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#035 Kaffeen: Helping Young Food and Drink Businesses Get FMCG-Ready

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Portrait of Charlotte Ellis who helps young food and drink businesses get FMCG ready
Photo courtesy Charlotte Ellis.

 

Charlotte Ellis Describes How Kaffeen Helps Young Food and Drink Businesses Get FMCG-Ready

Have you ever wondered how your marketing and design would fare on the shelf of an FMCG operation like a supermarket?

Maybe you’re planning to launch your food or drink product into FMCG and are anxious to make sure you can stand your ground alongside established brands.

If you need to get FMCG-ready, it’s time to meet Charlotte Ellis, founder of Kaffeen.

Kaffeen helps ambitious food and drink companies get their design and marketing ready for the cut-throat world of FMCG.

What You’ll Hear About in this Episode

In this episode of the show Charlotte Ellis:

  • explains why a brand analysis is the first exercise you should perform before thinking of launching into FMCG
  • describes the key elements of a brand analysis, including the questions you should ask yourself in order to become FMCG-ready
  • explains how a brand analysis enables you to benchmark your products in relation to your competitors, and why this is important
  • shows how critically appraising your branding and marketing highlights areas for improvement
  • discusses why developing a design and branding strategy will give your brand the best possible chance of flying off the retail shelves
  • gives a host of useful (mostly free) online resources that will help you learn about branding and design for your food or drink product
  • describes the complimentary brand analysis that Kaffeen offers to early-stage food and drink companies

Click on the Player Below to Listen to the Show

Get the Show Transcript

If audio isn’t your thing, you can download a transcript of the show here: Ep #035: Kaffeen: Helping Young Food and Drink Businesses Get FMCG Ready.

You can also find the full transcript of the show at the end of this post.

Very Sound Bites from Charlotte Ellis

Check out the chart below for some direct quotes from Charlotte during the show.

Direct quotes about how young food and drink businesses can get FMCG ready from Charlotte Ellis of Kaffeen

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The Kaffeen logo. Image courtesy Charlotte Ellis.
The Kaffeen logo. Image courtesy Charlotte Ellis.

Links Mentioned in the Show

Thanks for Listening

Thanks for listening to the show. If you are a food or drink producer who would like to come on the show (there’s no charge) to talk about your products, or if you are an industry professional who would like to talk about your services, don’t hesitate to get in touch with me by using the Contact Form on this website or by tweeting or dee-emming me @FoodDrinkShow.

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Transcript of the Show

Catherine Moran:

Hello, and welcome to episode 35 of The Artisan Food & Drink Business Show, the show where artisan producers tell their brand story and share the secrets of their success. I’m your host, Catherine Moran.

If you run a young food or drink business and want to break into the FMCG market, this episode is for you. In fact, even if you don’t want to break into the FMCG market this episode will still interest you because it’ll give you a great insight into the world of professional food and drink design and marketing. It features Charlotte Ellis, who is the founder of Kaffeen, a London based design and marketing consultancy.

Charlotte has a “big agency” background and worked on the design and marketing of both big and small food, drink and other FMCG brands. As you’ll hear on the show, she clearly has a soft spot that translates into empathy for early stage food and drink businesses.

The subject of this episode is about how you can ensure your food or drink branding and marketing are ready for your launch into FMCG land, a cut-throat environment if ever there was one. Getting ready for FMCG requires an analysis of your brand, which assesses where you are now versus where you want (or need) to be and, importantly, how your branding and marketing compare with the competitors you’ll be facing on the FMCG shelves. It gives you a benchmark, in other words.

And the whole point of this critical appraisal of your branding and marketing is to firstly highlight areas for improvement and then develop a design and branding strategy that will give your brand the best possible chance of flying off the retail shelves.

Charlotte offers a complimentary brand analysis and on the show she describes the various elements of that analysis. Also, towards the end of the show, she gives some great resources for you to learn more about branding and design for your food or drink products. Let’s now hear from Charlotte.

Welcome Charlotte, to The Artisan Food and Drink Business Show. Thank you so much for taking time today to talk to us about food and drink branding, specifically FMCG, which is a fast moving consumer goods branding. You are the founder of Kaffeen, which is K-A-F-F-E-E-N, a design and marketing consultancy in London.

Before we talk about the services that you offer and some tips and techniques that you have for food and drink businesses, would you mind telling us what you did before you set up Kaffeen?

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah, absolutely. First of all, thank you very much for having me. I’m a big fan of this podcast so it’s a privilege to be on here.

Catherine Moran:

Oh, brilliant! Fantastic, that’s great to hear.

Charlotte Ellis:

No problems. Yes, I’ve recently set up Kaffeen. It’s the title for the consultancy that I run. Prior to that, I worked for a highly successful, brilliant, but big brand and packaging design agency called BrandOpus. They specialise in FMCG brands. It’s really their homeland. The clients include prestigious household names like PizzaExpress, Schwartz, Belvedere Vodka, Fox’s Biscuits, Twinings, et cetera, so a really broad portfolio.

They also work with some early-stage brands, so Piper’s Crisps, New Beginnings, Choc on Choc, Vivid Drinks, which is a brand some people out there in your audience you may be familiar with.

Really, it was the smaller brands that I find incredibly exciting. When it was time for me to move on after five years at BrandOpus, I had an ambition to start my own business. Part of that comprises of helping those early-stage brands across various different touch points because, as you know, when you’re a small brand, you really have to multitask and so it’s not specifically about any one thing.

Catherine Moran:

Absolutely, yeah. You said that you worked there for five years and then you struck out on your own. Was that something you always wanted to do? Set up your own business?

Charlotte Ellis:

Absolutely. I come from a very entrepreneurial family. I think it’s been baked into me from when I was young. It’s really acceptable to start your own business. I think that translates into my clients. Yeah, it’s an exciting adventure.

Catherine Moran:

You’ve got a fantastic pedigree behind you to bring to clients. It’s something, the branding side of things, is something that food and drink businesses are always terribly interested to know more about. Would you therefore give us an overview of what Kaffeen does?

Charlotte Ellis:

Absolutely. In a nutshell, we’re a design and marketing consultancy with a specialism in helping early-stage ambitious brands. Built from our own experience of working with clients in a consultancy role, it’s become really evident, as I mentioned just before, that you really have to do all that multitasking. If you’re an ambitious early-stage FMCG brand, there’s always too little time for everything. You’re more than likely going to be product-focused, which is absolutely where your focus should be, because if the product’s not great, then no amount of design will cover that up.

Many of these people are aware that brands and marketing is vital, they just don’t really know where to start with it, which is understandable. Really, Kaffeen has come from that experience of working with people and consulting with people and understanding that, actually, the world of brand design is really intimidating to them. They don’t really know what their options are in terms of working with suppliers. I’ve developed an outfit that helps people to find the services that they need.

Catherine Moran:

Right. How do you work with clients? Do you work in person or remotely?

Charlotte Ellis:

As we all know, we all need to be really flexible, time-wise or financially. Not everybody is based in London, which is where we are. We absolutely… we understand that. It depends really on the stage of the project. A lot of clients, we work with remotely via Skype, phone calls, emails. But of course, there’s no replacement for meeting in person and definitely at one part of the project, we definitely aim to meet in person.

Usually, that comes upfront around the time that we’re putting together a brand analysis, which is something I’ll talk a bit more in about in a second. Also, when we’re in the brand exploration stage of the project — which is really the “airing of everything” stage of the project before any design even happens — we understand your aims… It’s a brand strategy stage basically, to understand what you’re trying to achieve. Certainly, a stage at which we like to meet with people.

Catherine Moran:

Right. I saw on your website that you have this concept of walking through with new clients, a pre-analysis, a set of pre-analysis questions. These are questions that you ask clients just before you start working with them. Would you give us an idea of the sorts of questions you ask them?

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah, absolutely. Just to clarify what that means, so basically a lot of brands, as previously mentioned, are so product-focused, and don’t really understand what tools are out there in terms of brand design and marketing. To clarify what we actually do, because marketing is a word that covers a very broad space, I think it’s really important to clarify with people where we’re going to add best value. How that happens is by offering them, it’s a complimentary brand analysis, which basically takes into account some of their key burning questions that we’d need to know about their ambitions as a company.

Then, with that in mind, take a look at their brand, their design and their positioning, and to really rate them against key players in the marketplace, so they can understand where improvement is needed — where there’s room for improvement — basically. That’s an absolutely complementary stage that happens before we would agree to work together with a client. It really gives them options about whether this is something they want to address now or later, with us or with somebody else.

Really, the questions that we ask people before we go into the analysis session really fall down into two categories. One is about thinking big and the other more about practicalities. So, under “Thinking Big”, I think it’s really important… Sometimes you’re so focused on the day-to-day, it’s about taking a step back and understanding what’s your brand’s unique point of difference.

It’s really interesting sometimes the answer you get from a perspective client… it’s very different from how we would interpret that. What’s the biggest ambitions for that person’s brand, because many people build a brand to exit at some point. Many people build a brand because it’s an outward, public-facing seal of approval on top of the product that they’ve been making all their lives and likely will continue to make. People go into FMCG with very many different reasons and I think it’s important to understand that.

Also, in a more kind of medium-term perspective, what’s their dream goal within the next year? For many people, that might be securing the all-important listing. It might be graduating off a market stall into independents. It could be a whole variety of things.

Then on the practical side of things, how many ranges does a client have? How many products are in each? What’s the hero product? Those things are really important because we find that consumers often get confused when a range is too big or it’s too hard to navigate the portfolio of the brand that’s presented to them. So we like to take into account how can we break that down in the most digestible way for the client. It’s important to understand that upfront.

What are the current selling platforms and how you’ll see this change in the foreseeable future. Because, as we know, a lot of retail is moving online and If somebody’s designed to be… has an ambition that they’re going to be online only for a long period of time, then I think it’s really important to cater to that in your design. Equally, a pack that’s presented on a shelf in a major multiple has to fight a very different battle to one that’s on a market store. Its owner, its brand owner, is sat next to it, is explaining why it’s so wonderful and why you should buy it. So, really important things to understand in advance.

Catherine Moran:

With the first question there, you’re talking about USP or unique selling point, unique selling proposition, and you mentioned that’s one of the areas that you’ve come across as a disconnect between you and the perspective client. Why is that do you think? Is it because clients have this view, maybe they’re too close to the products and they can’t see the wood for the trees or?

Charlotte Ellis:

First of all, I think it’s important to point out that the consultancy you work with on the brand is acting as a proxy for the consumer. If they have an opinion about what your point of difference is, it’s because that’s likely what the consumer will be saying. And I think what’s really important to understand there, where I feel sympathetic with smaller brands is that, often, they’re being compared to different things in the marketplace, if they’re going for investment or it’s a meeting with suppliers — they have to draw parallels between what they do and what’s already out there in the marketplace.

It becomes very easy to group yourself with another brand, a competitive brand, or brand they aspire to — their point of difference — and actually forget what makes you so different in the first place. Really, there are so many horrible marketing jargon acronyms out there, but I think unique selling point, or some people call it USP, is so important because that’s really the hook from which you can build your brand proposition, your brand design, et cetera. It’s really the thing that’s going to make you really distinctive on the shelf when it’s registered in a visual way.

Yeah, I think it’s the most challenging, but on both sides, not just the client’s. I think it’s the most challenging for the consultancy who work with them, as well. Which is why it’s important that this is the stage of work that takes into account the biggest strategy behind your brand, rather than just getting stuck in and starting to design something.

Catherine Moran:

All right. It sounds like the USP is, as you said, just said, the most challenging aspect for clients to really nail and be clear on.

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah.

Catherine Moran:

Are there any situations where people come to you with their products and they’re quite samey or you found it quite challenging to get to the nub of the USP?

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah. Actually it’s interesting because I’m having a lot of conversations similar to that at the moment. I think the important thing to remember is that, anybody new joining a marketplace, whether they’re creating a new category or they’re competing against a bigger player or a pre-existing player in there, will be bringing a different ethos to play in there. And I think that’s really what’s important about getting down to the nub, as you say, of what that is, what makes them slightly different.

Yeah, but there’s no shame in being the second person to a marketplace, or anything else. The hard work is done for you. A lot of the brands that I work with who are creating a new category where the consumer really doesn’t understand what this brand is about, what the product is about, have a really difficult job in the brand design and packaging to not only demonstrate that they’re a brand that’s confident, authoritative, you should trust them, you should buy from them, but also whatever it is

I mean, they have to explain, they have to do an education exercise on the front and back of pack in an eye-catching enough way that you immediately understand what it is, think actually, “there is a need for that in my life” and pop it in the shopping basket. Which is, it sounds all good and well when we’re saying it here and we’re on Skype discussing or you’re listening on the podcast later. Actually, at the supermarket, the vast majority of the decisions we make are irrational. People are running around popping things into their baskets, into their trolley. You might even have a screaming child in tow. There’s really no time to digest these things. I would say, whether you’re a new brand, a new category or whether you’re a competitor, you’ve got your work cut out either way.

Catherine Moran:

Yeah. Because we’re talking, in supermarkets in particular, the time frame is milliseconds, often, isn’t it? Certainly seconds anyway. You haven’t got a big window of opportunity to influence people if you’re a brand. Have you come across many companies who you would say have too many products in their range?

Charlotte Ellis:

I think that this is actually where artisan food and drink businesses have the upper hand. If you’re an early-stage or an aspirational, aspiring new brand rather, then actually you have the upper hand over some of the bigger players in the market. There are some really big multi-national companies out there who have a series of different brands in their portfolio, very well-known names, and the temptation for them to reach those aims and goals each year of building more penetration within the marketplace, building numbers of consumers, increasing sales, et cetera, is to create innovation. And often, that innovation ends up being nonsensical.

Catherine Moran:

Interesting.

Charlotte Ellis:

Brands with a whole raft of products in their portfolio and you wonder, on reflection, objectively, from a distance, what they’re doing in there? It does seem a little odd. I think when smaller brands are innovating, it tends to be from the heart. It tends to be, the fact they haven’t done it already, generally relates to money, investment, and time et cetera. By the time they come around innovating, extending their range, it tends to be with lots of thought in advance. They’ve really nailed their product and there’s a lot of love and sincerity gone into it.

Catherine Moran:

So you go through eight key brand points that you grade their current brand against. Would you be happy to walk through those brand points as well? Just to give us an insight into what sort of things you’re looking at and advising them on.

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah, the first point that we measure people up against is when we take a look at whether there’s a bigger idea behind their brand or whether it’s just product-led. The second point is about product clarity. So, daft question, but as regards do people understand what it is, and that relates back to what I mentioned earlier about innovation and starting a new category, et cetera.

Catherine Moran:

Mm-hmm. (Affirmative) Yeah.

Charlotte Ellis:

Next, is ownability. So, yes, your product is amazing, of course it is, but the problem is that leaves you vulnerable to major category players who wants in on the action. I think it’s really important for brands to consider how easy would it be for a bigger company or competitor to steal, in inverted commas, their brand because there’s only so far that IP [intellectual property] protection will go. And it’s possible to protect a brand through design. It’s a really interesting area in its own right. The next one is about layers of information. Does the brand depend on words to explain why it’s different or do you let visuals do the talking where it’s possible? This relates to what we said earlier.

Catherine Moran:

Are you suggesting there that it’s better to let visuals do the talking?

Charlotte Ellis:

I think it’s very… symbols and images are much more powerful than words and we talked before about how little time people have when they’re in the supermarket. We know that as humans, we decipher symbols much quicker than words. It makes absolute sense that we use symbols to explain to the consumer what we’re about. Yes, I think it’s vital that we learn to use them.

Catherine Moran:

Yeah. Mm-hmm. [Affirmative] Clearly, copy is very important but I suppose that the thing that… I heard this phrase sometime ago: “the packaging attracts but the copy retains”. Something like that. So, the visual will draw you in like a magnet, if it’s done well. Then once you’re in, right, you’ve potentially got someone hooked: “Let’s use some copy now to tip them over the edge and buy the product”.

Charlotte Ellis:

It’s a very interesting perspective. I think, definitely, on a pack, there were some excellent analyses online about hair care commercials. About the different types of consumer that exist. The things that they need ticking off the list of things that they look for before they’ll commit to buying the product. And you get the people who are led by emotion, which are the vast majority of us. Then you get people who need a bit more of an explanation. Then we come back to the L’Oreal Elvive adverts when Jennifer Aniston swishes her hair around and then says, “Now, for the science bit.” A lot…

Catherine Moran:

Right, yes, yes, very good, yes.

Charlotte Ellis:

… a lot of people use adverts to help them understand that this is the brand for them. Then, the next point is around memory structure. How differentiated is a brand from the competition on the shelf, which is obviously very important. Then it’s a really important point around ranging, which we touched on earlier: do you need ranges or variance within your brand? Is it clear what product belongs to each range? And how easy and quick it is for the consumer to navigate when they’re at the shelf.

Tone of voice, you’ve just mentioned previously. Design, of course, should be considered. Tone of voice should be considered but it’s really important that they’re considered in conjunction. Because if you’re demonstrating uniqueness of your brand in an emotional way and your tone of voice, not just the descriptive one, then it’s important that marries up with the emotion that you’re evoking through the pack design. It should be considered together.

Then authority and confidence. This is almost the most important one for some smaller-stage brands. Because when you’re an early-stage brand, you need to really look a lot bigger than your boots. Because you need to inspire confidence in your consumers, and not just your consumers but before you can get there, you need to inspire confidence in the buyers and you need to inspire confidence in your investors. There’s a whole series of people. You really don’t want to look like the new kid in town in front of those people. Which is obviously where design comes in again.

Catherine Moran:

How can that sort of excitement associated with the new kid on the block…

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah.

Catherine Moran:

How can you strike that balance between the exciting new kid on the block who’s also the trustworthy, dependable brand or product that will deliver on flavour or dependability or availability, I should say. How do you strike the balance between those two things?

Charlotte Ellis:

Really, that’s the magic when it comes through to design. The first stage of the actual design work is called the concept stage. Really at that stage you’re taking together all the information we’ve already heard. So, around what makes you unique, product traits, any claims that you’re allowed to make, that the EU [European Union] allow you make. Who you are and the reason you started this brand, what your ambition is both long-term, short-term, medium-term, and really infusing all this information together and outputting it in a visual way.

At concept stage we explore around three, minimum of three, different routes. They all look very, very different from each other and in that sense, the word “route” means a design scheme, a look and feel, a different tone of voice and way of speaking, different colour palettes. Each of those three routes, because they look exceptionally different from the other, and the whole point in there is to challenge because often we find amongst ourselves, but also with the brands that we work with, it’s very hard to discuss design and emotions, etc. It’s actually much easier to react to symbols and visuals, much like it is for the consumer at the shelf.

Really, it’s by challenging each other and saying what we like and what we don’t like and the reasons why that we eventually evolve to something which encapsulates all of the things that we laid out during that strategy stage, everything that’s in the brief, and translates to something that the consumer can easily digest and understand as well.

Unfortunately, there’s no secret sauce that I can just say. For the benefits of everyone, I think the key there is about the chemistry with the people that you’re working with, that you’re collaborating with, to get through to a brand presentation that jumps off the shelf.

Catherine Moran:

You’ve brought us through the eight key brand points that you grade brands against. What about some of your favourite food or drink FMCG brands? Would you care to tell us what they might be?

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah, absolutely. The first one I want to mention is Method. I don’t know if you’re familiar with Method. I think what they’ve done in how they’ve used structural design to make something that’s commonly accepted as being very functional  — and we’re talking about products for around the house from toilet cleaner through to hand wash, stuff that’s becoming accepted as being very functional — they’ve made it very attractive and very aspirational. That’s a huge shift when you think about the commodities that they’re working with.

I don’t think clients always consider how structure can greatly impact the consumer’s opinion of the brand. It’s an excellent tool that’s not always deployed for many different reasons, often because of speed, often because it’s another a complication that somebody’s packaging and print company can’t deal with. Equally, because it’s often expensive to go through that stage of structural design, as well.

But if you look at Method, really, it’s the only thing that’s setting them aside — aside from great products — I acknowledge that. But, you know, Ecover, anyone else in that environmentally friendly, household product category, could’ve done what they’ve done. They’ve chosen to do that through structural design and I think that’s fascinating.

Marmite is one where you either love or hate the contents of the actual pot, but you can’t argue with how recognisable the brand is. It’s full of quirky design traits, a colour palette that’s so distinctive and it’s identifiable at 20 paces in the supermarket. There’s really no way that a major multiples own brand is going to outpace Marmite.

Catherine Moran:

Have you seen, I presume you have seen their squeezy… I don’t know how new it is, but their squeezy bottle now?

Charlotte Ellis:

No, it’s not something I’ve got in my own house, but they have been really playful over the past few years with how they could work with that brand. One of their really interesting things that I saw recently, in fact it’s probably not even that recent now, but there was a project at Selfridges which was looking at the power of brand. They actually removed the Marmite words from the front of the pack, and it was still really recognisable. I mean, I can’t think of many brands that you could do that with, where consumers could still buy into it.

Catherine Moran:

Fascinating, but probably something like coke, Coca-Cola?

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah. There were a few … It’s a very interesting project. It’s actually, if you Google “Marmite No Logo”, I’m sure you’ll come up with some of the other projects that were included in that as well.

Catherine Moran:

“Marmite No Label”?

Charlotte Ellis:

“No logo”.

Catherine Moran:

Oh, “No logo”. Right. Yeah. Okay.

Charlotte Ellis:

Variations on that I’m sure will come up in the images search.

Catherine Moran:

Yeah. What about other food or drink products?

Charlotte Ellis:

Absolutely. Hendrick’s, I think is a really interesting one. It’s the Hendrick’s Gin. They’ve mastered the art of crafting a brand that oozes heritage, confidence and authority. Impressively, it’s only 17 years old. I mean, they started this in 1999. It’s no mean feat, when you think that many of the other long-established brands, particularly in the spirit space, are really tempted to transition to contemporary brand design to increase appeal to a younger audience.

I often wondered if they’ve really considered the cost of discarding the heritage and history, the next generation doesn’t know what they previously looked like. I love that… I find it so refreshing that Hendrick’s are inventing their own history, effectively, and to see that consumers are really embracing that as well.

Catherine Moran:

Mm-hmm. [Affirmative] Yeah.

Charlotte Ellis:

Then the final brand that I very much love, which was a project that was worked on when I was at my old agency, by a very close friend of mine, who worked particularly close doing this project. Buckwud is a beautifully detailed brand. It’s a maple syrup brand from quite a well-established sauces and spreads company. It shows that new brands don’t have to be boring. Buckwud is an entirely new brand from, as I said, an existing company, where they really embraced this idea of being quirky using illustrations and not being afraid to look different. Which makes everything else on the honey spreads and home baking fixtures recede quite a lot. I think that’s a particularly impressive brand.

Catherine Moran:

Actually, is that something that you develop as well, names, product names? Just thinking about Buckwud, there.

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah. Absolutely. There’s a really interesting story behind Buckwud, but the listeners can discover that from themselves if they buy a pack and read on the back. There’s a beautiful piece of copywriting on the back of the pack, which describes where the name comes from on that particular brand.

Absolutely, I mean, many of the times we first… Much of the time when we first speak to a client, they are very much product people, as we said before. They’ll have stumbled across us and they’ll have created something weird and wonderful that they know the wider world would want to see. They really have no idea where to start in any kind of presentation, and that includes names. So, yeah, absolutely. That is part of the skillset that we deploy as needed.

Catherine Moran:

Very exciting. I think that’s a very exciting part of branding, the whole thing of naming companies, naming products. Pretty challenging as well.

Charlotte Ellis:

Very challenging. Very fun.

Catherine Moran:

But when you light on the one then you’ve got that eureka moment: “This is it, This is just perfect.”

Charlotte Ellis:

Yup.

Catherine Moran:

Charlotte, would you recommend, be able to recommend a book or other online resource for early-stage companies who want to learn a bit more about branding?

Charlotte Ellis:

One of the things that we haven’t talked about so far is the impact of recent studies in science, particularly neuroscience, on the ways in which consumers make decisions. I think this is a hugely important area for brand design. Neuroscience often helps us to understand what appeals to consumers and allows us to design to make brands more ergonomic in a sense, visually, and more likely to be purchased, which is ultimately what we’re all aiming for.

There are some excellent reads into understanding the modern consumer mindset and how to appeal to them. Some of the very little… I’m not going to say “heavy”, they’re not huge academic tomes, but you could, I think, easily dip in an out of, and some are more relevant to the FMCG brand than others. One in particular I’d recommend is Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. That’s based on his Nobel Prize-winning paper into how consumers make decisions. There are some fascinating insights in there.

Then, along similar lines is Predictably Irrational by Dan Ariely. Nudge by Cass Sunstein. And Unconscious Branding by Douglas Van Praet. There are a whole series of other ones out there, but they’d be a good starting point, even if you just read one, read Thinking Fast and Slow. It’s a good place to start.

In terms of other resources, a haunt of designers is The Dieline, a website, a packaging website, which started as a blog for good packaging and it’s where brand designers go for inspiration, sometimes. It’s also where they like to see their branding displayed once they’ve finished the project and it’s hit the shelf. It’s just really interesting, I think, for clients, as well as people brand side, when they’re trying to understand what does a good pack look like, and perhaps help them to decipher some of the words that they’re hearing the agency say that they don’t fully understand if they’re looking at different reference materials, then that really helps. So The Dieline is a wonderful world of brand and packaging inspiration that I wholly recommend to take a look at.

Then, the other group that I’d really like to recommend here because, although it’s not specifically about branding, that’s one aspect of it. I know they’ve being visitors on the podcast before, but the Grocery Accelerator is an excellent one-stop shop for mentoring, funding and connections that will help brands of various different sizes accelerate their business and so much more.

They’ve recently launched a Facebook page, which is just a place where it’s much easier to share links and interesting relevant content. Again, another entirely free resource, just worth taking a dip into every now and again, even if you don’t feel like you want to apply for the Grocery Accelerator Programme for whatever reason.

Catherine Moran:

That’s, of course Rob Ward’s and his colleagues. That’s his…

Charlotte Ellis:

Yeah. Simon… [Lacey]

Catherine Moran:

And Paddy [Willis]. Yeah, that a very exciting venture, I think. I wish that was around when I was running my food business.

Charlotte Ellis:

Yes.

Catherine Moran:

Well, you’ve given us this fantastic insight into the way you go about helping food and drink businesses into the FMCG world. Where can people reach you online? What’s your website and your social media?

Charlotte Ellis:

Online we’re at kaffeen.club .That’s spelled K-A-F-F-E-E-N.club And equally, there are links on there through to various social media, Twitter is probably the main spot. But yes, absolutely, if you’re an aspiring brand out there, whatever stage you’re at and just want to understand, you want to understand in terms of bench mark where your brand is in an objective way, and understand what next steps for you might be in terms of branding and marketing, then head to the website and just drop me a line through there. There’s a little form to fill in, it’s very quick, and I’ll get straight back to you and we can go from there. It’d be lovely to hear from some of your listeners.

Catherine Moran:

It sounds like an absolute no-brainer to me. I’ll be encouraging all my listeners to get a touch. That’s fantastic Charlotte. Thank you very much for your time.

Charlotte Ellis:

Not at all. Speak to you soon.

Catherine Moran:

You too. Take care then.

Charlotte Ellis:

Thank you very much for having me.

Catherine Moran:

Bye-bye.

Charlotte Ellis:

Bye-bye.

Catherine Moran:

Bye-bye.

I hope you found Charlotte’s description of how she helps young food and drink businesses get ready to break into the FMCG market useful. Don’t forget that Charlotte will do a complimentary brand analysis for you. You’ve got everything to gain and nothing to lose. To contact Charlotte, check out the Kaffeen website at www.kaffeen.club and she’s on Twitter as @KAFFEEN_LDN.

All links mentioned in the show are available at the show’s website, which is myartisanbusiness.com. Most of the books Charlotte recommended are available online as free downloads. You can also download a free transcript of the show there. To get updates on when I publish new episodes of the show, subscribe to my email list at myartisanbusiness.com and I’ll let you know when new episodes are live.

If you are enjoying the show, would you please leave me a review on iTunes. I’d appreciate that greatly, thank you. That’s all for this show. You can find me on Twitter as @FoodDrinkShow so please do get in touch if you have any comments or questions.

Until next time, I’m Catherine Moran, happy cooking, happy brewing, happy fermenting and thank you for listening.

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