To serve the senior marketing, branding and design leaders in our community better, ST Media Group International along with our partners at Nielsen and LPK, embarked on a discovery on how to best serve today’s market. What many of our audience members told us was they needed a brand design strategy and insights resource that still recognized that packaging is and will remain a powerful marketing vehicle for their brands but they also are increasingly responsible for contributing or creating the complete brand experience.
You told us about some of the editorial projects you loved, e.g., the annual Makeover Challenge, from our previous publication, and what you wanted to see more strategy and insights articles like this issue’s piece on marketing mix modeling by Brand Experience’s associate editor Katie Gravely.
We also listened when you said omni-channel marketing is no longer a buzz word, it’s SOP, and we added editorial content that helps brands perform both in traditional retail markets and evolving online and mobile sales environments. For example, “The [Brand Experience] List” is a new department that spotlights the top brands in a specific urban market, and it is the result of two great partnerships. The first with innovation research and trends membership service, Stylus, which introduced us to one of our newest partners, Nextatlas. This issue’s edition of “The List” spotlights the top five beauty/personal care, consumer electronics, fashion, and food and beverage brands in New York City.
Some content types, such as our multi-media thought-leader series, were evolved to recognize the large existing and growing audience of senior business leaders who read our publication. “CXO” will continue to feature in-depth multi-media channel interviews with marketers and designers who are subject matter experts in design and marketing but it will also feature executive leaders who seek to disrupt entire markets or cultures.
Our first installment of “CXO” features Sonat Birnecker Hart, Ph.D., who serves as president of Koval Distillery. Birnecker Hart is clearly a subject matter expert in market and culture (she was a professor of cultural history before becoming an entrepreneur). She is also a strong advocate of design. Birnecker Hart credits the brand’s growth from small craft spirits company to the 2016 Illinois Exporter of the Year with distribution in the U.S., Australia, New Zealand, Japan, throughout Europe, most of Canada, and soon to be in Taiwan, South Korea and China, to package designs developed by her sister Oona Hart of Dando Projects.
I would like to end with a note of appreciation. The editorial, art, marketing and publishing teams at ST Media Group thanks the 2016 Package Design editorial advisory board members and all the readers who emailed, called and broke bread with us while leading us to this new direction. The teams appreciate your guidance, and hope you will continue to share your candid feedback to improve and grow Brand Experience (BXP).
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Sincerely,
Linda Casey, Editor-In-Chief
