Lightning Labels Blog

Stickerman Creates Art from Produce Labels

Barry Snyder is the Stickerman. He takes used produce stickers, the kind that you see on apples, oranges, pears and the like, and creates works of art from them. He has become a bit of a local celebrity appearing in the Denver Post, on the local TV news, and on the Food Network.

He has a unique hobby that is not only very creative but also eco-friendly. He receives thousands of used produce labels from people all over the world who support him in his work. He has a beautiful portfolio of artwork with each piece having been painstakingly created in his home studio.

If you want to help the Stickerman he gladly accepts donations of produce labels. You can send them to: Stickerman, P.O. Box 301 Erie, CO 80516.

How 'Critters' Help Sell Wine and Beer

Introducing a new author for the Lightning Labels blog: Christy Correll. Christy is our online marketing specialist and has been with Lightning Labels since the start of the year. She has a background in journalism and online marketing, and will be a regular contributor here.

Animals help sell alcoholic beverages. This is not news. AC Nielsen released a report three years ago about this wine label phenomenon.

What is news is we now have an idea of why using images of kangaroos, penguins, frogs, dogs, and other animals to peddle our products from store shelves has been so successful.

A new study by University of Chicago Booth School of Business professor Aparna Labroo, Ravi Dhar of Yale University, and Norbert Schwartz of the University of Michigan suggests consumers buy products with labels that reflect the consumer, not the product. The findings of the report go against the traditional branding strategy of designing labels based on what the product is about.

The next time you walk down a wine or beer aisle, look closely at the bottle labels. In a wine aisle, you will find many labels depicting grapes, vineyards, and the countries where the wines are produced in. In a beer aisle, you will see many product labels featuring different types of grains and words describing beer. These images give the consumer information about the product behind the label, i.e., what the product is made from, how it tastes, and where it was produced. The makers of these beverages are following the traditional branding strategy of designing product labels based on the product itself. During that same stroll down the wine or beer aisle, will also notice a number of bottle labels featuring all kinds of animals -- and not just cute, fuzzy things such as the black lab on Spanish Peaks Black Dog Ale or the perky penguin on the Little Penguin Shiraz.

Some of the critters on these beverage labels are ugly, if not downright menacing. Take the frog on Bad Frog Beer’s product label, for example. Draped over the lettering of the product logo, he stares the consumer straight in the eye and shoots him the middle finger. Why would anyone pick that beer over one of comparable quality and taste?

In an article for Chicago Booth Magazine about the new study, Vanessa Sumo explains how putting an animal on their product label could help a wine maker build a better brand. Sumo gives the example of how a woman who frequently sees and hears great things about Kermit the Frog from her son is likely to purchase a bottle of wine with a frog on the label if she has minimal time to make a purchasing decision.

Familiarity with Kermit the Frog actually makes it easier for a consumer to visually process the image on the label. This enhances the label’s appeal and as a result makes the "frog wine" more desirable relative to its competitors.

The point is that familiarity with a particular animal on a product label causes a harried shopper to buy that product. The consumer already has a pre-established relationship with a specific animal, and transfers it to the product because of the label. If the same woman featured in Labroo, Dhar, and Schwartz’s study had been shopping for beer, would she have ended up choosing a case of Bad Frog Beer over Spanish Peaks Black Dog Ale? What if she didn’t have a son who adored Kermit the Frog, but a loyal black Labrador retriever instead?

Even if you are not in the wine and beer industry, it might be a good idea to take the findings of this study to heart the next time you re-evaluate your product label design. When was the last time you did that, by the way? I would love to hear if your product packaging design is currently working for you, as well as what -- if any -- changes you have made to your label designs over the years and how they have affected your sales.

Related Posts

Critter Labels Taking Over Wine Industry

The New Wine Label Phenomenon

Food Recalls and Serial Number Labels

My two year old son loves peanut butter. He enjoys peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, several different peanut butter snack bars, and sometime just spoonfuls of peanut butter straight from the jar. So when my wife and I heard about the peanut butter recalls recently we went to the FDA web site to check to see if we had any products that were recalled. It turns out we did but after some digging we realized that based on the "Best by" date the products we owned were not part of the recall.

This whole episode got me thinking about the safety of our food chain and the inefficient way these recalls are handled. Some of the products in this recall had their best by dates on boxes and if you had thrown the box away you had no way to tell if your product was part of the recall or not. In which case I am sure most people just threw the products away not wanting to risk salmonella poisoning.

There has to be a better way. We need to be able to identify these recalled products better. Here is my idea. Every product label should have a unique serial number along with a barcode. Every UPC barcode uniquely identifies a product with a ten digit number. Underneath this barcode I would apply a unique serial number. To be safe you could make it a ten digit number also which would allow for 10 billion different numbers, enough for even the most popular products. So every item on the supermarket shelf will have a number that will uniquely identify it. Then when a product recall is started the FDA could provide information on what serial numbers are affected and you could just look at your product label and know if your product is safe. Maybe the FDA could even have a system where you could type in your barcode and 10 digit serial number to look up your product on their recall web site.

Serial number labels would only add a few cents on to the cost of each product and would have immediate benefits in product recalls. All the technology is in place to do this right now and I hope and expect something like this to come out from the government sometime in the next five years. Of course, this mean all product labels would have to be printed digitally in order to print the variable information. Here at Lightning Labels we will be happy to be part of this new movement to help ensure our food supply remains safe.

New Food Labels Coming This Year

The Smart Choices Program is a new food labeling system which aims to bring clarity and consistency to nutritional information on food labels. It is a front-of-pack labeling system meaning that the front of food package will have this information in large and bold type, it will not be in small type on the back of the package. The idea here is that with simple and easy to read nutritional information consumers will be able to make better choices with their food purchases.

Right now this is a voluntary program but some big food companies such as Coca-Cola, General Mills, Kellogg, Kraft, Pepsi and Wal-Mart have signed up for the program. With the growing obesity problem in this country, it will not be long before the government steps in to make changes to food labels. The Smart Choices program is an attempt to deal with this problem before the government mandates changes.

I will be interested to see how this new information is implemented into existing food labels. Label designers have a challenge here because they will have to take away some existing label real estate to incorporate this new information. We can expect to see new products on the shelves with these labels by the middle of the year.

More People Are Reading Food Labels

Natural Products Insider recently published an article about food labels, describing how more consumers are spending more time reading food labels than ever before. A report put out by the Hartman Group found that 61% of consumers are reading labels more than before, and half that total are reading labels much more frequently. People are mostly concerned with nutrition and food safety as they attempt to comprehend what they are really buying.

This is actually good news for businesses in the food industry. People want to read your labels, so good design is more important than ever. My feature story in our latest newsletter describes ten elements of good label design, but designers of food labels need to focus on a couple of extra issues. Remember, people are studying your ingredient list. It needs to be easy to find and easy to read. This means no fancy fonts and certainly no tiny print. Make it large enough that a person with reasonable eyesight can read it without difficulty. Black or dark type on a light colored background will work best. Also, your nutrition information needs to meet the standards of the FDA.

The good news is that if you have high quality, healthy ingredients you will have a leg up on the mass produced competition. And with the high quality digital label printing you get from Lightning Labels you have another advantage over your competition. Just make sure your ingredient list and nutrition information is easily readable and you will give your potential customers every reason to put your product into their shopping cart.

Custom Labels for Frozen Products

We get many calls from people who want to put labels on their ice cream or some other kind of frozen product. What kind of material can stand up to the harsh conditions inside a freezer? Well the good news is that our standard White BOPP material is up to the task. The adhesive on this material is good down to -20 degrees which means it should be fine inside most commercial freezers. The minimum temperature that you can safely apply this label is 23 degrees, so unless you have a labeling machine deep inside your freezer, it will work fine. This material is also designed to withstand the water and ice condensation that could occur on the container.

With the standard adhesives available today you simply don't have to worry about your labels sticking whatever kind of frozen product you have. Here at Lightning Labels we have plenty of customers who apply their labels to ice cream, frozen yogurt, meat, bread and many other products that spend most of their life in the freezer.

Starting a Food Business

Here at Lightning Labels we print a lot of food labels. Hot sauce, coffee, honey, salsa, chocolate, ice cream, jelly, olive oil, soup - these are just some of the food products where we supply the labels. The food business is very competitive and it is not easy to break through into the national retail chains.

Today in the Small Business section of BusinessWeek.com, there is an interesting article on how a couple of young entrepreneurs with little business experience went from making their product for friends in their kitchen to the shelves of Whole Foods. The article provides insight into how they were able to make the leap from part-time hobby to professional food business. For anyone trying to get their business off the ground it is interesting reading.

A Striking Hot Sauce Label

We printed this label a few days ago and I really like the colors here so I thought we should feature it on the blog. This hot sauce label was created by Mike Shultz of Shultz's Gourmet where they make a delicious range of sauces and seasonings. We have a bottle of this hot sauce sitting in our office that I am anxious to try but the label looks so good on the bottle we have decided to keep it on display in our reception area.

The hot sauce label is printed on our White BOPP material with a gloss laminate that really shows off the quality of our digital label printer. The vibrant colors we can produce is perfect for the hot colors required on a hot sauce label. The white BOPP is an excellent material because it is very durable and will hold up well even after months sitting in the fridge. And we always put a protective laminate on the label to protect the inks, so the label will look just as vibrant a year from now as it is today.

Delicious Looking Ice Cream Labels

Gaby's Farm is a small family run farm in South Florida that grows exotic tropical fruit plants and makes ice cream from the fruit. Their ice cream is all natural and they have complete control of their production process because they grow their own trees and harvest their own fruit. I chose to feature this label because these are my two favorite fruits - mango and passionfruit. I would love to taste this sorbet, but right now it is only available to South Florida residents.

Their ice cream labels are beautifully designed in rich color, and they really show off the capabilities of our digital label printing press. The labels were printed on our standard White BOPP material with permanent adhesive. The adhesive is guaranteed down to -20 degrees, and the labels can be applied down to 23 degrees. It is also very durable, so it is the perfect label material to use for ice cream. Gaby's Farm also took advantage of digital label printing by doing small quantities of 13 different label versions.

Eye Catching Honey Labels

We printed these honey labels here last week and I thought they were very striking. They were for Pot of Gold Aparies, a small one person business in northern Colorado founded by Stephen Hack. Stephen has been a bee keeper for 6 years, but has only been selling his products for the last year and a half.

Pot of Gold Aparies has two products - honey and a handcream made from beeswax. He sells his products at some local markets and also through word of mouth. Right now this is just a part time business for Stephen, but one day he would like to grow his business into a full time operation.

Stephen has taken an important step by using professionally printed labels instead of just the home made variety. It is a simple but eye catching label design that will give his products a more professional look. It can only help Stephen sell more of his honey and handcream.