JKR

It’s helpful to have someone in mind when designing a pack, and it’s understandable that we are usually briefed to target ‘opinion leaders’ rather than the herd, but the reality is often interchangeable pen portraits of the same bland person. It’s most common in alcohol brand briefings: we are invited to “meet” a guy who is invariably mid twenties, starting to become more discerning, enjoying his career and relationship, appreciates good food and the occasional night out ‘just with the guys’ (the devil!). While he might be the poster boy for a responsible drinking campaign, a few minutes immersed in his upwardly mobile world and you want to knock the smug smile off his face. Just as an aside on female pen portraits: surely there are more stripes of young women than indicated by moodboard’s populated (seemingly exclusively) by the unholy trinity of Cheryl, Davina and Paris?

While such personifications are not really a problem, they aren’t much help either – as one colleague often remarks, if you want to see who you’re designing for, hang out at a motorway service station for an hour. Real life is far more inspiring and instructive than these anodyne ‘guys’ ever are. It would be refreshing just once to get a pen portrait that begins “Meet Smithy, he loves life but at his age life seems to be all about big Friday nights….”

Apologies if this reads like a long whinge but I’m trying to make the point that if the start point is always the same, there is less chance for a distinctive design outcome, which is, after all, the endgame…