How Anja Integrated a Strategy Workshop to Boost Her Client Proposals
Anja is a food packaging designer, food business expert, and runs her own design company. Outside of being a food packaging and strategic superstar, she also mentors up-and-coming entrepreneurs and supports them in their professional development.
By Anja Korenč, d.MBA alum, with contributions by Clare Goldblatt
I kept running into the same problem when presenting client pitches for food packaging proposals: a sizable gap between what the clients actually wanted and what I ended up offering.
Many clients wanted their packaging to look more beautiful than competitors’ packaging on the same shelf without considering what customers actually want, expect, and value. They were essentially operating under the assumption that an attractive food packaging product would allow them to stand out amongst the competition, without first deeply knowing their customers’ needs. Also, as a creative person, I wasn’t keen to just regurgitate my designs I’d painstakingly created for a separate purpose entirely.
“I knew that I needed to do something to gain more information than the client telling me what they like. Just because they liked it, doesn’t mean their consumers would like and buy it.”
Therefore, I decided to revamp the pitch approach; integrating business knowledge in my pitch to cover the gap that visuals couldn’t. I incorporated a Strategy Workshop as a default into my client offerings, in order to perfectly understand their needs before digging into the design phase. This Strategy Workshop involves creating a Style Scape conducted with the client as the first step. It’s a mix of fonts, keywords, colors, and other visual elements that are presented to the client as inspiration. During this first session, I closely track and record their reactions to what’s presented, gather all the items that they liked, and present their personalized Style Scape at a later meeting.
“Interestingly, no design that I have presented has been turned down since I have incorporated the Style Scape session into my Strategy Workshops.”
The thing is that this [Style Scape] is gathered from their subconscious. I gather things that they don’t tell me with words. The result is like a mood board on steroids.
The second phase of this Strategy Workshop involves a thorough business research phase. Depending on the case, I sometimes do market analysis, competitive analysis, consumer behaviors, demographics analysis, or field research. I also look to similar brands in other more advanced markets when compared to the Slovenian food landscape, as these trends and tendencies often come to Slovenia at a later date. The UK, and especially London, are a constant source of inspiration for the future of food since there are so many cultures and types of people there and the food scene must fill these gaps. You can see the future of the Slovenian food landscape by looking at other markets.
With this Strategy Workshop I came up with, the gap between the clients and myself has disappeared. My clients trust what I deliver in proposals as each proposal is now the process of visual co-creation, business insights, and ample research.