At Innodelice, we strive to highlight the incredible efforts of ice cream brands and manufacturers worldwide every day.
This time, we’ve created an article to help you learn more about a subject often left unaddressed but crucial for CPG products: packaging design. After all, the proper packaging is essential to getting ice cream products into the hands of your customers.
According to Meyers, 72 percent of American consumers say product packaging design influences their purchase decisions. Buyers are likelier to form a positive perception of the brand when it's attractive and compelling.
To share the latest knowledge and insights with you, we collaborated with two packaging and design experts with true industry expertise – Elyse Boulet, CEO and Managing Partner of PIGEON Brands, and Ramon Castillo, a freelance creative specializing in AI design.
Below, we’ll get insightful answers to some packaging-related questions we hope will help you with your products. Let’s get to it!
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Meet PIGEON Brands – Elyse Boulet, Canada
Founded in 1977, PIGEON Brands is an integrated independent communications agency with offices in Montreal and Toronto, Canada. The company offers impactful solutions to make brands buyable, lovable, and recommendable. Our agency creates ideas that make a mark for clients, such as IKEA, METRO, Danone, Corby Spirit, Wine, Wells, Irving, and Hershey.
We help brands express their differences through brand strategy, branding and design, packaging, advertising, in-store experience, digital content, and marketing. We work with them throughout the entire process, from a brand’s creation and latest innovation to the packaging, promotional campaigns, and everything in between.
We have a track record of generating tangible results that can boost sales by up to 400 percent. We’re proud to have received multiple awards within the industry, notably at The Dieline, GDUSA, PAC Global Awards, Grands Prix Dux, IDEA, and SIA Awards.
What are your favorite technologies when designing ice cream packaging or marketing campaigns?
At Pigeon, we build our process on equal parts rigor and alchemy. Whether we create brands, packaging, or communication initiatives, we use a simple four-phase process for all our clients, regardless of their industry:
1. Discovery
We start by learning everything we can about your brand, consumer, category, and what’s happening in culture.
Each new project also involves a unique market approach: ‘Face the Truth’ workshops. These intensive brainstorming sessions, which include different stakeholders, aim to discover precisely what it takes to make people buy, love, and recommend a brand.
We pinpoint the ‘moment of truth’ – the crucial three seconds during which people choose a product among many. It’s the critical moment in a consumer's purchase journey and a brand's defining moment.
2. Definition
In this second phase, we take all the great insights we’ve just learned and identify white space opportunities for the brand to win at the moment of truth.
Before heading into creative development, we develop strategic territories (strategic opportunity spaces). Getting the right insights before diving into creative is essential as we may miss a great opportunity that’s unique and ownable for the brand.
3. Development
Actual development begins when our agency and client are aligned. As a highly collaborative phase with our clients, we pressure-test our strategic territories and bring them to life creatively.
If timing and budgets allow, we recommend doing testing to gather final feedback before we move into our last phase.
4. Delivery
In the final phase, we take the winning concept, set up production artwork, retouch imagery, undergo thorough QA, and work closely with printing partners to ensure flawless execution.
What’s the advantage of using your agency/process/technology?
PIGEON creates work that delivers results at the moment of truth, particularly in the competitive retail environment. Almost 80 percent of our clients are in the CPG and retail sectors, setting our agency apart.
Building brand value and winning at the moment of truth are at the heart of every engagement. Our average client tenure of 14 years – well out of the norm – is a testament to the partnerships we create.
We become brand guardians for our clients and help ensure brand consistency. While consistently reinventing ourselves, we also deepen our knowledge of the brands and categories we are privileged to work with. Because of this, we’ve become a valid extension of our client’s teams.
How much time should a brand spend designing or redesigning its ice cream packaging or campaign?
It’s crucial to ensure you spend enough time completing your initial brand discovery and strategic phase to find your white space opportunity. Your team needs time for creativity and collaboration with our brand team. This includes completing consumer testing, creating mock-ups, conducting color tests, and ensuring production excellence.
In truth, there’s no right amount of time as it depends on the brand, project scale, and the overarching ask. But on average, you need 3-12 months before sending the material to the printers. Of course, this fluctuates depending on your approval processes and whether you’re integrating research.
What’s the number one mistake you wish all ice cream brands would stop making in their packaging design?
We wouldn’t frame it as a mistake, but as something we wish we saw more often! Though it may seem simple, investing in high-quality photography and visuals is one key way to ensure your brand stands out. Proper budgeting for these elements helps capture consumers' attention and align with your concept while providing rights management and avoiding any risks pertaining to those rights.
After all, we eat with our eyes first – visuals can make or break whether a customer picks up your product. Competition in the ice cream space is fierce, expanding with more and more players, including private label brands. Gone are the days when private labels only competed with better prices.
Great design is coming through and, in many cases, outperforming national brands with consistent platforms. This is why it’s important to be proud of your brand and put the product forward to create taste appeal and brand distinction.
What are the top pieces of advice you would offer a brand starting its next packaging or marketing campaign?
In today's fast-paced world, consumers seek moments of joy. Ice cream is a powerful tool to uplift spirits, boost dopamine levels, and foster happiness. Ice cream should be fun, and you should portray this on your packaging.
But at the same time, keep it simple. Whether you’re creating packaging or communication elements, focus on what’s important to win at the moment of truth.
Grocery shelves are the torture test for packaging. Creating beautiful packaging in an owned environment like a flagship store is easy. But unlike branded retail environments that allow for highly manicured merchandising, grocery stores’ combination of SKU volume, velocity, and limited staff engagement means your brand and its packaging are fending for themselves.
Finally, always put your consumer first. Understand their habits, what drives them, and what cultural movements are happening. Become obsessed with understanding their motivations so you can better serve their needs and deliver a great brand experience.
Meet Ramon Castillo – Freelance Creative, Spain
I’m a freelance creative with over 20 years of experience who thinks of ideas and how technology can empower them. For the last two years, I’ve been focusing on using generative AI to power creativity.
As a Midjourney (a generative AI tool for image creation) specialist and AI creative artist, I start with a text prompt. Then, I create visual art.
What are your favorite technologies when designing ice cream packaging or marketing campaigns, and what are the advantages of using your agency/process/technology?
I mainly use Midjourney but also other AI tools to improve the original image, change the size, or increase the sharpness.
Traditional photography and its required session, mock-up creation, and editing time can be laborious and expensive. And at the end of it all, the product in the image will look exactly like it does in real life (as long as the photographer does a great job!). Often, there’s a lack of creativity in this process.
Unlike traditional photography, I create my designs using AI prompts. By translating imagination into short text, I transform ideas into images and works of art, optimizing both time and financial resources.
For example, in the case of ice cream, I wanted to create images of bars and cones that held more profound significance. Ice cream products for children often have creative shapes, such as cartoons or animals. With ice cream holding such an important part of our childhood memories, why not use it to help children learn art?
I can accurately and immediately convert anything you can imagine into an image. When designing new packaging ideas, AI can be the perfect tool for testing options with focus groups.
And it’s all done in a quick turnaround time, too. Creating a quality image with generative AI can take around an hour or an hour and a half, including post-production.
What’s the number one mistake you wish all ice cream brands would stop making in their packaging design?
Dedicated marketing teams spend substantial time analyzing and innovating packaging. Although this is crucial, I encourage them to do so while keeping the consumer in mind.
Packaging often depicts what’s inside – the actual product. However, it should also reflect the consumer’s persona.
In other words, ensure your packaging reflects what the consumer thinks, what they want, and what excites them.
What are the top pieces of advice you would offer a brand starting its next packaging or marketing campaign?
Always focus on the consumer and use imagery to connect with them and their desires.
Equally important is to create innovative ways of presenting ice cream. For example, my suggestion for Helados Modernistas was to develop a serious theme unlike anything typically found on ice cream packaging. Pushing the status quo, could there be ice creams like necklaces of frozen coconut pearls or gold ice cream bracelets with vanilla flavor?
You should also incorporate technology into the packaging processes as much as possible. Technology makes the process more efficient and can generate improved results.
Wrapping Up: The Modern World of Ice Cream Packaging
Undoubtedly, the right packaging truly matters. After all, it’s the first thing buyers see while shopping online or in-store.
As we learned from Elyse Boulet and Ramon Castillo, proper planning, creativity, and execution help get your product into the hands of your consumers. At the same time, technology can play an important role in revolutionizing your image and connecting with your target market.
No matter the route you choose, one thing is clear. In this competitive industry, packaging is essential for your brand to stand out and succeed at that crucial moment of truth.
Want to discover more about packaging and design? Connect with Elyse by emailing eboulet@pigeonbrands.com or Ramon through Instagram (@ramoncasti_ai) or LinkedIn.
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ABOUT INNODELICE
Founded by former executives in the ice cream industry, INNODELICE aims to create a worldwide ecosystem of solutions within the frozen dessert industry. Thanks to the relationships fostered by INNODELICE, manufacturers, brands, importers, distributors, and suppliers can discover, buy, and sell solutions to grow their businesses. These solutions include co-manufactured and branded products and innovative and competitive ingredients, packaging, and services. Our collaboration model generates lower costs and fewer risks for our participating partners while optimizing their time to market. To learn more about INNODELICE, contact Andrea Montreuil or visit www.innodelice.com.
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