Five seconds – that’s the incredibly short window of opportunity that Irish food businesses have to communicate their brand message and convince shoppers to place a product in their shopping basket.
The make-or-break nature of food packaging design is underlined in a professional design guide launched by Cork-based Bullseye Food Marketing (bullseye.ie) .
Conor Hyde, managing director of Bullseye, advises: “The first thing any artisan food producer needs to do is to ensure that their product has a unique selling point that is going to work in the marketplace and the second is to communicate to their market through really strong packaging.
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“I have seen products that struggled with poor packaging take off once the brand was dressed properly. In the case of food products, there’s an incredibly short time lapse between the moment food packaging crosses the consumer’s line of sight and the ultimate purchase decision - in fact, it’s approximately five seconds.”
As Hyde points out, it’s all about ensuring that your product stands out from the crowd as this is what the buyers in the multiples are looking for. “The next step is to get a good distributor to take the product around the country and then it’s on to promotional tactics like PR and marketing.”
Hyde points out that the artisan food business is very attractive at the moment but a lot of people are romantically attracted to it without fully understanding that it is a high volume, low margin game and unless they gear up and become more efficient early, they will get burnt out.
“Irish food producers need to develop strong, recognisable brands that command long-term brand loyalty and higher margins.”