Jess (00:00)
Welcome to Dig Inspiration, a quick recap where we dig deeper into the story behind the story. In each of these bite-sized episodes, I'll revisit key moments from our incredible guests, highlighting the most inspiring parts of the stories they share. So today, we're dropping a quick reflection on some of the most memorable parts of my talk with Ron Burrage

former head design for PepsiCo, Hershey, and P &G. He's currently with the agency Go Dutch, which he talked a lot about, long-standing partnership with that agency, which is great to hear. I guess my first takeaway is who doesn't love a story about Hershey's Kisses, right? What such a fun brand to work on? I'm not surprised this was one of Ron's favorite stories to tell. And when revitalizing a brand from a visual standpoint, Ron talked about how they had something right under their noses the whole time. And that was that little

that little piece of paper that sticks out of the foil and thinking about how they could use that as a way to tell stories, especially around holiday executions. So if you have seen the bunny ears or the Valentine or how they kind of embody hot cocoa during winter, there's so much freedom to explore visual and physical storytelling through the packaging. And so I thought that was a really great and fun example to get the company really re-energized around the brand, leveraging some of its very core equities.

And another thing that Ron talked about that folks might not think about is the transition from laid down bags in the confectionery aisle to the stand up pouches and what an innovation tipping point that really was for packaging. So suddenly when you think about those stand up pouches, you have a lot more real estate to experiment with your design, your ability to stand out and get noticed on shelf to communicate a more premium positioning.

All of that was embedded in this stand-up pouch movement. Now, if you go to Target or your grocery store, you see stand-up pouches everywhere. But this is a relatively new category dynamic. So it really goes to show innovation takes a lot of forms and packaging innovation is a powerful lever brand and design leaders can pull.

And finally, one of the lessons Ron shared was from his time at Disney. He has such cool brands as part of his background.

But what he was talking about is how some very influential

wouldn't let him rest on the great IP that he had at Disney, but constantly pushing them to do better and to think bigger. If you think about making Mickey Mouse relevant after 75 years, and while that's a super fun challenge, it's still a challenge to reimagine an IP that has had so much historical association.

So I really think Ron's work across so many longstanding brands and that characteristic of sort of never settling for the status quo, always pushing the boundaries and experimenting, that's one of the things that continues to push these brands to evolve and to grow.

Well, that's your Dig inspiration recap for the week. We would love to hear takeaways and thoughts on the conversation. So please do visit the link in the description and leave us a comment.