A few months back, I was scrolling through my feeds in Google Reader (“Good night, sweet prince, / And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest”). As I rapidly swiped the trackpad, a product review caught my attention and gave me pause. 

The item looked like a product from skincare brand philosophy, but something was minutely, though definitely, off in the design. On further inspection, even the name sounded slightly awry from the brand’s usual phrases. I stopped to read the post. The product was a dupe. 

I can’t tell you which brand holds ownership of that evil, for I’m currently unable to find the post I swore I would remember. The contrivance may have come from a store label, or maybe it was the product of a challenging company. In either case, it demonstrated how much opposition brands face from knockoffs: be it private copying national design, national ripping of another national product, private imitating private — I'll stop there, but whatever possible scenarios are left have surely happened as well.

Does your brand need to regain ground lost to a competitor? Winning the Battle at the Shelf gives definitive steps you can take to earn back consumers who have strayed. Perhaps you want to set your product and package apart from the very beginning. Read Don’t Follow the Herd … Be Heard! to pick up tips straight from a great artist and Apple — we can’t stress enough the vital role packaging plays in selling your brand.

Don’t forget to submit your Design Gallery entries by the end of the month, and sign up for Packaging That Sells before Sept. 9, when the early-bird discount expires.  

Laura Zielinski, Editor-in-Chief
zielinskil@bnpmedia.com