Have you got the sauce?
Your brand is the basis of your visual identity and is the way that you can communicate who you are to potential customers.
The identity of your business is represented by the branding and packaging that you choose which makes it SO important that you get it right.
You want to invoke the right emotions in your customers, and have your brand be instantly recognisable next to the vast amount of competition on the shelves next to it.
Branding at its heart begins with the understanding of who your customer base is.
Here’s a few questions you could ask yourself to help get started on branding;
Who are your customers?
Who do you envisage when you think about your customer base?
Are they old/ young?
Are they vegan?
Are they gluten free?
What is your USP?
It might be beneficial to identify an element of your brand that stands out from the competition, because with sauces, there is A LOT.
All it takes is a walk down the aisle in your local supermarket to see just how many sauces of all different flavours are on the market.
A couple of ideas may be to have your sauce be an unusual colour or flavour that is rarely seen on supermarket shelves.
Alternatively, the packaging itself could even be your USP! If you use your packaging effectively, it could help drive sales by making your product noticeable to consumers.
According to US packaging company WestRock, 81% of consumers tried something new because the packaging caught their eye! Additionally, a further 63% of people repurchased a product because of their packaging.
Statistics like these really show just how important it is to get your packaging right.
Where is your product being sold?
Are you aiming to be sold in supermarkets? What about niche places such as farm shops? Or maybe exclusively online?
Wherever you choose to sell your products, making these decisions early on in your branding journey will help you to tailor how your product is branded, marketed and packaged.
Who are you as a brand?
Ask yourself, who are you as a brand? What is your brand personality and what is its purpose?
Sauces can range from everyday household sauces such as ketchup and mayonnaise to sauces of all sorts of crazy flavours and colours.
Are you a brand for the everyday sauce user? Is your sauce a novelty? Or somewhere inbetween?
Depending on what you decide, is going to affect both your branding and packaging.
Utter Creatives Clay Oven Kitchen Branding Project
In 2022, Utter Creatives were tasked with creating the brand and packaging for Clay Oven Kitchen’s brand new curry sauce range, set to hit supermarket shelves this year! After the success of their sister brand Clay Oven Bakery, the founders wanted to create authentic tasting curry sauces made with natural ingredients whilst keeping the sauces authentic to their family recipes.
We used mandalas for inspiration, paired with bright and vibrant colours that really make the jars stand out on supermarket shelves.
The designs also incorporate the sauces’ individual ingredients into them, such as chilis within the Bhuna sauce packaging.
It was important that these sauces represented their family recipes, whilst also standing out on shelves.
Be Consistent
All successful branding stories start with a consistent brand.
The purpose of creating a visual brand identity is to reflect the brand values and personality, and doing this well means doing it consistently.
Elements such as colours used, font, imagery and logos all contribute to your brand’s visual identity.
This means that the packaging you choose should compliment and hold the same values that your business has to allow the customer to see who you are and what the brand stands for.
A good way for customers to resonate with your brand is having a recognisable logo that is used across all packaging and marketing materials.
Logos create brand recognition and in turn brand loyalty.
As well as this, a colour palette and font should be selected carefully to reflect your business.
An example of this would be a sauce company that focuses on hot/ chilli sauce may use reds, oranges, blacks etc to represent the temperature of their sauces. Whereas a company that sells bbq sauces for example probably would not make the same choices.
Once you have created your brand assets, you want to use these consistently across all your marketing platforms.
From your social media or website to print, marketing and packaging.
Having a consistent and solid brand identity will make customers see your brand as professional and trustworthy.
Take the next step by doing the groundwork and creating cohesive visuals that reflect your brand.
