Production for brands

The production of your brand is as, if not more potent in portraying the culture and values it stands for than any paid piece of promotion. Today virtually every person on this planet is more aware of looking after it and as consumers we recognise the need for friendly production methods.

Every step of the line, not only the marketing, but from the development to manufacture and distribution tells the world what your brand really stands for.

However as this is a design blog I will focus on the marketing piece of the jigsaw.

With so many options available to utilise to promote and sell a product, we can begin by selecting a range of suitable mediums to use from packaging, point of sale material through to advertising.

With packaging, the very container that holds the product is looked at and questioned. Is it necessary to be made overly large for shelf presence or is this simply wasteful consumerism. Large packaging is heavier and takes up more space resulting in wasteful transportation.

What way can we reduce the number of materials used to protect, hold and display efficiently and therefore reduce the production cost. I cannot stand the over the top wasteful packaging of children’s toys, not to mention the fight with it to remove from the pack.

Point of sale just like packaging, needs questions asked. Do they include material that is recyclable or biodegradeable and with paper products, is it sourced from renewable and/or sustainable forests, is it bleached or made from/contain recycled material.

When it comes to advertising and promotion, what is the best environmentally and cost effective way to achieve the desired results. For example, is an electronic email campaign as opposed to a direct mail campaign better, one may use tons of resources to print and distribute, and not forgetting afterwards the cost of old flyers going into landfill or the energy used to recycle them.

To sum up, as the title says: you want your brand to say volumes without using volumes.