packaging design services will help you to choose the right creative graphic design agency! As always we are here to serve you, so if you have a questions or a suggestion please send us an email. We love hearing from our blog readers!
