A lot of manufacturers think that the design of their cases or their cartons don’t really much impact on their brand. This is really unfortunate because you have to remember that you are really branding two kinds of people. You really have two audiences as far as your casepacking and your cartons are concerned.
While you might think that your end users or consumers don’t really have any contact with your bulk casing or your casepacking, you are mistakenly assuming that just because this is the case, your casepacking really has no brand impact at all. Indeed, your casepacking also impacts the experience of your distributor. In many cases, your distributors are actually your most important audience.
Think about it, who has the more impact on your bottom line? Somebody who buys from you occasionally throughout the year or the distributor who buys from your in bulk constantly throughout the year? I hope the answer is a no-brainer.
You really have to pay careful attention as to the brand signals that your casepacking is sending out. You have to engineer branding strategies into your casepacking. Otherwise, you are completely losing out on a tremendous opportunity to make the right impression with your distributors. Here are four ways casepacking can impact your brand.
Clear brand identity
Make it a point when you’re dealing with your cartoning service provider to ensure that your brand identity is clear in your packaging. Even though this is bulk packaging, even though the end users probably are not going to see your cartons, it’s really important that the qualities that your want to communicate be clearly expressed in the brand identity of your carton and packaging materials.
Brand consistency
There has to be a consistency between the actual branded end user product and the cartoning brand. This is very important because you’re communicating to your distributor that whatever value you bring to the table with your end user products is the same value you bring to your distributors. If your consumers think of your products as trustworthy, dependable, and worth buying, these are the kinds of signals that you should be communicating constantly to your distributor.
Maximizing brand opportunities
You have to remember that end users do use cartons from time to time. Don’t overlook this opportunity to brand end users. Sure, it doesn’t happen all the time. But when people do end up using your cartons, at least be in a position get a chance to brand them.
Send secondary signals
There are many other secondary signals that you are sending with your casepacking decisions. You can send out the signal that your operation is efficient, that everything is standardized, and that you are focused on profitability. These are secondary signals that give your distributors and intermediaries more confidence in having you as a manufacturing source and as a long-term partner.