How to create a brand from scratch and help a sitting Duck take flight…….

Creating a brand is hard. Actually it’s harder than that, it’s really bloody hard. The problem is that every single food and drink category has so many competing brands that defining a unique space is spectacularly difficult. Even if you do stumble on a unique space convincing retailers that your newly discovered unique space exists at all, can be like making a naked assault on the summit of K2. It leaves you exposed to criticism and worse like you don’t know what you're doing. (plus it’s a cold lonely place at the top of K2 without proper trousers)

There are 5 key steps to developing a brand. They can be as simple or complex as you want to make them. The good news is that with the right tools, brand development can be a powerful way of growing your business.

Step 1. Define your Audience

This is easier than you think. You simply talk to consumers in the street, send out a questionnaire to your facebook followers or stand outside a store and ask people. What you really need to find out is what are the barriers to consumers buying in your category and what are the purchase motivations. Draw up a portrait of your consumer. Bring them to life. Where do they live? What sort of job do they do? Most importantly what brands do they aspire to buy. You need to know the sort of ‘company’ that your new brand will need to hang out with.

Step 2. Segment the market

The initial step should also allow you to segment the market into clusters. Consumers that love treating themselves, consumers that love to share, or consumers that find your category uninspiring and boring. Where can your brand be most effective at overcoming barriers and reinforcing motivations? Use your Ninja marketing skills to see where you should focus. 

Step 3. What Consumer Need state does your brand fulfill?

The next step is taking a look at a Need State that your brand can fulfill. ‘Sociability’ for example is a generic Need State for beer brands. Beer is best drunk with mates (obviously), but what about ‘Discernment’ if your brand has a unique provenance or ‘Control’ if your beer brand has a low carb proposition. Identifying a Need State will allow you to find how you can differentiate from competition and engage consumers in a more meaningful way. There are Universal Need State Models, but luckily we have developed one for food and drink brands that we can send you (e-mail hello@thiswayupdesign) we also have special one for beer that has had years of finetuning!

Step 4. What are the unique physical attributes of your brand?

The hardest part of any Brand Development process can be identifying what the unique attributes of your product are. These really need to be linked to the physical experience that your brand delivers. The unique texture, shape, production method, provenance, range, founder’s philosophy, ingredients that make your brand different. This is absolutely key and you should look back at the brands history, speak to colleagues in different departments, involve sales teams, distributers, production and management.

Step 5. A Big Brand Idea

Select the 3 most relevant brand attributes. This stage can take some time. So plenty of coffee, a quiet room and no Pokémon Go. Think about how these attributes deliver functional benefits to consumers and how these lead into emotional benefits. This is where the magic happens, because these emotional benefits are about how your brand makes consumers feel and that defines what your brand stands for and how it should behave i.e. your brand personality.

If you’re still with me, and you haven’t clicked onto the weather channel or drifted off into Amazon to buy your sisters birthday present, you’ve just defined your brand DNA! The only thing you now need to do is define a single powerful Brand Idea. A Brand Idea is a summation of your brands attributes and personality and it drives all communication. Yes, I know pretty cool. All that power in one idea!

Right, if that sounds all a bit theoretical, here’s one we prepared earlier.

Plucky Duck was a brave, unknown, but unique snacking product. The issue they faced was that they had no proposition and looked like a brand that you might find in an obscure Farm Shop off the M5 in Barnstaple. See below....

We worked with the founder Adam Wilding to create a new brand that could drive his unique product to unimaginable success, worldwide fame and stellar fortune. Adam had created a Duck Crackling that was seasoned with Peking Duck spices after going through a top secret triple cooking process. This crisps up the duck skin and drains off the Duck fat, leaving a delicious, crunchy, sophisticated, healthy alternative to Pork Scratchings. Have I got your attention now?

We recognized the barriers to purchase of pork scratchings included ‘it’s a blokey beer snack’, ‘oh my god they’re high in fat’, ‘it’s an awkward chew that forces me to pull weird faces’ and ‘they have limited flavours’….which include well…. just pork really!

Our target consumer was a more sophisticated gourmande, interested in the adventure of flavour and experimenting with food, and as happy with a glass of wine as an Italian pilsner.

We recognized that Adam’s passion for transforming forgotten or overlooked ingredients could provide us with a Need State of Discovery for the brand. Challenging consumers to try something new, be adventurous and open minded about snacking.

Adam’s Duck Crackling had 3 unique attributes:

1. Adam was literally transforming forgotten ingredients that were destined for the waste bin.
2. Adam was a visionary trained chef forging a new path
3. All Duck Crackling was batch and hand made for perfect texture

The Big Idea for Adam’s brand was ‘We See things Differently’. A simple expression of Adam’s creative and adventurous spirit and desire to re-invent snacking.

To bring a Brand DNA to life it’s also a good idea to visualize what it actually could look like. This will help to get alignment with anybody involved from shareholders to your mum. (Pictures do actually say more than a thousand words, particularly for mum). Here’s the Visual DNA board for Adam’s Duck Crackling.

And based on that analysis, insight and creative strategizing we developed a brand name ‘Wilding’s’ which also happens to be Adam’s surname (I know it’s brilliant!) but it fits with the DNA of the brand and then created award winning branding and packaging. 

Adam is exhibiting at Speciality Fine Food Fair this weekend at Olympia. If you’d like to meet him and hear the whole story why don’t you pop along. 

For further information and a Tool kit including A Need State Model and Brand DNA template just e-mail [email protected]