Exclusive survey points out two issues: The design brief doesn’t pack enough punch. And external creative input often is underutilized. Trust seems to be at issue.
Many of those who work in the creative environment like to emphasize that they’re working collaboratively with other departments and external partners. But just how deep does the interaction go?
Often, not as deep as it could, according to the results of a targeted survey on packaging and the creative process. Design firms are an equal collaborative partner or have a substantial role in the process about 41% of the time. The impact of material suppliers as an equal collaborative partner or meaningful contributor occurs about 36% of the time. And for the most part, a little less than half of consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies have an integrated loop system in place in which all partners continually interact to present ideas and solve problems during package creation.
These are the top-line results of a targeted survey that Shelf Impact! conducted early in 2008. In all, 514 readers completed the survey. The responses were sorted as either brand/category/product/marketing manager (34% of the total participants) or designer/supplier (66%) data. Other important conclusions from the data and the analysis show:
• About 58% of creative teams work from a prewritten brief (see Fig. 1), but 35% who develop a brief beforehand wind up rewriting it as the process moves along.
• Just 26% of companies responding to the CPG company portion of the survey indicate they incorporate brand identity and package design firms as an equal collaborative partner (see Fig. 2). Another 31% say that although designers have some input, the designers mostly follow the CPG company’s directives, suggesting that factors other than strategic design sometimes drive the creative process.
• Technical and process factors seem to guide large CPG companies, on the whole, as much as creativity in their selection of external creative agencies and suppliers (see Fig. 3).
• The relationship between brand stewards and package designers is not as trusting as it could be. In separate written comments, those responsible for growing brands most often cited concerns about trust and confidentiality as a hurdle to working through the creative process with an outside agency, far more so than they mentioned issues of quality and cost.
Jonathan Ford, Creative Partner at Pearlfisher Design (www.pearlfisher.com), believes the results shown in Fig. 1 indicate the lack of a systematic approach taken with design too often today. That, he says, is one reason why packaging doesn’t always help sell consumer brands as much as it should. A lot of creative teams have acknowledged the importance of developing a brief to guide the creative process, but the results show that more than two in five of the responding brand marketers routinely work without the document they claim is critical to any creative team’s success. Moreover, more than one in three brand marketers who say they start with a brief acknowledge they often revise it as they work.
“Overall, there’s a feeling of an ad-hoc approach to design that really surprised me,” Ford says. “How can you judge design if you don’t have a brief against which to measure progress? If you can’t identify the design goal in a brief, then you’re going to end up going around in circles.”
The ad-hoc approach to package creation that Ford speaks of manifests itself in another way. Looking at Fig. 2, CPG companies are most likely to develop creative ideas internally and then communicate their needs later to both their external design firms (31%) and suppliers (50%). Less often, design firms (26%) and suppliers (23%) were considered to be an equal collaborative partner on the CPG company’s creative team.
Trust and confidentiality were the reasons that respondents from CPG companies cited most often for making decisions internally ahead of external vendor participation. But costs were a consideration, too.
“We worry that outside vendors do not fully understand our specs from the beginning,” says one brand manager who responded to the survey. “If we bring in outside design firms, we are concerned that costs often go beyond what was initially quoted.”
Adds a product manager, “We fear that brand information may be leaked during the design stage.”
To which Ford responds, “It’s find, interview, hire, pay, and fire. The data are saying that it’s not a very trusting or integrated relationship between companies and design firms.”
Ford also notes that the data uncovered evidence that smaller CPG companies seem to be more flexible to letting the benefits of a good design drive a packaging project than larger companies. But smaller companies don’t have the major capital investments in packaging lines that larger brand owners do. Those high-speed lines are configured to run large product volumes, which can limit the design flexibility of very large brand owners.
As seen in Fig. 3, technical capabilities were a key overall consideration in CPG companies’ selection of design firms and suppliers. But that number shot up to a full 100% for CPG companies with revenues of $1 billion or more. For larger firms, factors such as “cost and process,” “creativity,” and “understanding of my business” also were mentioned more frequently than for responding CPG companies on the whole.
“There is an element of protectionism going on with the larger companies,” Ford says. “When you have fixed parameters, such as huge capital investments in your lines, you work within those parameters. But design agencies also have to ask questions to work outside of those parameters. What the results say is it’s a technically driven evaluation and not so much a creative one. One solution is to ask (CPG companies), ‘In what ways can we get a dialogue going?’” {SI!}
The author, Jim George, is the Editor-in-Chief of Shelf Impact!
