Companies do not win in the marketplace by themselves. Companies win by partnering with the right wide range of suppliers who supplement their internal capabilities to create the winning formulas for marketplace success. These partnerships are only formed after long and careful consideration. Forming these partnerships through a trial and error process can only create far more errors and far too little success. The wisdom of winning companies is choose your partners carefully.
One of the most valuable partnerships that you can choose is your graphic design partnership. One of the reasons that this partnership is so important and potentially valuable is that their work it is very customer facing. Put another way, their work is what your current and potential customers see as they are considering whether they should buy your product or not. That consideration includes a comparison of your graphic design to that of your competitors.
A major focus of this partnership is often new package design. This can be new designs for existing products or a first-ever design for a new product that is being introduced. Both of these kinds of projects are exceptionally important and can make a huge difference in your marketplace success. The marketing world is littered with examples of companies that change their package design only to find out that they confused their existing customers, which resulted in lost sales and profits. For example, Tropicana's move to an all-white package in the orange juice business was a major failure. Fortunately, the company was nimble enough to recognize the mistake and return to a more acceptable design and begin the long process of winning back lost customers.
In forming a partnership, put together a detailed plan for due diligence. You not only want to understand a partners design capabilities but also understand their design results in the real world. All too many design candidates are not well-equipped to answer this critically important question.
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