Spanning two days, the Velocity conference hosted retailers, industry veterans, manufacturers, agencies and even ground-breaking leaders from Fair Trade USA. The atmosphere of the event was contagious with camaraderie as attendees took advantage of the numerous networking opportunities to share and learn.

The conference agenda included an engaging mix of topics ranging from work culture to design to tracing the history of Private Brand’s origins. Despite the eclectic nature of the speakers there were in fact several consistent themes throughout the conference:

There is no shortage of data to suggest that Private Brand grocery is steadily occupying more shelf space than ever before. Contemporary Private Brand is usurping National Brand loyalty as consumers are becoming more attuned to ingredients and nutrition facts. GMO’s, artificial colors and added sugars, or the lack thereof, have contributed to a sea change of consumer’s attitudes about the quality of Private Brand products.

The 5th Annual Vertex Awards, a global package design competition, hosted it’s very first “Pop-Up” awards ceremony in NYC on June 14th, 2018.

MBD was both a proud sponsor and winner at this year’s event including two bronze wins for Wellsley Farms Spices and Natural Grocers Apple Cider Vinegar. Accepting the awards for MBD was Project Manager, Alison Hom and Creative Director, David Ziegler-Voll.

“It’s very exciting to see the hard work that goes into so many facets of a project pay off with this kind of acknowledgement,” said Alison.

Transparency. Today’s consumers want it in product sourcing. They want to know where their food came from. To the point that they’re willing to pay more to know the provenance of the products they buy. By communicating transparency with consumers, retailers win.

Transparency has become a buzzword, but it can be more than that. Extending it beyond sourcing and into other processes allows teams to work as teams, regardless of where the team members live. Getting to that point is a process, and it starts with communication.

This year’s GD USA American Package Design Awards marks its 55th year and has yielded another bumper crop of incredible design work for a wide array of industries and companies, and MBD is pleased to congratulate four of our clients on their wins. Great branding and great packaging requires not only vision and creativity on the part of the design team, but also the courage of marketing and brand managers to believe in their agency partners, share their passion and fight for more than average results. We literally couldn’t do this without you!

At Marketing by Design, we believe in bringing brands to life. That applies to our brand as well. Which is why we are pleased to announce the addition of David Ziegler-Voll to our team as Creative Director. In this role, he will be responsible for creating ground-breaking private brand designs and strategic plans.