Page 70 - Packaging News Magazine Sep-Oct 2019

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BRAND & PACK DESIGN
In the Loop
www.packagingnews.com.au
September-October 2019
Design and branding agency Loop Brands ensures clients receive not only design solutions, but branding solutions. Doris Prodanovic speaks to managing director Ed Kirk about the Loop Brands approach, and how the agility model for both the business, and branded packaging solutions, is the foundation for strong consumer engagement.
LOOP Brands is a branding con- sultancy with a deep heritage and specialty in packaging, ac- cording to managing director
Ed Kirk, who has lived many lives in the packaging and branding industry. With a
background in design and produc- tion, Kirk has been an artist, design- er, manager, business partner, and now focuses his time in client ser- vices, business development and strategy. An integral part of Loop Brands for 18 years, Kirk has over the last six years shifted the compa- ny from a tactical packaging studio, to a strategically-focused team with an agile, extended team of designers, photographers, copywriters and pro- duction experts.
“The brand engagement piece, not the channel, drives our solutions,” Kirk says. “When we focus and pri- oritise the brand communication
and factor in the target market, the translation to design is easy.”
Kirk tells PKN that one thing he’s noticed is how many agencies don’t give clients a design solution driven by consumer insight or branding. “In other words, it looks nice but there’s no engagement piece,” he says. “What’s the story? We’re all consum- ers, and as consumers we want a brand to believe in something and to stand for something. If that can be weaved onto pack, it makes that brand so much more powerful, and ultimately, more successful.”
Kellogg’s and Bayer Australia are some of the names that form Loop Brands’ foundational clientele. For decades, the studio has provided packaging and branding solutions for companies of this ilk, and Ed em- phasises on the importance of main- taining these relationships.
“I would say it’s because we’re putting ourselves into the shoes of the client, being a partner, and thinking with them,” he says. “Some clients, such as Kellogg’s, we have worked with for over ten years. We encourage long-term relationships and don’t put profit first. What’s for- tunate for us, we have a good mix of large and small clients. In this dy- namic market the spread between small and large is strategically very smart and creatively very exciting.”
Kirk often shares case studies of smaller start-ups and family compa- nies with his bigger-named clients. “With the small guys, we’re able to work in clear air. There’s no noise or layers of decision-making processes. These clients don’t normally have any budgets for marketing except for their packaging, so our team has to work their socks off. What is amaz- ing is how our work with small cli- ents flows back to large clients. When you see your work grow small businesses, it gives you the confi- dence and evidence to focus on what works. Our larger clients are starting to appreciate our pragmatic ap- proach to strategy, which feeds into our concepts and designs.”
THE STRATEGY EQUATION
The Loop Brands approach for client briefs is to focus on strategy and to go beyond a general overview. The team conducts an initial category