SmashBrand - A Brand Strategy & Packaging Design Agency

SmashBrand - A Brand Strategy & Packaging Design Agency Package design that’s proven to perform. We design, test, and optimize your product so you can be su

We're a brand experience and packaging design firm, founded by partners who have owned successful retail brands. Purposefully selective, we work with brands that want to stand out and also stand for something.

09/04/2026

Four years ago, Aileen joined SmashBrand, and she's been the connective tissue of our creative process ever since. As Creative Project Coordinator, Aileen guides projects from kickoff through design rounds, consumer testing, and final production files, keeping dozens of client engagements moving at once.

Her precision and dedication to getting the details right have made our process stronger and our delivery sharper for every client we serve.

Here's to 4 incredible years with Aileen, and to many more! 🥂

09/03/2026

Christy spotted something on the shelf at Walmart: Benebone's flavor-packed chew toys, but under a second label, "Essentials."

Same brand, same category. But when a premium or specialty brand lands a deal with a mass retailer like Walmart, hitting the required shelf price can mean creating a distinct line, not just cutting the price on the original. It protects volume and positioning everywhere else the brand sells.

Christy's read: "Essentials" isn't a new product so much as a channel protection move, the kind of story that matters more to a buyer and sales team than to a shopper scanning the aisle.

Channel strategy, playing out in real time on a physical shelf.

09/03/2026

Fewer designers on a project usually means less creative diversity, which is why teams bring in multiple people for the ideation phase. Mike Keplinger, Chief Innovation Officer at SmashBrand, explains why AI fills that same role well: it explores a creative space fast, the way multiple designers or different prompts would, without the hours normally spent building mood boards that mostly end up in the trash.

The value isn't in AI producing a finished design. It's in exploring a wide creative space quickly so designers can pick up from what resonates and apply their own expertise to communicate the product and its value proposition.

Watch the full episode on Startup to Scale with Jordan Buckner: https://www.foodbevy.com/274-can-ai-create-packaging-that-actually-sells/

08/27/2026

Every packaging project starts with the same groundwork: get grounded in the category, understand the competitive space, and figure out what's actually driving purchase decisions. Mike Keplinger, Chief Innovation Officer at SmashBrand, walks through where AI helps at this early strategy stage and where it falls short, especially in novel or emerging sub-categories.

AI can accelerate category research and competitive mapping, cutting down the calendar time and strategist hours that discovery normally takes. It can't replace the process of translating decision drivers and differentiation into a creative brief. That step still comes from a long-standing, tested approach, not a single prompt.

Watch the full episode on Startup to Scale with Jordan Buckner: https://www.foodbevy.com/274-can-ai-create-packaging-that-actually-sells/

08/25/2026

Frozen is a velocity aisle where low turns lose the slot.

Kinder's spent two years building distribution in spice. Now it is in frozen vegetables at Walmart. That is a category adjacency, not a line extension, and it asks the shopper one question: does a seasoning brand have permission to own the vegetable itself?

On pack: "Liquid Gold" as the flavor callout, a term Velveeta ran for years. "Air fry and toss in the flavor" as the usage cue. A font treatment that breaks from the spice line. Display-ready case copy that says "Hi there" instead of a purchase driver.

On shelf: 33 cents per ounce against Better Goods at 24, Bird's Eye at 23, Green Giant at 20. A real premium in a category with decades of habit behind the incumbents.

Trial is not the risk. Repeat is. Flavor buys the first purchase. Vegetable quality decides the second.

08/20/2026

Founders are showing up with AI-generated packaging concepts and asking to run them through consumer testing. Some hold up. Most don't, because a concept built without proof points from prior testing rounds skips the step that makes concepts test well in the first place.

Mike Keplinger, Chief Innovation Officer at SmashBrand, breaks down where AI actually fits in the packaging design process. AI accelerates ideation and frees up design teams to spend more time on critical thinking instead of repetitive production work.

It doesn't replace the judgment an agency brings to concept development, purchase intent testing, and market-ready ex*****on. The work product is still yours, whether AI touched it or not.

Watch the full episode on Startup to Scale with Jordan Buckner: https://www.foodbevy.com/274-can-ai-create-packaging-that-actually-sells/

Your target consumer and your category's actual buyer are not always the same shopper. In one of our tests, they skewed ...
08/18/2026

Your target consumer and your category's actual buyer are not always the same shopper. In one of our tests, they skewed different generations entirely, and both profiles were accurate. They just described two different people.

Mid-size CPG brands get a packaging cycle every few years, not every cycle season. Point that cycle at the wrong buyer and the investment is wasted before it hits shelf.

Six decisions that get mistaken for design failures, when they're really unresolved buyer calls:

1️⃣ A buyer nobody confirmed with consumer testing
2️⃣ Claims nobody retested against current purchase intent
3️⃣ Online velocity mistaken for on-shelf proof
4️⃣ A front of pack that says more than it shows
5️⃣ A category matched instead of differentiated from
6️⃣ Heritage that states its age instead of its reason to believe

Every one of these is a decision about who the pack is for. Start there. It determines everything else, from claims hierarchy to shelf standout to purchase intent lift.

08/06/2026

Christy walks a new Kroger in Colorado and one pack stops her in the orange juice set. Not a redesign. Not a new identity. Photography.

Tropicana's oranges are shot several shades darker than the category norm, nearly purple-red at the edge, with a shadowing treatment that deepens the saturation. The result is extreme contrast and hard edges, and that is what the eye finds first from shelf distance.

Compare it to Simply Orange one shelf down: sliced fruit, clean white background, lighter flesh, softer edges. Handsome in isolation. Invisible in the set.

Tropicana's packaging history is not a clean one, and the container change cost them volume. That does not change what is happening on this shelf. The contrast and the edge definition are doing their job.

Two lessons here:

1️⃣ Visual salience is a photography decision, not only a design decision. Appetite appeal and shelf standout are two different briefs, and most brands only write the first one.

2️⃣ Variant architecture matters as much as the hero pack. The immunity SKU planted mid-block breaks the brand block and slows navigation for a shopper who came for orange juice and nothing else.

In a low purchase involvement category, the shopper gives you three to five seconds. Whatever wins first fixation gets considered. Everything else competes on price.

About Shopping with Christy: Christy is a CPG veteran with decades of brand leadership at Kraft, PepsiCo, Unilever, and JBS. Every episode, she walks real retail environments to break down what's driving (or killing) purchase decisions at shelf.

Learn more about our data-driven and consumer-validated packaging design process: https://www.smashbrand.com/

07/29/2026

Christy spotted Pepsi Prebiotic Cola at Costco just months after launch. Now the shelf tag tells a different story. A price ending in .97 means clearance. An asterisk in the upper right corner means the item is done and not coming back.

The deeper issue is positioning. Olipop and Poppi lead with flavor and treat prebiotic as a reason to believe, a small proof point behind the proposition. Pepsi made prebiotic the headline. Consumers don't want prebiotic cola. They want better cola that happens to have functional benefits. Taste is the price of entry.

Costco distribution is a bet on velocity. When repeat purchase doesn't materialize, the tag tells you first.

07/23/2026

Communicate a real point of difference once and most shoppers never register it. Say it or show it three, four, five times and it finally lands.

This pack repeats a single benefit four separate times, and there is a purchase intent test behind why frequency beats one clean mention. Watch for the number that maxed out PI on a different pack entirely.

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