Thomas Pigeon, president and creative director of Thomas Pigeon Design, is a man on a mission. He’s out to convince marketers that well-executed strategic brand design alone can dramatically revitalize a brand and powerfully drive a business forward. And if you talk to any one of his firm’s diverse range of clients – including Campbell’s Soup, Pfizer Canada, Maple Leaf Foods, Hostess Frito-Lay, Kraft Canada, Pillsbury Canada, Johnson & Johnson, and the Royal Canadian Mint – you’ll realize he is fast converting true believers.

‘Most marketers simply don’t believe the fact that re-vitalization of a brand design on its own can produce major revenue gains for them,’ says Pigeon from his Oakville, Ontario-based office.

‘We feel we have a missionary job in educating marketers to convert the traditionally passive, tactical activity of design into an active, strategic expectation.

‘This passivity comes from years of tactical delivery by many professional package designers, who can create nice photography and color but sadly lack big ideas. While claiming to be strategic, most package design firms fall short of this promise.’

Pigeon clearly lives it. Now consisting of 50 employees in its Oakville and Montreal offices, his firm has been enjoying exponential growth in recent years, delivering truly strategic brand design thinking to both Canadian and international markets and setting a new, results-oriented standard in the process.

‘The power of brands never ceases to amaze me,’ observes Pigeon, a veteran of 22 years’ experience in the field. ‘On the coat-tails of the fear of most national brand marketers of the private label conundrum, we’re now seeing a huge resurgence in the power of brands.

‘Yet many of those brands are still under-promised with respect to their external packaging. There may be wonderful products inside the can, box or bottle, but their passive, shy exteriors often fail to communicate the essence of the brand.

‘Our hallmark is to be very aggressive in re-staging brands, not by simply making them graphically prettier but by telling a compelling story that articulates a unique and defensible benefit.’

A case in point: Hostess Frito-Lay’s re-design of Miss Vicki’s potato chips. When the company first acquired the Miss Vicki’s franchise, it was a $4-million to $5-million business. After Pigeon’s package re-design, the product rocketed to $30 million in revenues overnight – without significant marketing support.

‘That happened because Thomas doesn’t see himself as a package designer but as a strategic brand designer,’ says Robert Carscadden, direct of small format for Hostess Frito-Lay. ‘He brings so much more than we ask him for, even if it’s annoying sometimes. He forces you to re-think the bigger picture, which single mix suppliers rarely do.

‘Thomas and his team have an incredible ability to focus a light on a single essential truth about a brand – in the case of Miss Vicki’s, down-home country goodness – and then explode it into a much larger truth, expanding the whole package along with the individual graphic entities. Most designers simply give you back what you wanted as outlined in the briefs, but Thomas is single-minded, disciplined, aggressive, and uncompromising.’

That kind of creative challenging of his clients is typical of Pigeon’s approach.

‘We start our assignments by asking our clients point-blank: ‘What do you expect your brand design re-vitalization to do to your brand sales?”’ says Pigeon. ‘Often clients see package design as just another part of their overall brand promotion. We recommend that they set their sights much higher.’

In some categories, Pigeon feels so confident in his team’s ability to drive the brand that if he doesn’t deliver against the growth target, he doesn’t expect to be paid.

Conversely, if design alone drives brands the way he knows it does, pure fee-based compensation for services rendered seems to understate the value of his firm’s contribution. That’s why he has successfully constructed performance-based compensation agreements with some clients.

‘I believe there is too much focus on the new users of brands and not enough focus on current users,’ says Pigeon. ‘I’ve seen some designers, in the quest for egocentric design and frivolous awards, lose a brand’s roots entirely. That is simply irresponsible.

‘They grow the new brand by 2% and the client is happy. Unfortunately, they’ve gained short-term conversion of 17% of new users but alienated 15% of their loyal user-base. You see a six-month spike up in the business and then quickly thereafter a long, steady decline of market share. With the unique consumer insight models we employ at Pigeon Design, we consistently retain the core franchise while increasing consumption and attracting new users.’

With offices in Ontario and Quebec, Pigeon sees his firm’s French/English duality as a unique benefit to his clients, typified by the recent re-design of the Habitant Soup line. Habitant’s roots go back to 1929 in Quebec and yet Quebec is not its single largest market. When Pigeon re-designed the brand by using teams in Montreal and Toronto concurrently, the firm was able to produce a truly balanced national brand design yet maintain its strong Quebec roots.

In addition to this strong bi-cultural national perspective, Pigeon is fast developing important international design connections. Five years ago, he formed a joint venture with ideal, the International Design Alliance, comprised of seven companies in six countries which collaboratively build global brands and, alternatively, employ member firms based on their core competency as an international resource for domestic clients.

As a statement of his firm’s international vision, Pigeon has recently garnered a world training mandate from Kodak’s global head office in Rochester, n.y. to train its marketers on how to optimize their brand design systems. In November, Pigeon will visit Melbourne, Australia to present his firm’s unique two-day course ‘Leveraging Brand Packaging To Delight Consumers’ to an audience of Kodak Australasian marketers.

But finally, Pigeon’s true evangelical mission is all about bringing brands to life through packaging, both nationally and internationally. ‘We know we can unleash the inherent power of brands simply through great, strategically-executed design,’ he says. ‘If we can convert skeptical marketers to believe in that simple message, we know we can powerfully deliver against their bottom line.’

Thomas Pigeon Design

75 Navy St.

Oakville, Ont. L6J 2Z1

Tel: 905-338-8300

144, rue Ste-Catherine Ouest,

Montreal, Que. H3G 1R8

Tel: 514-871-1322

www.tpdg.ca

Also in this sponsored supplement:

– The Watt Design Group: From food to fashion, The Watt Design Group offers real-world solutions p.D2

– Russell Inc: Russell’s ‘Thinking Design’ builds powerful brands p.D3

– Perennial Design Company Limited: Integrated design and marketing p.D4

– Tudhope Associates: Asking the right questions p.D5

– Ove and Goodhue: Partners in solution design p.D6

– Karo [Toronto] Inc.: Design at the forefront of change p.D10

– Davis & Associates: Connecting with consumers p.D11

– Strategies International: It’s all about trust p.D12

– Hunter Straker p.D13

– Marovino Design Group p.D14

– Genesys Design: Canada’s rising star in design gets the PartyLite account p.D15