268. Building a Brand People Believe In

0:01Grace Finerman:Welcome to Startup to Scale, a podcast by FoodBevy. I'm your host, Jordan Buckner. Join me as I talk to aspiring entrepreneurs, seasoned industry experts, and everyone in between as we unlock the keys to growing from startup to scale.

0:18Grace Finerman:When most founders think about branding, they immediately think about packaging design or logos. But great brands are built in two layers. The first is your values, your personality, and how your company shows up in the world. What you stand for, how customers emotionally connect with you. The second is the visual identity that brings those values to life in a way that people can instantly recognize and remember. Today, I'm joined by Grace Feinerman, founder of Date Smarter Snacks, and Dana Franks, co-founder of JK Creative. And we're going to be breaking down how Date Smarter built its brand identity, how creative decisions evolved over time, and what founders should think about when building a brand customers actually recognize and believe in.

1:00Grace Finerman:Grace and Dana, welcome. Thank you. Excited to have you on. So, Grace, starting out, I would love just to get an overall sense of, you know, what was the original vision behind Date Smarter? Yes, twofold. Kind of like you just said, the product and then the creative aspect behind it. So I was a TV News Anchor reporter and I was traveling throughout the country and I always brought a cooler to work that had all of my healthy snacks. And everyone thought I was nuts because I was living all over. So they gave me this little cooking segment on a slow news day. And then eventually someone said, oh, this is interesting.

1:37Grace Finerman:You should sell it. So once I had that idea of the product in my head, I started to think about what I wanted it to look like. And in my family house growing up, we had 50s style Coke machines and cash registers. And I always thought that was super fun and nostalgic. And I wanted to have branding that represented that and made the product also feel like it was nostalgic and fun and quirky and different and would pop off the shelves. So I reached out to JK Creative and I said, you know, this is my vision, but I need help to kind of get there. I had some ideas for a logo and it didn't quite hit.

2:16Grace Finerman:And I was having trouble really getting the vision, you know, getting the vision to come to life. So I reached out to Dana and worked with them. And it was pretty quick, you know, we found the packaging and that's kind of how it all began. I love that. So Dana, I'd love to understand kind of from your perspective, when you first looked at Date Smarter and met Grace, what stood out to you about the brand opportunity behind the product?

2:41Dana Francks:Yeah, so when I met Grace, she had already put in so much time and effort into making her chocolate date. She had spent over a year with the food scientists making it taste perfect. And she was just itching to get them on the shelves and in people's hands. And in her case, you know, she came to us with a pretty clear idea of the theme of her packaging as she just spoke about the vintage vibes. And she sent us some references and, you know, she had that first iteration of the logo that she wasn't really loving. It was really her baby. And we were happy to take it from there and kind of do a creative exploration with her.

3:18Dana Francks:So that's actually the most fun part for us is when a CPG founder comes with all of their like ideas and their passion and we get to bring it to life. There's a little tagline on our website that says you plant the seed and we'll make it flourish because a lot of people that are wearing a million different hats as CPG founders, they're not necessarily visually creative. So we love to be able to take all of that off their plate and starting with whether they need brand new packaging or they want to refresh their packaging. We really love that part of the creative process and kind of envisioning how it's going to go from just the package on the shelf to what it's going to look like on their website and what it's going to look like on their social media and just ensure that their brand looks established, even if it's just brand new.

4:11Grace Finerman:I think that's really important. And, you know, I'm curious around like you had this initial framework around the retro look. But how did you start talking with Grace around, you know, her values and that that you wanted within the brand and then creating that visual identity around it so that it would be recognizable?

4:28Dana Francks:The creative exploration kind of started with Sharon and I. I have to mention him. He's my creative partner. He's got a background in illustration, actually, and photo compositing. And over the last few years, as AI has completely blown up everywhere, he's been trialing everything from the start. Every week it's a new trial and new testing and everything's better than it was a month earlier. So when you have the right vision and you have the prompt, it can spit out a million different things for you. But like the key is really finding the one that matches the values of the brand. So we weed through all of those, you know, whatever AI is spitting out at that time.

5:13Dana Francks:And some of them really speak to us. Some of them are total garbage. But we really look for what's important to the brand. How does the consumer want to feel when they come to the website? And it's a bunch of different things. It's the colors, the fonts, the claims. So it's really what's important to show when you pick up that package. Like, what do you want to get? It's a two second thing in your brain as a consumer and it has to read right away.

5:41Grace Finerman:I love that. Yeah, I think that's so important. Grace, tell me a little bit about the actual product itself. What is the product and how do you imagine people eating as part of their daily life? Man, I forgot the main part. I was so excited to talk about everything else. That's too funny. Yeah, so date smarter. We make caramels made out of dates instead of sugar. So they're gluten-free, refined, sugar-free, dairy-free, vegan, kosher. There's the packaging right there. Yeah. And then we have two flavors there. But we do have three. So that's two out of three, which is pretty good. So we have our original, our peanut butter, and our peppermint.

6:21Grace Finerman:And for me, I wanted better-for-you food to be accessible to people. when it comes to taste. A lot of people have thought, oh, I'm going to go have a better for you candy. And it's not going to be that great, but it's going to be good enough so that maybe I don't crave whatever it is that I actually want. And I just didn't think that was sustainable. And also, I've noticed from my time in news traveling throughout the country, I live in New York. I have a lot of family in LA, family in Florida. And I found that people in those states really want to focus on the macronutrients of what's in the product.

7:00Grace Finerman:And of course, people everywhere care about those things. But I found when I was in the South a little bit, people really valued cooking and taste. And so I wanted it to be something that they would enjoy as well. And of course, people everywhere of different preferences, maybe different diets that they like to focus on. But I just felt I wanted to have a product that was sustainable in that way. So people have it as a snack, as a dessert, after a meal, whatever it is. I think, I mean, the product looks delicious and just like full of kind of decadence. You know, one thing about kind of a chocolate covered caramel is I'm curious, like how they, they photograph, right?

7:39Grace Finerman:Like you have to be able to describe to someone that experience in the mouth of peel. And then I know like on the packaging, I see things like the piece, the date square kind of being pulled open and seeing like the gooey caramel coming out. And so I'd love to know some of the key parts of like the experience that you wanted to highlight on the package that really stood out for you and Sharon.

8:02Dana Francks:Right. I think always like even, you know, not as a designer, but as a consumer myself, I want to pick up something and be like, that looks amazing. I need to eat it right now. So there was, you know, a lot of changes to Grace's actual chocolate over the first couple of months, I guess. And we wanted to make sure we were showing how tasty it looked on the package. But, you know, sometimes the shape changes. So like at first it was square and then it was a rectangle. It's still a rectangle. And it's fun for us because we don't have to redo a photo shoot every time something is different with the product.

8:44Dana Francks:We use AI to make it look like we did another photo shoot. Our background is in photo retouching. So Sharon is phenomenal at making fake things look real. And yeah, you have to see how delicious it looks right when you pick up the package.

9:00Grace Finerman:and to go on that as well too i just want to emphasize what dana said you know when you're smaller there will be changes that you'll make whether you change co-packers where the product's made you test things out you learn from customers and i felt that it was really important to not just have the packaging but also have a formula to make little tweaks to the packaging is we have to make those for production as well. And we made some changes to the pull-apart image with Dana and Sharon to make sure that it was as close as it could be to the actual product, which for buyers was very important because they wanted the person obviously buying the product to have an idea on what they were getting, especially when it's something like a date caramel that people may not be accustomed to.

9:54Grace Finerman:Yeah, I think you're right. And I love that the speed of the tools that you're using now. So I know a lot of companies, right, they have like a long process. It takes months to go through and make changes. And so, you know, I think you mentioned a lot of that like speed to to make changes. But I'm wondering if there's any other benefits to how you run your creative agency differently than maybe more traditional ones by using some of these tools and other processes that makes it a better fit for, you know, emerging CPG brands.

10:23Dana Francks:Yeah, definitely. So when we design the art, we have all of the future steps in mind because we've done it so many times that we know what's going to come next. So if, you know, the ingredients list changes or they need to add an asterisk somewhere or they want to add a fiber sticker, it's not going to be a big deal. We have the file ready to go. it takes as quick as you can imagine. It's just a couple of clicks and you can save the same change to all the SKUs pretty easily. We know that things change. We know that different co-packers are going to ask for the different templates. We know that different, you know, Erewhon needs something a little different than Whole Foods and we're ready to make those changes and make it really easy and seamless for people like Grace.

11:13Dana Francks:You know, she's got a million other things to worry about. So for us to be able to take all of that off of her plate, we love to be able to do that. And it's not just the packaging. It's then on the website, it has to change. And on social media, it has to change. So we want to make that very easy for our clients. Don't make it three separate issues. It's your brand. Anything that changes from here is going to change across the board. It's going to be consistent. And the consumer is going to see the change across the board. It's not a big deal to make changes on the visuals, you know?

11:46Grace Finerman:Yeah, I think that's actually a really good point because a lot of times a lot of brands might work with a creator or agency to do like their packaging design, but a different group to do the website design and social media or maybe just doing it themselves. And it leads to kind of disparate parts where everything's a little different, especially as you mentioned, like if the packaging design changes, maybe they don't go back and update the website or do other pieces. And so, you know, I'd love from your perspective, what a cohesive creative system looks like and how you really think about it across everywhere the brand shows up.

12:19Dana Francks:Right. I would say you want your brand to look the same every time you encounter it. You don't want to see it in the store. And then once you run out and you want to go online and buy another batch of it, you want to come to the website and feel like, yeah, I love this brand. It's established. I trust it. And when I click on that Instagram link, it's going to feel the same. And I'm not going to be like, oh, the founder definitely made that post while they were lying in bed after a long day of work. You want it to all look professional. So it's great that we can handle all of those things and the founders can worry about all the other fires that they have to put out.

13:00Grace Finerman:Yeah, I mean, as you're doing that, too, I think that's so important. And I'm curious, like, just in terms of your process for keeping everything consistent. Do you have a way of working to make sure that like as you're building things, you're kind of like checking off to make sure everything looks the same. You kind of generally know where things are so that you can update it at once. Or even just like when you're talking with founders, how you think about that whole cohesive picture. And are there things different about a packaging design than the website design? Like how do you kind of bring those elements through all the different parts?

13:32Dana Francks:Right. I think once your packaging on the shelf is exactly what you want it to be. You can do different things with the website and still have it feel like it's a cohesive brand. And it also can go a lot of different directions on social. For example, like some brands have just graphic looking ads while other brands have a lot of influencer videos. So it's really whatever you want it to be, we kind of just make sure that it feels like it matches with the style and the general vibe so that you're not feeling disjointed as you go from place to place.

14:10Grace Finerman:And Grace, from your side as the founder, how has having a single creative partner helped to simplify the execution of this? It's been huge, especially for someone like me. I've been doing this for about a year and a half, and there's always something that has to be done. Whether you're going to a trade show and you need a banner or you're pitching to a big retailer and the little sell sheet I made myself on Canva back before I started is just not going to cut it and you want to make something that looks more professional. or, you know, I had to pitch to a big retailer and I wanted a PowerPoint that felt like it had all the graphics and the branding that I wanted.

14:51Grace Finerman:I've found that you have to think of the brand like a person and think of, you know, the personality and the colors and the font even, you know, some of the pictures and make it uniform. And going to the same person just changes the look, in my opinion, and makes it seem, you know, like we're a small business. And I think it makes our branding seem like we belong with the big guys. Yeah, I think that's so true. And there's always something else to be designed, as you mentioned, like there's always a flyer, a piece of content that you need. And in some ways, it's never ending. So it's great to have a partner who has all the foundations and knows just how to make it look great without having to like go through a whole creative process or something.

15:35Grace Finerman:Right.

15:36Dana Francks:It's it's yeah. Like I remember the day Grace emailed us about the sell sheet. And I think when when you're in need of something to happen quickly and you also have 20 million other things to do, it was easy for her to just send me a quick email and be like, hey, I need a sell sheet tomorrow. Can you do it? And it's like for us, of course we can. We have all of the elements ready to go. And we're just going to lay it out for you. We're good at this. Like, let me take it off your plate. So that's what we love to do.

16:07Grace Finerman:And innovation as well for different flavors or potentially down the line, different products. I think we have a really good setup where it's pretty easy to get that done with any new flavors coming out. Yeah, especially right for your packaging. It's not just that you change the name of the flavor of the package, but you actually have graphic elements for the peanut and like for the different flavors that are incorporated within the packaging. So it's more than just like a typography change.

16:34Dana Francks:Right. Her new flavor that's coming out, I will not spoil the surprise, but we just did the new packaging for it. And it was, I don't know, a couple hours we had it ready to go because we already really knew the vibe of what she loves. And we showed her three options and she's like, that's the one. And, you know, from there, we already know we're going to update the website. So we have everything prepped for once it needs to go on the Shopify. And we can't wait for all the new ads we can do with the new flavor. So it's all just exciting and really fun for us, too.

17:09Grace Finerman:So, Dana, what do you think are some of the biggest branding mistakes or design mistakes you see early CPG brands making?

17:16Dana Francks:Well, I think we talked about that a little bit earlier, just that it looks like a do-it-yourself social media or a do-it-yourself website. because, you know, Shopify, there's like this template and you could tell which websites are using the bare minimum and just placing the images that they have on there and hoping that people come and buy stuff from their website. But you want it to look established. And there's, it's hard to do that as a founder all yourself because you're so busy doing other things. And a lot of founders don't have the visual background. They have this amazing passion for their product, but they don't have the skills to do a professional job on the visual side.

17:59Grace Finerman:If I can add something to that, which is pretty funny, I have some friends, I've made amazing friends in the industry who have a ton of different kinds of businesses, some of them in food, some of them in tech, whatever it is. And I did my website myself before Dana went in and I emailed them and I said, hey, do you want to do a collab, a sampling event together? And now they're two of my close, close friends in life, not just in business. And one of them told me, we took a look at your website and we thought, hmm, I don't know about this one. So it's just quite funny. But, you know, it is really important.

18:36Grace Finerman:And I think it's a fine line. You know, I always get excited when I just talked to an NYU student a couple weeks ago who's coming out with their own product and doing everything they can. And I think the best thing to do is just start. And if you have to just start on your own, that's what you have to do. But I think as soon as you can, investing in a website and the branding and in packaging, I mean, those are the first investments that you make.

19:01Dana Francks:I also want to say that, you know, a lot of the founders who don't have huge budgets to begin with, we actually really enjoy the creative process at the beginning. And we are happy to waive some fees for the for the investor decks because we want we trust that the brand is going to grow with our support. You know, brands that don't have a huge budget to start off, it doesn't mean that they're not going to be very successful. So we have done it in the past where we'll start out knowing that we're not going to get paid right away. But we want to do the creative exploration and grow as the business grows and continue the relationship for years.

19:41Dana Francks:So even if you're just starting off an emerging brand, you know, even our website looks like we work with a lot of very established high end brands, but we are happy to work with emerging brands as well.

19:54Grace Finerman:I love that. And thanks so much for helping us, supporting brands. So those are a lot of our listeners as well, and they kind of are looking for that first foot. And so just to kind of share, I love for you to run down through like where a lot of people are like, what does branding entail or design? Like what's possible? And so what's kind of the coverage that you and Sharon are able to do with your design services?

20:14Dana Francks:We design the packaging to the point where it's handed off for printing. So it's vector art and we can turn that into 3D images for any usage. We also can make your website from scratch. Everyone that I've come in contact with uses Shopify. So we're great at using Shopify, but whatever kind of add-ons you're interested in. And we provide images for you to use for your social and things like the sell sheet or the pitch decks. Really anything visual, we will never say no. And we always want to help.

20:49Grace Finerman:Grace and Dana, thank you so much for being on and sharing the story of bringing the Date Smarter branding to life. If you want to check out more on Date Smarter, I'll put the website in the show notes. And if you're an emerging brand that's looking to get creative design work done, packaging, design creatives, definitely check out jkcreativenyc.com and connect with Dana. Thanks so much, everyone.