But what about brands D, E, F and G? For every decision we take, there are a plethora of options that don’t even make the short-list and if your brand doesn’t exist in the mind of your audience, it’s never going to end up in their shopping basket. So, why is it that some brands don’t even get a look in?

Historically, there has been a tendency to suggest that the only way to get a brand embedded within in the mind of its target audience is to undertake a sustained assault on the customer though enormously expensive advertising campaigns. While there is some truth in this, and great reassurance for those that can afford it, are there really no other options for those companies lacking big budgets?

Within the FMCG sector, products operate in a unique environment. Consumers can see, touch, even smell the alternative options first-hand and this is why packaging is emerging as an increasingly strong contender for creating cost-effective influence. Put simply, any brand that lives on-shelf has a golden opportunity to elevate itself from obscurity right at the point of contact with the customer.

Good, well thought out design will communicate a brand’s values through its physical presence direct to the purchaser. If we leverage this correctly we can not only steer consumers towards our brand in the short-term, but also actively shape the way in which they view our competitors further down the line.

We’re seeing more organisations taking advantage of this philosophy and using packaging as a focal point for their brand story. At a niche level, the premium pie brand ‘Higgidy’ recently shook up the pre-packaged pie category with a light and frivolous identity that has made the available alternatives look down-market, masculine and just plain ‘stodgy’. Without any marketing support, an investment in disruptive brand packaging delivered a 15-fold increase in turnover within a few years, as well as changing the things that consumers looked for from the category as a whole.

By communicating fragrance instead of run-of-the-mill messages, Colgate-Palmolive generated £10 million of additional revenue from sales of its Soupline fabric conditioner across Europe. Using clean, white, minimalistic packaging it was able to conjure up a notion of indulgence in what is traditionally perceived as a practical product, introducing a further level to the consumer decision making process.

Similarly, a well-researched tweak to Bassett’s Soft and Chewy vitamins supplements resulted in a 49% increase in sales as the brand looked to update its identity to appeal to more mature customers, without compromising the existing equity of the brand in the children’s supplements market. Again, all without any investment in marketing support.

Of course, these are exceptional examples in terms of results, but what they demonstrate is that packaging is somewhat of a sleeping giant. These companies realised this and harnessed its power to improve sales without incurring the huge costs associated with above-the-line campaigns. Perhaps more importantly, the process behind these examples is not new; it’s simply a matter of looking at products from an alternative angle to collect different ideas and then incorporating those ideas into the packaging design. Get this right on the packaging and you’ll have a product with real pulling power.

Over £2.5 billion was spent staging the tournament, but while the games went ahead with very few glitches, there was debate about whether the legacy the World Cup would leave would be enough to deliver sustainable employment and prosperity going forward.

Throughout the competition, the country’s social and economic issues were well documented and clearly demonstrated that despite all the pomp and ceremony there is still a huge gap between the haves and have nots. But it’s not just South Africa that suffers from social inequality, the same divisions can be seen in many places around the world, especially in cities.

Quite often we find that unequal access to public resources is at the heart of social inequality. This can be for a whole host of reasons, but without pathways to cultural and educational growth, social division in any society is likely to continue.

Like South Africa, the UK is hosting major events in the coming years and, like South Africa, we will want to use these events to communicate to the world about who we are. As marketers, we have a responsibility to ensure that when we develop destination brands it is critical for them to have longevity and to be agile enough to translate across all social boundaries. Only by connecting with all sections of society can we be sure that we have removed any barriers to access by generating an awareness of what is available.

Culture & Sport Glasgow (CSG) is a case in point. It recognised the need to tackle some of its biggest social challenges by getting more people, more involved in cultural and sporting activities. Tayburn was brought in to carry out a strategic and creative review of CSG’s brand, which operated disparately across 55 separate customer facing brands, housed within the eight sub brands of museum, concert halls, sports, libraries, communities, arts, events and young Glasgow.

With over 14 million customers each year, the new brand had to be flexible enough to be relevant to multiple audiences, but consistent enough to create a relationship between every single piece of communication. Following a huge research process, Tayburn dispensed with the existing brand chaos by unifying the brand identity and Glasgow Life was born. This new cohesive approach generated greater awareness of the organisation’s services by cultivating a wider knowledge of what was on offer, thus effecting better cross selling of those services.

Showcasing destinations is difficult enough, but what brands such as Glasgow Life do is widen access to shared resources, helping to eradicate social divisions and shifting external perceptions of a destination. And when you have an inclusive brand that translates at every level, you have a brand that holds its value long after the party is over.

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Design Grand Prix

Corporate Literature / Annual Report

Stationery

Corporate Identity

Poster

Item of Self Promotion

Craft

The key advantage the iPad has is a large screen and it’s this crucial element that could well accelerate further the migration of reporting from print to web. Mobile phones have never really lent themselves to viewing information on the move, particularly that of the financial variety, and while Amazon’s Kindle and Sony’s eReader does allow some usability, they’re limited. Things may change with the imminent arrival of the second generation Kindle and Google’s version, but it’s the iPad that’s captured the imagination of industry.

With pretty much everything looking like it will eventually end up online, users need something that is portable and simple to navigate. The iPad promises both. Combine this with a browsing application that enables viewers to access the growing number of annual reports that are being produced in HTML format, and you can’t help but wonder if the iPad will be the catalyst for all companies to seriously address their online investor relations and stakeholder communications.

It’s fair to say that app development will drive the market for iPads, but it’s not unreasonable to envisage paid for applications that use programmes like XBRL to generate content and provide real time comparative corporate and annual reports. This evolving information could remove the traditional ‘annual snapshot’ from the equation, replacing it with more and more frequent updates.

Clearly, the prospect of having such current information is enough to whet the appetite of any analyst. Certainly, when the iPad was launched in the States the value of its potential was recognised immediately, sending Apple’s share price soaring. For analysts, having an iPad as standard issue could revolutionise commerce and for the companies producing annual reports, print costs – which can be substantial – could be negated.

Of course, it’s not a done deal yet, Apple has to get grips with the problems it has with the iPad’s battery life or run the risk of playing directly into the hands of the advocators of print and competitors. That said, battery technology is a problem facing the digital hardware sector as a whole and I’m sure, given a little more time, this glitch will be resolved.

But before we condemn print to the archives, it’s likely that it will always have a place with some stakeholders, albeit a slightly different role in the future. Personally, I believe report design will be led by the online requirement and print will support overall communications in the form of summary reports that supplement the full online version. I also think digital reports will become more sophisticated, focusing separately on the needs of different audiences – shareholders, investors, employees, customers, suppliers etc.

Whatever happens, those companies that are interested in real engagement with their stakeholders will seek out whatever means there are to get their message across and influence. My money’s on the iPad being the next new way of doing it.

It’s a turn of phrase that holds real resonance in packaging design. How many times have we wandered up and down a supermarket aisle picking up brands without giving others a second glance, let alone a second thought?

This lapse in attention to our surroundings has been well documented, the most famous of which was demonstrated by Simon and Chabris who ran a study some years ago into what is termed inattentional blindness. The experiment involved asking viewers to watch a video of a basketball game and count the number of times one particular team passed the ball. Mid way through someone dressed in a gorilla suit strolled onto the centre of the court, turned and faced the audience before performing a slightly bizarre jig then slowly walked off. Viewers of the game were none the wiser because their attention was focused on the passing of the ball and not what was going on elsewhere.

In a retail environment this proves two things. Firstly, that recognition is critical and, therefore, brand equity must be very carefully developed and managed and secondly, that stand out is key.

When shopping, our attention focuses on certain features and distinguishes them from the background. Where we look for products and how we look depends on how we take in a scene and how we understand that scene. Bearing this psychology in mind, when we validate the effectiveness of packaging design in research scenarios, are we sure that we are giving the sample the most realistic experience of how they would normally interact with a brand?

There is evidence to suggest that traditional focus group have given way to more direct observational research – or ethnography to give it its official moniker. Focus groups rely heavily on the proactive attitude of sample target audiences to provide killer insights into a brand. But, packaging design has to work on shelf and not in the middle of a coffee table so observational studies, such as accompanied shops, provide more relevant evidence of top of mind behaviour and the subtle changes of body language in situ.

That said, behaviour varies from category to category. For example, so-called commodity goods such as milk are mostly a low engagement purchase which the consumer navigates on auto-pilot. Premium bottled ale on the other hand is a high-engagement process making the shopper more receptive to key elements like an on-pack brand story, which is more likely to result in a considered selection of goods. And this is where focus groups do provide value.

In many ways our response to design is governed by our subconscious which is, in turn, shaped by our values, needs and attitudes. Using focus groups and related qualitative research tools provides a way of identifying what these underlying consumer motivations are so that brand owners can better understand the needs of their audiences. By building the values and aspirations of strategic research into packaging design before testing that design in a realistic purchasing environment, brand owners can ensure that a product’s design will hold enough stand out to capture purchaser attention and avoid falling foul of buyers not being able to see it for looking.

Was it just me or did all the parties, with the exception of single issue parties like the SNP, BNP, Socialists and Greens, sound exactly the same? Despite tuning into the televised debates, following it online and watching a succession of candidates kissing babies, to me, there wasn’t any originality or substance that inspired me to pledge allegiance one way or the other.

Heated debates and political rallying aside, I didn’t see anyone laying their cards on the table with meaningful detail on their policies. I appreciate parties have to satisfy myriad stakeholder audiences, so they can’t have pin-point precision when it comes to their ‘propositions’, but surely they should have had something that distinguished them from their competitors?

Was it not obvious for someone, somewhere amidst the pre-election melee to suggest developing a series of targeted propositions that could be underpinned with real commitment to effect the change the party promised and build a solid political reputation? A by-product of building that reputation is trust and in light of all the spin, political enquiries, expenses and the financial crisis, if a party can counteract all its failings by implementing, and standing by solid values, then it will regain the public trust it desperately needs to restore.

What was made clear to me in this election was not how branding could have helped any of the main political parties succeed, but how the lack of it failed to help any of them win.

If politics is to pick itself up off the canvas it needs to take a leaf out of the book of business and differentiate better. It needs to target key audiences with key messages that are not littered with ambiguity. Just as with all good brands, political parties need to focus more on substance and communicate exactly what that substance is with flair. They need to deliver the values their brand promises and not rely on talking a good game and hoping the public are too stupid or ignorant to notice the difference.

Historic Scotland plays a vital role in safeguarding Scotland’s built and natural heritage. It is a key tourism provider with over 78 visitor attractions including top attractions Edinburgh and Stirling castles.

Tayburn’s commission is to design Historic Scotland’s consumer and marketing print for its tourism portfolio including Edinburgh Castle, Stirling Castle, Urquhart Castle, Stanley Mills, the Orkney Islands as well as its main guides with all 78 attractions.

By designing the Historic Scotland Members Handbook which will see a higher volume on production this year following Historic Scotland’s successful increase of members to 100,000+. Another important piece of print for Historic Scotland is the Events Guide showcasing the hundreds of events Historic Scotland staged every year. In addition, Tayburn will create a printed map which will accompany the popular ‘one ticket’ Explorer Pass Historic Scotland product used mainly by rest of UK and overseas visitors to Scotland touring the 78 Historic Attractions.

The new communications, which focus on Historic Scotland’s distinct identity, are due to be printed in January and released in April next year for the key visitor season.

“Historic Scotland distributes over 2.5 million pieces of printed material around the world so the impact of the designs needs to be strong and persuasive, while remaining true to the brand values”, said Jessica Wilson, Account Manager. “We will be looking to refresh the print suite whilst maintaining Historic Scotland’s distinct visual style, creating a lively and fresh collection to communicate with visitors to Historic Scotland properties in 2010.”

Rebecca Hamilton, Marketing Manager of Historic Scotland, added: “Our marketing print suite is an important project that requires good creative flair, dedicated resources and accurate interpretation of our brand. Tayburn has been awarded this exciting project and I look forward to working with them on creating our core suite which will help us welcome almost three million visitors into our properties from all over the world.”

With markets and competition heating up, Tayburn was tasked with reengaging the Tween audience and re-energising a brand not seen on TV since the 1990s. To tackle this challenge, Tayburn turned to Chewits’ cheeky and energetic mascot, Chewie the Chewitsaurus.  The new-look Chewie not only features prominently on all packaging, trade and consumer materials, but has also been a vital brand ambassador for Chewits.

Chewits have been a UK favourite since their launch in the 1960s.  Today, Chewits are one brand of sweet making a concerted effort to ensure kids enjoy a happy and active lifestyle. Chewits’ active lifestyle campaign includes sponsorship of nationwide multi-sport courses during the school holidays, sponsorship of Lancashire County Cricket’s junior members club, Chewits Lancashire Thunderbolts, and support for 2012 elite sporting hopefuls with their Young Ambassadors scheme.

www.chewits.co.uk

We were initially asked  to complete a strategic review of customer perceptions of Daryl which involved; a communications audit, in-field interviews and mystery shop visits. We presented a series of findings and strategic recommendations for how Daryl could drive sales more effectively through these customers.

As a result Daryl re-defined its Principal Showroom programme and the support that it gives to its key customers. A smaller group of showrooms were selected to work in partnership agreement outlining what both parties agree to deliver, advantageous terms, showroom support material, personalized access to the Daryl portal, after sales service and product training.

This was not purely a creative exercise; it forms the basis of a wider strategy that we are working on with Daryl to help them work with their key customers, showrooms to help the retailer drive sales of Daryl products. This involved initially identifying what is unique and special about Daryl  and translating these findings into strategic recommendations and then expressing this creatively across all communications channels.