Many times an in-house design team are under pressure, ‘up-against-it’ advocates for your business, but aren’t psychologists in design, branding and consumer behaviour. This article helps explain why you might want to choose a branding agency for packaging design.

With an abundance of creative agencies out there, who will ‘design pretty’ and can do a good job of packaging but if you are looking for the ideal fit for your product, you need to find a creative team who understands your business and the consumer. To us packaging is practically the last stage of your manufacture, but it is the first the consumer is exposed to it. If your packaging design is weak, you have lost the competitive edge. You need creative and innovative packaging that is backed by out of the box thinking.

What to look for in your current design team

• Can they create a brief themselves?
• Are they passionate about selling the product or designing the packaging?
• How do they describe the brand, product and business?
• Are they free-thinkers? Are they thinking out of the box?
• Place your current packaging against a selection of 20 competitor products, where do you currently stand?

If you’re ‘hidden’ and are hoping customers buy your product, then your business isn’t where it should be. If you have a great product but struggle telling the customers this, let the packaging design do it for you.

By appointing a branding agency like AdBrand, who have big ideas, free creativity, you’ll end up with a series of beautiful packaging, and the brand guidelines can be introduced to your in-house creatives to carry on with the daily design application.

What to look for in a Branding Agency

Many design agencies will come up with different designs for your product packaging that appear right. In order to select the right firm, you should make sure the agency has the following:

• Retail experience along with design capability
• Strong research strategy
• A great portfolio with diverse brand and products
• Established and successful products
• Value led pricing
• The entire process of branding
• Attention to detail
• Flexibility
• Quality control

One option is to approach the branding agency with your likes and dislikes, examples of your existing packaging and containers and your target market. We wrote an advice piece recently on How to Choose the Right Branding Agency, which offers impartial advice you will hopefully find helpful. The most successful selection process beyond the above list is a personal meeting so that you can find out whether you like the people you’ll be working with.

If you are ready to discuss your business and have seen our portfolio, then contact AdBrand and we’ll offer the chance to choose the right agency for you.

Thank you for reading.

Adam Ridgway
Chief Creative Director
AdBrand