How to Design Packaging for Ecommerce Brands: Operators Build (E4)

22:23Chris Ganz:Curtis, what's our thinking right now in terms of number flavors? Is the idea to kind of come up with one kind of hallmark flavor or to have a sweet flavor? We were going to launch with one, just one Hallmark flavor and then expand on that if, if necessary. But you know, it's, it's yeah. I mean, as we all know, it's, it's unique and you got to find something super neutral and familiar and people that want to have repeat the same thing every single night. If this is a daily supplement, you don't want to get tired of a, you know, one flavor. So.

22:59Yeah.

22:59Chris Ganz:Makes sense. So, all right, keep going, Chris. So, uh, What else would you like to share about this design before we talk about it?

23:06Winks team:Yeah, well, I think that just kind of wanted to show how this design can kind of come across in sort of different areas of the brand as well. So thinking about how that packaging, you know, you're utilizing this color palette, you're utilizing this element of sort of the winking face. And we have this sort of like dashed tear mark here that you can use and bring in the wink face as well. just what that looks like to bring it into things like website. So you're able to kind of bring in some of these visual cues as well on the website and on something like, you know, something that's never actually going to see the light of day, but just really allows the brand as a whole to really be shown on something like a billboard.

23:50Yeah.

23:51Chris Ganz:So Matt Curtis, I'd love to hear you guys' thoughts on this design. I mean, the one observation I'll make is that when we started talking about the name, which I think the name is great. Curtis was the name? Yeah, there's an old saying, get 40 winks. And so it's like back in the 1800s, 40 winks was get, you know, optimize your sleep with a, you know, some sort of nap. And, and then it went from 40 winks into, into the concept of just shortening like one syllable word winks. And, and that's how we came up with it. Yeah. it's such a great, I guess, just as an aside here, it's such a great name. And honestly, one of the reasons I got excited when Matt first brought this concept up to me was just, I love the name and I think name matters a ton.

24:42Chris Ganz:And one of the things that we found, it's interesting with Simple Modern when we started it, in a lot of ways, we just took two words that have positive connotations and we threw them together but it served us pretty well um that simple modern i guess modern has a little bit to do with drinkware but here you've got a word that ties in perfectly with sleep but it has a really positive connotation like when i think about wink i just think that's a positive word and so one of the very first things that popped into my head i don't know if i even shared this with with you chris i don't think I did but it's just like man we got to incorporate you know the winking emoji or the winking uh kind of uh semicolon is that right semicolon uh in in this somehow and so I really it's very distinctive I can't think of an example of somebody in including a semicolon in a logo this way that's so like obviously on brand have you did you see this anywhere else Chris

25:43Winks team:I didn't see it anywhere else from what I was looking at. That's not to say that there's not someone out there that's utilizing it, but none of the major players were utilizing it. I love how creative it is.

25:56Chris Ganz:You think about, like you actually just said it, it's a winking eye. It's actually a winking eye. Yeah, so super creative for sure. Matt, what do you think? Yeah, I think quality of the name and the fact that it's a single syllable and then this is like as a word mark this is probably my favorite word mark of all the concepts that i saw um i i just love that it's easy to text as well so like the logo holds whether you're texting it it's an email it's in visual because it is literally a keyboard character

26:29Winks team:that is a great point i think i think to add to what you're saying too matt is uh there was something about when the airbnb went through their kind of initial redesign but you know way back and I think it was maybe like 2012 or something like that. The desire for the logo to be so easy that anyone can draw it. And that's usually a really positive thing for your brand is whenever you're able to, you know, anyone can text it out. Anyone can draw a semicolon. That's just usually a sign that you're on a really strong mark. Okay.

27:04Chris Ganz:This is awesome. All right.

27:06Winks team:We'll move on to the next option. Yeah. Yeah. So for option two, to go back to the territories, we incorporated systematic sleeping and refined relief. We're utilizing soft curves and classic iconic design. Use of green makes the brand feel like you can get a great night of sleep and feel healthy while doing it. So the three words I'd use to describe this is simple, earthy, and iconic. This is the word mark. So using more of a soft serif type face, lowercase, making it maybe feel a little bit more approachable while using that serif to make it feel a little bit more classic and traditional. Kind of makes it feel like a familiar old friend and having that crescent moon used for the dot of the eye allows for it to be quickly tied into the idea of what you're doing of sleeping with the name Winx.

27:58Winks team:In terms of the logo marks, utilizing this nice green just It just helps, like I said, make it feel a little bit more healthy. And then you can kind of see what happens whenever you can strip it down to just a simple, for the first one we had just the semicolon would be kind of the single icon favicon that you'd use for this. For this one, the monogram would be the W and you can tuck in this crescent nicely underneath the overhang of the W. It really makes it a really nice clean mark for this brand. This was something, so for the packaging, we've added in some clouds to kind of maybe make it feel a little bit more moody give a little bit more of a premium feel and then still calling out the different elements that are in there but this is the call of design for better rest so really this one is just bringing in a little bit more of a premium look while having some elements that make it feel approachable and friendly at the same time.

28:55Winks team:And I think that this color would really allow for it to be standing out in the shelf because it's on the digital shelf as well, because there's no other brand that's utilizing that green color. So this would really be an ownable color for you guys. And this is what it could maybe look like on something like websites. So again, using a little bit more premium photography, bringing in some nice sort of cloud imagery in the background, really makes me want to fall asleep personally. And then what this could maybe look like in terms of the whole system. So those clouds become really an iconic element for this direction for Winx.

29:34Winks team:And then just some nice moody green allows for it to be used as like a more of a premium distinguished element. So let's talk about this one. What do you guys think? I'm getting back into the weeds. One of the things I'm probably the rustiest on is email. I'm super excited to be using OmniSend. They're using them on Winx. We're AI-pilled. We are using it to do everything. I'm running most of our email program from Claude and Codex using the MCP, and it's awesome. We also have email, SMS, and pop-ups all in one place. We have all of our flows, welcome series. It's all talking to each other. I love the platform.

30:09Winks team:The analytics are really good. I highly recommend it, especially if you're in the position that Winx is in. New brand starting out. But if you're on a different platform and you're paying too much and you want to switch, they will do the migration completely for you. No lost data, no lost list. It takes only five days start to finish. And they are giving our listeners 30 % off the first three months. Go to omnisend.com slash nine operators to try it out for yourself.

30:34Chris Ganz:A broader question, Chris, is can you, like when it comes to like, we look at all these concepts, the elements of certain things. Like if we like the word mark from one, the clouds from another, like what is your view on, because you've approached this like they each have a different angle or vector that you're coming at it from. Because there's elements of each that I'm sort of like attracted to. And obviously you don't want to create like a Frankenstein where shit just doesn't work well together. So, you know, like the clouds part of this, I like. the color green i actually think we should avoid it guys just because we know that athletic greens is coming into the space and that's kind of like their yeah no they definitely own that dark green

31:18Winks team:package is like ag1 yeah and the agz product is probably going to do the same damn thing

31:24Chris Ganz:um yeah that's the my thoughts on green is like we want to be if they're going to be the demand generator and they're going to spend the mega bucks on ads like right differentiation from

31:35Winks team:them is probably going to be important like just positioning wise for sure for sure and there's definitely things like that whenever there's new uh competitors coming in where you're going to want to be cognizant of of not wanting to be look like a me too um brand where you're looking like you're trying to kind of like scrape the bottom of what they're doing yeah from my perspective on on

31:56Chris Ganz:this specific one probably my my least favorite and the only reason why is just based on you know green comment that matt made uh i think you know you have someone like ag1 coming into this space i think also there's not really a really it's not a relatable color to sleep like i don't think of sleep and green being at the top of the list um and of course black dark blue blue is something that people tend to go to but i think you have something in in some other designs that you know uh some variations of color that actually do really really relate which we can talk about later um i think it's also where we're at with the font and the premium but approachable side of this to me is almost a little bit like beam which is a competitor um you know beam like you look the font style i think it's similar i think you have a premium yes you've made it a little bit more approachable with the the clouds but you know it's not just like really clean looking but I think the font style is closer to a beam and I think um you know the one call out I would say is I I love the visibility on the ingredients I think that's going to be important you look at like the success of like RX bar or you know some other ones where it's you know very uh it communicates the and it builds trust with the uh the visibility of of like the clean ingredients or you know the natural ingredients in the product i think that's going to be important but it it is semi-premium i think what we've seen in this space is like it's either premium like you have like the ag ones the im8s the you know or just like one color palette no no imagery no clouds as an example yeah um premium packaging or you have what's trending right now which is the gruns of the world where it's you know that that approachable friendly type yeah type uh yeah yeah no i think that's

33:54Winks team:really well said there's definitely uh you kind of want to be one or the other and when you're trying to kind of split the split the difference you're not being nothing yeah exactly yeah as they

34:03Chris Ganz:say that the best are divides right so it's like you know you want to stand out you don't want to

34:07Winks team:get stuck in the middle for sure okay we'll move on to option three so this is kind of a this was originally an iteration of option two in terms of the systematic sleeping refined relief. This one is a little bit more geometric based and using a sans serif being a little bit more clean as a bit of a retro modern feel to it, making the packaging like instantly memorable and recognizable in the categories. So this is the word mark. Like you can, you can see how this is a clear sort of play off of the second option. And it's got a different execution in terms of things like color, in terms of its geometry.

34:49Winks team:It's a lot more geometric. Clearly, just working off of rectilinear hard angles as well as curvilinear, the sort of those circular motions that you see in the W, the N, and the S. And then you're able to kind of create a system of icons based on that sort of crescent mark. And you'll see sort of this particular mark come through in the packaging. So in this one, it's almost an inverse in some ways of the first direction where rather than having the name super loud, you're having this icon that calls out the function be this sort of predominant figure that's sort of centerpiece for your packaging.

35:28Winks team:What I like about this is if I were to stare at this from far away and I see that dot, you know, you could interchange the colors if you have a similar execution. I think you're going to start to recognize that. as Winx packaging. And so, you know, just for example, if like you zoom it away, that dot stays really strong even from further away. And so there's something about like that ink density that really allows for that to hold up at scale and from afar, and whether it be like small on your phone as well. And so just using a sort of a different approach to have the features and the ingredients on the two sides of that big icon clearly that's kind of anchoring all these other elements together still have the flowing sort of graphic that you had in the second option but outside of that you're really starting to bring in some different elements to execute in terms of how it looks on something website this is the copy for this is just a little bit more clinical maybe a little bit more of that proper sonnet direction of just being designed for better sleep from the very first sip and then again like You're really leaning into that circular shape to be an anchoring point for what you see across the marketplace.

36:44Winks team:It's like a piece for Winx. And so just seeing what it would look like in something like a billboard as well.

36:53Chris Ganz:I really like this logo as well. I love the moon instead of the dot on the eye. And I think, like you said, Chris, the circular thing is very distinctive. It's actually interesting. I was looking at it. It's like it almost starts to look like an eye that's about to wink. You know, it's like, anyway, or an eye that's about to shut, you know? So I think it's definitely interesting. Curtis, Matt, what did you guys think when you looked at this one?

37:34Chris Ganz:i am a fan of the larger dot uh but if i had to weigh it against the like the yeah the wink and i i keep i still keep the wink because it's just to me knowing that we're going to be digital first like that to me is the more recognizable like if i look out like five years ten years yeah you know it's like the amazon a to z thing mike the the the smile that goes from everything from a to z that's just so iconic and i think owning the the semicolon the my ego wants to own the semicolon yeah well i think you're right it's not common where your name can be a portable story like in and of itself right so like when somebody talks about a product like ag1 is less portable you know or like uh im8 right curtis like like the letters im8 like if you say to somebody im8 how are they going to spell that out like how do you even go to google to say that whereas like winks is an english word that is very easy to spell there is no other spelling of winks there's no IE there's no like weirdness to it so I sort of think putting the emphasis on the name makes more sense to me most AI tools right now are all promise and no delivery you know exactly what I am talking about super fancy launch videos this is why I'm loving what rich panel is doing they have AI and support smashed together made it practical made it useful made it valuable to brand today, not on some future promise.

39:17Chris Ganz:And instead of asking you to spend weeks writing prompts and uploading help docs and babysitting, they flipped the whole script. Their AI builds your support team for you and everything it needs. I've watched it. It works. It's freaking amazing. RichPanel even guarantees 50 % of your support volume will be automated by AI within 30 days or your money back. I call that a no-brainer offer. If you are interested, go to richpanel.com slash demo, not for some generic demo, but to actually book a call and watch them build your actual support team.

39:47Winks team:I'm going to move on to option four. This on the note of being more playful, these last two really start to move more into that direction. And this is another iteration on the name Winx, obviously. The type for the word mark brings a lot of personality, and we introduce a winking face to the packaging that can be seen quickly to recognize the brand. This can be applied across various products and configurations with ease. So the three words for this are friendly, memorable, and bold. So this is the word mark here. You know, we had originally like a dark navy, brought in more of a purple to feel like it's matching more, like we kind of talked about direction to how that green fell off.

40:29Winks team:Wanted to explore this one being in more of a purple color palette. And then you can see with this brand, we'd bring in this sort of motion of being awake, drinking winks, and then falling asleep. and you're utilizing a sort of a crescent moon as an element that can kind of be used for the wink, can be used to signify that you're asleep. This is the packaging for this direction. So really putting big and loud the winking face. And so just one of the first thoughts whenever I was sketching was just the idea of like, if the packaging itself was winking at you and there's, you know, examples in the across design, across the market of the smiling face.

41:13Winks team:You think of Amazon whenever you get a package and it's smiling. One that comes to mind is when Kraft Mac and Cheese did their redesign. One thing that they do is they have a smiling noodle. And that is the thought behind there is there's a psychology that if someone is smiling at you, you're inclined to smile back. It sort of creates this positive emotion. And so how could we potentially bring that forth in the packaging by bringing a winking, smiling face. You can start to see, you know, this direction could also be called like one, two, three, because I think about these three different states of being awake, you know, the drinking winks state, and then the sleep state.

41:53Winks team:And so better sleep is easy as one, two, three. And this is how it starts to just potentially come alive as a brand. So let's talk about this one. What do you guys think? Any thoughts, feedback? Open to it all. love the color palette on this one and the and i mean smiling face yes the psychology there is great so like no question and again something that can certainly be brought into like a different direct like direction one or something like that where you could certainly recreate this with the

42:25Chris Ganz:semicolon and the ingredient highlight at the bottom is really smart um to what curtis was saying before right around like transparency and trust because i i ultimately guys like mike i think you weren't here last week but we were talking about like who the customer is and i really do think this is going to be like family friendly sleep hygiene like family friendly health sleep health well it's just like expand your market so much when that yeah you know like gosh when you're a parent and your kid can't sleep right now it's like you're just giving them Benadryl basically you're just drugging them I mean I really we've talked about this on the simple modern side where we've like done a great job with women 25 to 45 and we've done a great job with really young kids but you can never hit the same highs as if you're making something that can apply to everybody right that's just it it's and I find a lot of supplement companies and I've said this to Curtis before they're designed by total freaks of nature and that they are like hardcore health people.

43:32Chris Ganz:So the brand represents them, you know, like it's very much the biohacker, you know, everything in my life is optimized. I measure how many erections I get in my sleep. Like it's that guy, right? Like that. And that's who they sell it to. And if you look at like all the influencers, it's all that guy.

43:49Winks team:And I sort of

43:50Chris Ganz:think the opportunity with winks is like, yeah, how about you just sell it to my wife? Could she be the best customer ever and our nine-year-old does not like to sleep you know well targeting targeting moms is always the easiest way to make a brand successful because they they spend more money than anybody else um and it's it's not particularly close from the the research that

44:13Winks team:i've seen i was just going to say that uh when you can win over the moms and they're introducing it to the kids there is a also this thing where the kids start to adopt that as like a brand that they're familiar with for the rest of their lives. And so when I think about, you know, 22 year old Chris can't sleep or, you know, is needing to like catch up on sleep or something like that because he's not sleeping enough. He's probably going to take something like a Z-Quil because I grew up having NyQuil. Like I have a trust element built in because that's what my mom gave me, you know, like it still kind of sticks with the kid, even whenever they're as an adult.

44:51Chris Ganz:you know what i love about this this packaging well there's multiple things um number one i have 11 year old daughter and she is i mean she looks at branding all day long she she could walk into a sephora at 11 and freaking know the trending brands and she smiled the minute that she looked at at this in the in their um concepts that you had sent over early on and i think it was different colors before was it not yeah like it was like that blue and an aqua type type color um but i like it um i think the the winking face is front center and i think that you know the emotion that that brings um it's not hidden in a semicolon like that's the pro and the con of the semicolon like i think you know from a from a kid perspective they get it right away and my curiosity is um if we're targeting moms uh number one if it's marketed if it's if it's so approachable that if people know it's kid-friendly they know it's going to be good for you like they just do like if it's if if it's a kid-friendly product and it's 100 % natural organic you name it then are they more likely to take it too um you know and and this one is you know the the imagery and the the front and center, you know, winking emoji is just, it just appeals to kids like this, you know, it's, it's really friendly and approachable.

46:18Chris Ganz:I also like, you know, I didn't pick up on the first, like the one, two, three, how you went from, you know, smiling or awake all the way to sleeping. And there's a concept that we're looking at is this isn't just about sleep. It's night routine. so like easy as one two three there's some there's some level of one two three can be used in multiple different ways whether it's like you know how we do almost instructional like okay number one you know uh you know timing um bedtime routine and taking winks like it's it's there's things that we can incorporate in that one two three element of what do you do to you know prep your nighttime routine to sleep well and it's not just about the supplement itself so there's some things that we could maybe you know um iterate or just go off of on that and so it's yeah i mean i like this one it's um it's a level of iteration on the first one i think and yeah there's there's a lot of yeah a lot of good in this i think awesome well we take it to the full dial of playfulness i would

47:32Winks team:I would say on option five, I want to give a quick shout out to Charlie Warren on the simple modern side. Mike, he worked on this logo and some of this design as well. So I just want to shout out Charlie. But the playfulness is on full tilt with this direction and lean towards a Gen Z demographic with its use of expressive typography and hand drawn elements. A little cozy monster becomes the mascot for the Winx brand and his watch flies here to ensure you get more winks of sleep. So organic, playful, and bold would be the three words used here. So for the wordmark itself, it's very expressive, utilizing an eye, a literal seeing eye as the icon.

48:15Winks team:And then you can see the introduction of that monster. When Charlie first drew that monster, I then thought about later of, you know, it's kind of like if you think about you're not getting sleep, um there you're not going to be thinking about like the monsters that you maybe had as a that you're scared of as a kid and like that the monsters and monsters inc you know they miss you that they want to um see you again they want to they want you to sleep again and so thinking about that maybe a friendly monster wanting uh wanting to help you come back to sleep uh was kind of a narrative that started to formulate so bringing that in and to go back here you know just you can bring that eye and that winking face as an icon itself.

48:58Winks team:You can strip down the dot of the eye to be an icon. There's a few different tools you can use for this direction. And then for the packaging itself, really keeping it straightforward, letting that mascot be a big part of the brand for this direction, and then letting that word mark still be pretty strong. You have a friendly serif type that is soft in its corners, that you're kind of using it at different weights to call out different information that you need to have. Something that this one has that you'd want to have, I think, for any of them is the call out of the amount that is in the packaging.

49:38Winks team:Something that you said earlier, Matt, of how you don't want people taking two of these or you don't want people getting addicted to these. That is something that is different from Trevi to this is that you're going to have 30 nights worth of Winx. You're not going to have just a 28 count of hydration, sticks that you could use in, you know, half that time. So that is something to call out. And then just kind of showing what a website could look like. You could certainly do a lot of sort of playful things of drawing that winking face on top of people's eyes or on top of, you know, a blindfold whenever they're sleeping.

50:14Winks team:And just really allowing that eye to maybe like be following you as you're scrolling through the page and then using it on a bit of a mistake there. but using it on the billboard as well. Really, this kind of leans in, in my opinion, towards more of a Gen Z demographic in terms of how the execution of the playful typography, the hand-drawn elements, this just feels something that's very inspired by Graza or Grooms in particular.

50:45Winks team:So I was all in on AI at Jones Road, but it's really hard to get large teams of people to change. But on Winx, I don't have teams because we're trying to keep OPEX as lean as possible. So we're going all in on AI and Runneth is a big part of that. Runneth and Motion are a sponsor of the show and we've been partnering closely with them to help run Winx day to day. It is the AI brain for our whole team. We are shipping as much creative as we can, as many angles as we can. We have it plugged in to all of our accounts, our email account, Shopify, Northbeam, all of our analytics. So it's got the whole thing.

51:19Winks team:It is our AI creative strategist and much more than that. It's really our AI coworker. If we use it, HexCloud uses it, Jones Road uses it. It is the best AI brain for e-com brands on the planet. If you don't use things like this, I seriously think you're going to fall behind. I highly recommend it. So go to runnith.com and book a strategy session. Just mention the operator sent you and you'll get$1 ,000 in credits when you sign up.

51:43Chris Ganz:The only downside to this, guys, is that this feels like a commitment to going after the family and the kid. Like we sort of have to say like, we're really high conviction that this is moms doing this. And at that performance, you know, biohacker, we're leaving that guy and we are saying adios out of the gate, right? For sure. For sure. Which by the way, I'm okay with. I like doing things with high conviction. And I think Mike, you've made the most important point, which is like any parent who's ever had a kid who doesn't sleep, uh, or any parent who's not getting sleep because they have kids is like such a potent, uh,

52:26Winks team:as a, as the father of a two year old, there's a, yeah, you'll get desperate pretty fast.

52:32Chris Ganz:Can't fake desperation. Yeah. Um, I, I love brands that have mascots like that have a little character. Uh, We actually just had a bunch of consumer research done on Lomi. And this was one of the things that they called out that is interest. Our customers refer to Lomi as a member of the family and that we get images and posts on social where people put faces on the damn machine. So like they'll actually add like eyeballs to the machine and then they'll draw and put stickers on it. And one of the recommendations from this research shop was like, you should turn this into a character because they're there.

53:11Chris Ganz:and they had a term for it i don't know what the term is chris but like sometimes brands that have a character it creates like an emotional connection um there's there's another psychology element to it so i kind of like that there's this little fluffy soft looking very friendly creature little monster i think is like a cool is definitely cool i actually wonder too chris like if you can combine the word mark with the monster on this one like instead of that eye could you actually do the semicolon with this and still be like very Gen Z, like texty, you know, everything's on my

53:49Winks team:phone. Yeah. No, I think that's an interesting idea. And you could certainly bring that in. I think that's like one of those where I'm pretty interested in trying that and seeing how that could look. So I think that's an interesting idea. It's a good idea.

54:01Chris Ganz:You know, I, this was my, you know, one of my top favorites too. And, and, uh, you know, I, my kids, my 11 year old daughter, she gravitated to the last one or this one um she she giggled when she saw this like actually giggled um and i don't know if you know how old your kids are it sounds like chris yours is too but you know the jelly cats like they're massive right like they're they're the next beanie babies right well what is if we gifted like a little like think about kids going to bed with this little fluff ball this little monster you know um i mean you know it's it's they're they're going to bed and they're sleeping with this and it's a friendly reminder every single night that you got to take winks um you know i don't know like there's you know just like you know there's a lot of psychology there curtis like with having a character um like i said that the only downside is that it's like this is very much built for parents oh the parents can take it the kids can take it you know there and then there's like a whole and if we're going in that direction you know mike then there's like the whole pricing and business model and how we model this out it's like is a 30-day supply different price from a 60-day or a 90-day because there's three people in the home taking it you know uh the the what i like here is like even because like the ad creative in this is going to be hilarious right right like we have so much yeah there's a lot of service area so much on this like even if mike we go the angle of like the nightcap like the new nightcap it's like you could have fun in ads with this where like mom and dad pour themselves a drink and kid gets a drink too and like how off how how pattern that's like liquid death right it's like why is the kid having a nightcap like you know your your 10 year old's got a low ball with an ice cube in it and it's just winks that is like such a pattern disrupting content um i just think there's a ton to do with this concept yeah i mean i just got back from disney and i think uh like monsters inc when was that released uh that's a thousand it was in 2001 so if you were 24 or under you you kind of grew up i mean really you probably if you're 30 or under you kind of grew up in a world where like that's that's a part of your your frame and it is interesting like I was reading something, this is kind of tangential, but I was reading something about how the Nolan Batman films have not really aged that well with Gen Z because their framing of superheroes is more kind of the Marvel cinematic universe and the Nolan stuff skews way darker.

56:50Chris Ganz:So I think that it's real that pop culture wise this is going to really resonate with someone that's sub 30 sub 35 uh and i i wonder i mean i think going back to the audience conversation that we had i think one question if you try to go after everybody the problem is you just have to go really generic yeah if you instead say we're gonna niche down into like this particular group or or this kind of angle it does get easier to tell a compelling story. And I don't know why, but the first thing that pops into my head when I see this is that this is like the anti-anxiety monster or something. That's not what you would call it, but that's the emotional idea.

57:40Chris Ganz:Do you want to talk about a single chart business, Mike? One chart business? Just go Google anxiety and children. Well, that's why I said that. Think about what else codes with 30 to 35-year-old and under. And that's the generation that grew up with cell phones and the the information that we have about the things they struggle with the way they see and experience the world it's interesting my wife and i were talking about uh burnout yesterday and it reminded me of a a long piece that i read maybe it was on twitter uh it was it was somebody talking about like why is burnout becoming more common and their their thesis was that it's the always-on nature of things like we live in a generation that basically doesn't know what a busy signal on a telephone sounded like like i can say that i mean chris chris you know what a busy signal is right yeah yeah yeah yeah i mean and i know as a concept but it's like my kids probably don't even know what a busy signal is you know and they wouldn't know what it is yeah yeah so just this idea that like the way that technology has kind of invaded our lives and this kind of always on nature has clearly disrupted our ability to sleep our ability to relax or it's upped our anxiety and if this little fuzzy monster is your companion to help you to relax and tune out and and zonk out like that that's actually like a really compelling idea i think i don't think it would work with the older crowd you know and i don't think it works with like like you said like the brian johnson or a crowd but um i don't think they're the the majority of buyers and uh i so i like the idea i think i think it's really interesting and i do like the idea of i don't find the logo on that one being yeah there you go it's one chart business yeah like i don't know how else to illustrate the like what you just hit on mike and why it's so important is because i do i think that's the reason i like the package is it speaks to sleep and this like calming like what is the reason that people struggle with sleep today it's the it is that like all people it's grown-ups it's kids It's everything.

1:00:09Chris Ganz:But look at the freaking Google trend for anxiety. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. That's a one-char business, man. It's a pretty easy concept. What I kind of think of when I'm looking at that is it's almost like a stuffed animal. That's what you have stuffed animals on your bed for. That's what I'm saying. Yeah. That's what I'm saying with the jelly cats. Can you imagine if every little kid got one of those? I mean, you could do everything. Subscribe and save gift. Yeah. I mean, listen, if we decided we wanted to really go after families, especially families with kids under 10, then like, and I will say this.

1:00:54Chris Ganz:The other thing that I like about that is that I think there are certain things where you're a lot less price elastic or a lot more price inelastic. I guess that's what I'm looking for. And it's like, if I had to say, how much are you willing to pay for your kid to sleep well? If you ask that to a parent whose kid is not sleeping well, the answer is an outrageously high number. I mean, it's like - I would dedicate a lot of money to this problem right now. Right, right. When you're getting woke up in the middle of the night, your kids anyway so i i do agree actually mike you know the funny answer that question is if you asked me well i'd tell you i'm starting a company to solve the problem because i have a kid you're really putting money behind it i'm committed but what i'm kind of hearing like is the you know like early consensus i guess like you guys give me some feedback on if this is kind of a good summary is that we i i on the first concept we just love the idea of the the semicolon in the logo and then on the last concept we love the idea of this mascot kind of thing and that if we could take those two things and put them together in a compelling way and then i think i think that what i heard was i i don't know like maybe those last two options um that that kind of are more purpley in nature is kind of more color-wise what we'd want to do.

1:02:31Chris Ganz:Is that a good kind of synopsis of the feedback we've given so far? Yeah, I think so. I think we, you know, you look at the bookends on one and five are probably the ones that we talked about the most. Four, because the similarity of the smiley face in the mark, I think is something that I liked, but it's the same reason why I like Direction 1. 2 and 3, I think, are not the highest talked about and discussed or interest. But I think, Mike, to your point, I just wanted to double down on Direction 5 again. I keep on mentioning my daughter's 11. She sleeps with a goddamn 20 jelly cat. She has anxiety that we had to go get tested for and figure out.

1:03:25Chris Ganz:She's a Sephora. She just loves all brands and colorful, playful, you name it. And she also sleeps with an eye mask. Like she, every night, sleeps with an eye mask. One of a subscription gift was a little - I find it so weird. I didn't even know they were a thing. Like, what is it if they could subscribe and they could add to a cart adult eye masks, kid eye masks, and a subscription gift is this little freaking anti-anxiety little monster? The more that we're talking about five, the more I really am sold on the mascot idea. What usually happens when I've worked with Chris on things is that he's able to take all this feedback and then come back with a second round of stuff, but is now much more kind of targeted.

1:04:20Chris Ganz:And Chris, it seems like we've given you enough feedback. I'm guessing you're kind of itching to get in there and say, okay, I'm going to take all. Yeah, so I know how you work. So I think that's what we do for the next step. next we're going to jump forward a couple of weeks to round two of our packaging we spent a decent amount of time on custom packaging here's why this impacts your target audience impacts our hierarchy of information the packaging materials themselves and frankly there's just a lot of rules and regulations to be aware of when you get into supplements or anything that goes on or in your body this is not about what is prettiest it is not about what is best looking it is about what is best for the brand we are trying to build.

1:05:06Chris Ganz:This episode is brought to you by our friends at Aftersell. Let me start by saying there is something that all of the best operators have figured out, and that is a new customer is expensive as hell to acquire. So every extra dollar you can get out of that new customer, well, that's just basically free money. Ridge uses Aftersell. Simple Modern uses Aftersell. Jones Road uses Aftersell. Pila uses it. Upsells, downsells in the cart. Checkout after purchase, plus rocked. So at the moments, right after someone buys make you money instead of doing nothing. Same traffic, more revenue. Sounds kind of obvious.

1:05:38Chris Ganz:We're building winks right now. That's why you're listening to this show. And after sell went into the stack on day one, not a bolt on for later when we decided we wanted to finally get smarter. Look, Black Friday is coming. You know it. I know it. Your traffic's going to go up. Your ad costs go up even more. Every single visit is worth more than it was last month. You do it right. so don't just spend more to buy more customers make every visitor worth more that's why we partnered with aftersell okay so chris you got some stuff to show us today we we looked at a bunch of stuff and we're excited a couple weeks ago you've gone back into the lab uh we'd love

1:06:15Winks team:to see what you've come up with yeah yeah so thanks again for as always for meeting with me guys uh based on round one these were kind of the main talking points that i sort of took into to the second round of development. So explore, I think a big thing that we all walked away with was this idea of a character, this idea of kind of building a, like sort of humanizing the brand and giving a bit of a personality to it, a bit of maybe like kid-friendly energy. And then another thing was, is there a way to incorporate the semicolon? I know that was something that we liked about that first direction.

1:06:52Winks team:Curtis, you had mentioned like an additional flavor. and so I wanted to kind of see what the system could look like if we extend it to a second flavor as well so those were the three sort of primary focal points of this round and then just as a quick recap these were kind of the three directions that we wanted to sort of take things from so you know definitely loving the character and a lot of the personality that was in direction five I've loved the semicolon element of direction one. And then just some of the things with direction four, I think the big thing was just this idea of like awake, wink, and then sleep, kind of incorporating that as like an easy one, two, three, sort of like part of your evening ritual.

1:07:36Winks team:So with that, this is just kind of a splattering, you know, it's been a bit of a chaotic time on the Trevi side of, you know, Prime Day was huge for us. and we just launched some new flavors as well. But wanted to kind of give a quick snapshot without building out a ton of slides of some of the different works. So we definitely worked on different explorations with some of the word marks, you know, seeing some of the different flavors and some different character illustrations, styles like that. You can see some of the wonderful sort of AI renderings of the different possible characters we could develop.

1:08:11Winks team:I loved Snorable Winks as a name. Curtis, I don't know who came up with it, but I thought that was an awesome name and just thought about what if there's a world where we create a family of characters and things like that. So I'm going to jump into option one, which is pretty much a refined version of direction one originally. I'm still playing off of that semicolon and then kind of bringing in a bit more of that things that we liked about direction five with a character and a little bit of fun with it. So still have the same sort of primary wordmark, incorporating that semicolon as the winking eye, as we've called it.

1:08:47Winks team:And then you're starting to see a little bit of an addition of a character into this system. And this would be sort of the character for this direction where you're bringing that semicolon in, you're making it a little bit more playful, a little bit more friendly. You know, just a fun semicolon cloud, winking eye cloud that you can sort of incorporate into the packaging, kind of becoming that sort of hero for this direction, kind of seamlessly connects the semicolon with the character in a way that we were just kind of struggling to do that with the other direction that we'll look at here in a bit.

1:09:25Winks team:And so I wanted to just kind of give it its due diligence and kind of, you know, explore it as far as, push it as far as we could to see if this direction had opportunity. And you can start to see how that looks in maybe a more orange peach flavor, things like that. So just sort of showing the color schematic like that, showing what the website would look like. And then this is just kind of an updated version of kind of that billboard design where we're just showing a bunch of the different design elements. So you can kind of bring that character into engage with photography using that semicolon on the sleep mask, which was something I know we talked about for the other direction as well.

1:10:01Winks team:So you'll see a bit of a blending between this direction and the next one. Hey, pause there.

1:10:09Chris Ganz:Yeah, let's talk about that for a second. Sean, one thing that we talked about two weeks ago, I think we mentioned to you, but another kind of reason to maybe be, to slow our roll a bit is I think you were the one who originally said the idea of, hey, we should have nose strips. So there's three ideas we have now, maybe four. I've heard four ideas of like throw-ins that could go with this. Nose strips, sleep mask, some kind of like a stuffed animal, and then like a frother or something that kind of like mixes it up. And we started like looking at, as we started looking at the packaging concepts, it started to be obvious that, hey, on, you know, on no strips or sleep mask or, or a stuffed animal, there's really easy ways to do that.

1:10:51Chris Ganz:And those are great free gifts with, you know, a subscription purchase, which I think is the way that we're going to want to go is an offer where it's like, hey, subscribe for this bigger cart value, but also you get these add-ins. But we would obviously have to source all that stuff. Yeah. And the frother is the easiest thing to source. I mean, that would take one minute. I can get the frothers on Alibaba shipped them. We can make them a cool purple, put a cool design on them. Literally, no problem at all. Sleep masks, also easy, but the challenge is sizes. If it's for kids, it's going to be different sizes.

1:11:22Chris Ganz:So it's like a kid's sleep masks. And then do we do kids and adults? Once again, not that challenging. and then the nose strips i don't know if they make them for kids i'm sure they do right yeah or just smaller they might yeah so we'll just do a small medium large nose strip package for family honestly all that stuff fantastic and it is like okay maybe we just take more time put more money into it launch it in like a march or whatever get a stuffy find a 3pl that can do a box package it all together but yeah dude i love this direction this looks awesome so i will say yeah on the actual design, Chris.

1:11:58Chris Ganz:I don't know if we picked this design, but you actually took the cloud, which I kind of disliked, really didn't like, and you did a very good job of making the cloud thing work. I really like the way that that character evolved from V1 to V2.

1:12:16Winks team:Awesome. Appreciate that. I think with, just to kind of piggyback off of what Sean was saying too, and just in general, this idea of product and this sort of added throw-ins and like swag and things like that. And then also just what Sean was saying of like needing time for the marketing. I feel like, or I sat in on a speech by the VP of creative for Liquid Death, Andy Pearson. And he kind of talked about that. Those were his three products. Like those are the three products that Liquid Death sells. It's the product itself, the merch for them, it was like merch and kind of those like Liquid Death, like the different graphic tees and hats and things like that.

1:12:54Winks team:And then marketing itself was its own product. So just to, you know, another example of how I think like those three pillars are going to be just a good foundation for whatever we do. Awesome. Well, option two is a buildup of direction five from the first one with the monster and whatnot. So taking that playfulness and just trying to kind of explore it a little bit further, see what it would look like with another flavor, refining a little bit of the illustration itself. I'll jump back up real fast. You know, Charlie and myself, we worked on a few different versions. He made this kind of wild looking dude in the middle to me.

1:13:38Winks team:I think he pushed it as he pushed it, which I love to see. Kind of gave me some Grimace vibes when you stripped off the hair of the guy. But just wanted to kind of, again, like shout out Charlie and his awesome illustration skills. So we worked on a few different things for this direction.

1:14:00Winks team:So we refined the word mark a little bit just to make it a little bit easier to read like when you scale it down, just keeping that N and that K a little bit more legible. We worked on trying to have the semicolon involved here, but between this sort of type of letter form, the semicolon from the original inspired font was not quite working. And that more angular, squared off semicolon didn't quite fit the look and personality for the rest of this direction. So we still kept kind of that lowercase i, which we think is still kind of a nod to the idea of winking, and just cleaned up the wordmark itself a little bit to help with its legibility.

1:14:43Winks team:and then you know taking that element from direction four of like a wake a wink and then a sleep and then cleaning up the character itself a little bit more and then this is where it gets fun is adding in some other characters and some other uh sort of building out a family of sort of Winx monsters and seeing how that could sort of you guys are talking about these different flavors you know i just chose green as uh as a third color that kind of worked well with the the orange and the purple but can certainly change that color to be for a different character or for a different flavor um you could really bring these characters to life on the website um you can do things like the the stuffed animal and things like that are definitely capable with this direction and yeah we just cleaned up a few different things on the packaging added in for this one i think in particular, the idea of like maybe your bedtime bestie, that it's like you don't go to sleep without Winx, whether it be the character or, you know, the actual product itself, kind of an idea potentially for some copy and just, you know, playing, integrating that into the packaging itself, made the character a little bit larger on the stick pack as well.

1:15:58Winks team:Looking at how it looks whenever we bring in a different character for something like Fuzzy Peach. And again, I think it just is showing how that sort of system can start to come to life in the packaging in particular. And then we have website and then showing billboard as well. So again, just kind of something you guys have already seen. And yeah, I would say that's it for this one. And we can either look at both directions next to each other, or we can just talk more about this one.

1:16:32Chris Ganz:Who wants to go first? My only concern with option two is that it looks like a testicle.

1:16:42Winks team:That's right. That's right. That's right. It'd be funny. Are you talking about this guy or both in general? How hairier are your testicles? The normal amount, Curtis. The things that like when you don't see it and then when someone says something, you're like, can I unsee that?

1:17:01Chris Ganz:I love how we went an entire two-hour conversation looking at this and nobody thought of a testicle. You get Sean in here within five minutes right away.

1:17:13Winks team:Perhaps the grouping there could be reworked and then some things like that as well.

1:17:19Chris Ganz:I think that one, there's one where he's a little bit more ovally. And that one, he's more like a gumdrop. and that one does not feel as prone to being mistaken for a piece of Sean's anatomy.

1:17:37Winks team:And we can also keep it all in the same shape and really change the color. That was something that we looked at as well. I guess, Sean, what do you think of a character overall?

1:17:46Chris Ganz:Oh, I like the characters. I think the character is cute and cool and we should have one. Yeah, this is very... the one on the left is very reminiscent of a grimace. And then if you guys know what meatball is from Aqua Teen Hunger Force, that's what the one on the testicle looking one is like. He's very much like meatball. I like option one the best, but I think you guys don't want to flash option one real quick.

1:18:15Winks team:Yeah,

1:18:16Chris Ganz:here I'll go down here. Show us the bags. Yeah. I'd love to look at the two bags. There we go. I think I like option one when I see the little cloud with the, there's something about that semicolon that i just think is such a mark i like i like the moon and i like i like i've always liked the clouds i mean but we should ask what kids think because you know with like with the boo-boo trend like maybe they want the little ugly testicle monsters and uh and i'm like their children they don't even know what testicles are yet sean right right but the one on the left i'm like that's like the cool cool like skateboard and sleep guy well i think age wise it feels like maybe the left one's a little bit more diverse i i uh i said this earlier but i think chris you you upped the the one on the left enough the the option one enough that i think both of them are very cool i i think ultimately the thing that i really care about is what does the bag look like and what does the stick look like that's you know 90 of the impressions you get right and i think both of these look very cool probably my only strong opinion is i think our direction of having a character is just right like when i just look at the bags and i see the character it makes me happy it feels distinctive i think it's i think that with a stuffed animal that comes with family friendly yes like we're definitely on it so like i still i still i do think the primary user of this is going to be a mother and that's just a sleep pain thing like how where is the when you have kids like who takes the brunt of not sleeping it's usually the mom right like most kids sleep just fine it's the mother who can't um so i i'm only saying that because i i think that's my gut tells me and then it's like which of these really caters to her um but then leaves you open that Like maybe mom does have a kid who actually wants to take this or like, or should write anxious kids, something like that.

1:20:27Um, I don't know.

1:20:28Chris Ganz:I have, I have a tough, you know, like for me, it's funny. I would, I would do my brain typically is like, I like clean lines. I like, you know, bold items. I don't like, you know, you know, on the creative side, like I would I would typically lean to the left one direction one. There's something that makes me giggle and laugh with these little fur balls. Like there's something unique. It's unique. Like there's not the clean, the lack of clean lines and, you know, just little kind of squiggly monsters is memorable to me. Like there's something about it. and i don't know what it is because to your point sean like the guy with with uh it's like the the cloud is cool it's kind of like cool like he could have a skateboard in his hands and he could be he could kind of be a little you know fido dido or i don't know what it is marketing it's it it's kind of it feels retro it does it does feel retro it and it's like a combination of like Fido Dido and Mickey Mouse with his hand like that.

1:21:32Chris Ganz:But it's at the same time, the other one, Direction 2, just stands out. Doesn't remind, it just, I don't know. There's something that makes me giggle a little bit with that guy. I wonder, so I guess here's a question. We're a little bit away from like being ready to pull the trigger on a PO. so we've got some time to focus group this in some ways let's let's get this in front of a little bit more of a sample and uh maybe i don't know a woman a child somebody in the target market and uh and let's get some feedback we can figure out as a group how to do that uh but chris do you guys want me to tweet it or do you think we shouldn't show anybody your audience no sounds

1:22:22Winks team:It's like I already tweeted it. Is that okay?

1:22:25Chris Ganz:It's like, if you want a bunch of testicle comments, just tweet it to Sean's audience. But I think that we do some kind of focus grouping, whether we go to one of those websites where you can pay people to do it, or we find, I mean, like we could easily put together an internal list of 100 friends and family that we think are kind of in the... I was going to say, just on my team, I probably have enough moms. Okay. Well, so like, let's, let's do that. Let's focus group this. And then we can kind of look at that feedback and make a final decision. One question that comes with this, I think we should start thinking about, okay, what are the free gifts that come with this and start sourcing those?

1:23:12Chris Ganz:Sean, you mentioned the frothers easy. If we're going to do like a little stuffed animal character, even if we don't know who the stuffed animal is, we should probably look into that. and i've got uh suppliers for that okay um yeah on so you've got on stuffed animals so do you want to kind of own the free gift matt sure okay so i i think we look at all of them we look at the nose strips and the stuffed animals and the uh and the the sleep mask just to kind of understand what those things would cost so matt's going to own the uh the free gift um i can own uh feedback on the two designs if we kind of come up with how we're going to generate that list.

1:23:54Yep.

1:23:56Chris Ganz:How many moms do you have, Mike, that work for you? Oh, a decent number. Yeah. Yeah. And I'll send it to my wife, who knows women. Yes. I have children. I have two children,

1:24:12Winks team:so there you go. I would be interested in getting some, Even if it's just getting some kids, like a portion of the survey is taken by kids. Interesting.

1:24:24Chris Ganz:Any thoughts about actually having six to eight kids on a podcast episode and presenting this and seeing what their reaction is? It's great content. I mean, we just did something. I could say the darndest things, man.

1:24:36Winks team:Like, you know, if you get like - I'd be interested in presenting to kids. I've never done that. I've gotten some pretty interesting feedback in a design presentation,

1:24:44Chris Ganz:but that would be a new they're all off school right now i could i could wrangle 10 in a heart beat go to the park

1:24:52Winks team:all right curtis go to the park with some sweet powder and try to get some kids

1:24:59Chris Ganz:if you get a van if you get a van you can get more of the kids to give you feedback at once so include ice cream or what these are all ideas hopefully this never is admitted into a court as evidence uh and so okay uh let's let's play on that we'll coordinate via text how we're going to gather some feedback but we'll try and gather feedback um great job chris just from a marketing perspective matt or or everybody actually going back to the design i know that we're going to survey um of what people think between one and two one of the things that you brought up chris on the presentation is this whole concept of like bedtime buddy i think that's what you said yeah bedtime bestie yeah or bedtime bestie i just when i when i hear that kind of tagline or or you know a stuffier you name it i would probably lean more towards the furry guy versus versus the little cloud guy you know i think about like bedtime monster or sleep monster slash bedtime buddy i would lean more towards those guys if we're going to use that to me the the cloud guy is the cool guy which is like a little bit more fido dido use in marketing but not not i think it's a little too masculine is my view it is as much as i like i like it right i'm trying to i bet you if i like i put both in front of my wife and daughter they would instantly choose the furry guy yeah and that's and i think that that's also like a like i bet you if i went and talked to like 10 of my wife's friends they

1:26:35Winks team:probably all still have a stuffed animal oh yeah especially if they like now with kids it makes them nostalgic of their stuff totally like my wife that's an emotional thing for women yeah

1:26:48Chris Ganz:you know like uh like my wife still has like a little bear that she gave to our daughter right like it's just i just i don't know if it's the mom uh i like number one but i i don't know that i'm the customer yeah maybe i don't know um yeah i gotta do something i i think mike you're Let's get this in front of moms and kids and see what they like. I'll start working on possible free gifts and suppliers and sourcing and all that. That's going to be pretty easy. If it's a little furry dude and we want a stuffy, Curtis, I talked to Brad about this and Brad's like, no problem making stuffies. He's like, how high quality do you want it?

1:27:32Chris Ganz:He's like, I can get you a$1 piece that you get at a fair or I can get you like, whatever those things are that are viral right now. Oh, Jelly Cats? Yeah, Jelly Cats. He's got, Mike, my old business partner, my current business partner owned a giant toy company. So did a load of stuffies. Yeah, that's going to be a great tie-in. So we're good there. Okay. All right. Good plan. We're making progress. I'm getting excited. so you watched us discuss what all of our options were for packaging how we thought about it at this stage of building the brand and if you are following us posting about the brand on x on instagram then you've clearly seen the final choices we made for you the listener i want you to walk away with this question how does packaging design influence consumer buying decisions what makes someone recognize this as your brand across a very, very crowded shelf, both physical and online.

1:28:35Chris Ganz:This is what we're talking about. This is brand recognition, folks. Why does the simplest looking option often win? Minimalistic design? Yeah, that's a thing. And sometimes it's really important. And above it all, how can your packaging make a customer feel it was worth the price before anyone opens it? This is also called perceived value. And if you've heard us on the show before, we all know that perception is reality. All right. Thank you for joining us. And if you liked this, please like, comment, subscribe. It helps our egos. We're fragile little creatures. We could really use this support.