Client
Capitol Distributing
Role

Branding, visual, print, service, & environmental design

Tools

Illustrator, Photoshop, InDesign, Figma, Fiery, Onyx

Overview

As part of the marketing team, I was tasked with improving current sales & marketing programs as well as creating new ones. Overhauls on the marketing program, catalogs, customer communication & appreciation processes, as well as the creation of completely new programs and strategy.

Final Deliverables

  • Sample Pack: updated packaging, streamlined process
  • New Item Rack: updated signage and communications
  • Now in Stock emails: welcome emails, signup campaign through sales reps, tracking and analytics, templates, callouts & deals, and special editions.
  • Events: comprehensive event branding packages spanning from initial save the dates through thank you messages. Includes all communications, event layout design and flow, landing page, digital and print materials, innovative ways to deliver information, giveaways, how-to videos, and more.
  • Sales Catalogs: massive reorganizations and update to each catalog, new responsive template
  • Promotional Book: overhaul to submission process, design and production moved in-house, full redesign

Sample Pack

While the sample pack program has always been one of the most popular for our customers and manufacturers, it had some problems.
When I started at Capitol the sample pack consisted of the samples and a printed shelf tag for each (like in a store with the barcode, name, size) placed inside a ziplock bag with a logo sticker on it.

ISSUES
  • Minimal branding or identification of the ‘sample pack’ as a product. The logo stickers frequently would transfer to other objects or bags.
  • No direction for store employees. As the sample pack was included with a store’s usual order, there was nothing telling them that it was intended for the store’s decision maker.
  • No way to include information for similar items (other flavors or sizes) to those in the sample pack. For example, if a brand new flavor of candy bar was released, a king size may be included. However, if the store wanted to order the standard size, there was no way to include information for ordering.
  • Time consuming to construct. There were four elements: shelftags (could be all together or in batches), products, bags, and stickers. And then fully sealing the ziplock bags. None could be assembled in advance.

Iteration 1

BRANDED INSERT CARDS
  • Printed cards included in each bag identified the sample pack, instructed stores to the intended recipient, and could include as many items as needed.
  • Beyond that, it allowed us to include additional marketing information: other new flavors and sizes, product rank, full descriptions, taglines, etc.
  • The card also streamlined the process to only three elements.

The recipient experience was still not ideal with the plastic sealed bags. The plastic allowed any employee to see what was inside. They are easy to open and reseal, allowing tampering.

Iteration 2

BRANDED BOXES

Ordering printed boxes allowed us to improve the recipient’s experience in many ways.

  • First, it gave a true ‘unboxing’ experience, as the items are not visible while the box is sealed. This also deters other employees from rifling through the contents as it cannot be resealed.
  • Secondly, it allowed more freedom in branding the ‘sample pack’ as it’s own product and making the purpose and recipient quite clear.
  • Third, it allowed much more freedom to the included card. With the insert serving as the entire identification and marketing element, it had many purposes. Trying to include too many items resulted in diluted exposure for each item. 
  • With the card concealed until opening it could be a variable size, adapting to the needs of each box.

Along with the sample pack, we used this opportunity to update the blank boxes currently used for the new customer kits and the bags used for the new employee survival kits.

Weekly Email

The previous version of the weekly Now in Stock email consisted of a grid of unedited product images and barcodes. 

The open rate consistently hovers around 30%. The click rate is very low as it only links to the company’s website and Facebook – all purchases are completed through their scanning devices. The previous version was emailed out to a BCC list directly through Outlook, so I do not have statistics to compare.

MAJOR UPDATES
  • Migrated into MailChimp to enable analytics and tracking of mailing lists. 
  • Sponsored “call outs” for items.
  • Creation of welcome email to new list members containing marketing information.
  • Added select discounted and discontinued items.
  • The last email each month features a ‘you may have missed’ section full of the most popular new items of the month.
  • Seasonal ‘stock up’ emails featuring seasonal items like wiper fluid, flavored creamers, holiday candy, and more.
  • Event reminders are added around major company events.

Event Emails

Vendors pay very little attention to their emails – skimming at best. We would receive countless questions who’s answers were contained in current communications.

This led me to overhaul the vendor communications around events. 

  • Short sentences, preferably presented as bulleted or numbered lists.
  • Use hierarchy in text and color to denote the most important take-aways from each communication.
  • Icons, images, or diagrams accompanying each subject or thought.
  • I also created a number of video walkthroughs of the event app.

Sales Catalogs

Capitol’s sales catalogs are intended to be both a resource for ordering known items as well as helping customers find new items. In redesigning the suite of sales catalogs, it was important that they be easy to navigate for customers and employees while also having an easy to update template format. I started with the most daunting catalog – Food Service. In this one, my main concern was the huge amount of products that needed to be included in an intuitive way that would work across multiple categories.

Many items would comfortably fit in different categories, so to begin, I first had to select the proper items from over 2000. Once I had a working list of my content, I selected 80 items to create sorting cards. I selected 3 of our sales consultants, our sales manager, and 3 customers to complete card sorting exercises. This informed the top-level organization of the catalog.

I then selected 20 items from each section, focusing particularly on ambiguous items, to create a new set of cards. I had 2 sales consultants and 3 customers organize the items within the categories. This gave me an idea of how I could order each section, and informed my decision to have two different strategies. Some sections, such as pastries and ice cream, made the most sense sorted by brand and then by the brand by type of food (popsicle, small tub, gallon, etc) within brand. Other sections, such as unprepared foods or deli items, weren’t as brand-specific. These were more beneficial sorted by type of ingredient (chicken, mixes, cheese, etc). Creating this taxonomy also allows others to add new items to the catalog in the future.

Sales Catalogs

The bi-monthly promotional catalog wasn’t getting used by customers. It was costing more to produce than it was making and wasn’t worth the cost to the vendors. The book was being designed and printed out-of-house, resulting in a huge turn-around time and excessive cost. The book design was also not ideal, some pages having just a couple of products or one large pixelated image.

The goals of the redesign were to relaunch the promotional book as the go-to spot for all of the companies short term promotions and to increase sales both for the benefit of the company and the vendors in the book.

In order to accomplish these things, it was necessary to make the book easy to navigate, order from, and access for all customers.

  • New guidelines for vendor submissions were instated to ensure that each product had quality photos and a worthwhile deal
  • Design and printing were both brought in-house to reduce cost and timelines
  • Items were grouped into categories rather than by manufacturer (as in previous versions) for easy comparison between products
  • The order form was streamlined and a digitally editable version was made available
  • The new template is easily editable to update the color theme in order to differentiate between frequent versions
  • Short-term benefits were provided to the sales team in order to get the word out about the redesign

The first few versions of the new promo book had revenue far outstripping any coming before. The previous version got very few orders from customers, but the new version is bringing in tens of thousands of dollars each time. It is successful enough that the sales team has started asking it be monthly.