#217 - Creative Briefs 101 with Janice Greenwald and Kat Karpati

The Startup CPG Podcast

Startup CPG

Startup, Food, Business, Beverage, Cpg, Entrepreneurship

4.9 • 642 Ratings

🗓️ 7 October 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Turn every BFCM QR code scan into sales—get the free report now: www.uniqode.com/bfcmcpg

In this episode of the Startup CPG Podcast, Daniel Scharff is joined by Janice Greenwald, CPG marketing consultant fractional CMO for emerging food and beverage brands, and Kat Karpati, co-founder of Flock Creative, to explore how brands and agencies can work together more effectively through the briefing process.

The discussion covers the essential elements of a strong packaging creative brief, including defining the business challenge, clarifying the target consumer, establishing a clear positioning statement, and prioritizing messaging. Janice and Kat also provide insights into aligning internal stakeholders, setting realistic guardrails, and navigating the RFP process with agencies of different sizes.

Whether you are launching a new brand, refreshing your packaging, or managing a large-scale rebrand, this episode offers practical guidance to help you communicate your vision clearly and achieve stronger results with your creative partners.

Listen now to learn how to create briefs that drive alignment, inspire agencies, and position your brand for long-term success.

Don’t miss the chance to connect with investors and brands—secure your spot at fandf.startupcpg.com

Listen in as they share about:

Purpose & Role of a Creative Brief
Core Components of a Brief
Understanding the Consumer
Messaging & Design Priorities
Channel & Retail Strategy
Shelf Context & Real-World Testing
Agency–Client Dynamics

Episode Links:
Website: https://www.handelfoodlaw.com/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lauren-handel-food-lawyer/
Website: flockcreative.com

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/kat-karpati-339bb31a

Don't forget to leave a five-star review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify if you enjoyed this episode. For potential sponsorship opportunities or to join the Startup CPG community, visit http://www.startupcpg.com.

Show Links:

Transcripts of each episode are available on the Transistor platform that hosts our podcast here (click on the episode and toggle to “Transcript” at the top)
Join the Startup CPG Slack community (20K+ members and growing!)
Follow @startupcpg
Visit host Daniel's Linkedin
Questions or comments about the episode? Email Daniel at podcast@startupcpg.com
Episode music by Super Fantastics

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0	Okay, you know that moment when someone hands you a business card and then it disappears into the void 10 minutes later?
0:07.6	Yeah, same.
0:08.4	If you're out pitching your CPG brand, grinding at trade shows, networking like it's your job, Unicode's digital business cards are the smarter, scalable upgrade that you need.
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0:39.4	handshakes into trackable leads automatically. If you're managing a team, you can deploy branded
0:45.2	cards at scale. You can lock templates for your brand consistency and automate updates
0:50.4	across the whole organization. So no more printing, guessing, or hoping that the card didn't end up in the hotel trash can.
0:56.8	Skip the paper, start making every hello measurable.
1:00.6	Hit the link in the show notes or visit unico.com slash CPG business cards.
1:04.8	That's un Iqo-d-com slash CPG business cards and create your first card and get your brand into their
1:12.6	phone, not their recycling bin. All right.
1:36.9	I will say that I've worked with a lot of founders who have just like previously gone straight to an agency or designer and just said, make me a great brand. And they haven't really explained like what it is that they're trying to achieve with that project.
1:43.6	And so it could be something like we've had like we've had no problem getting on the shelf,
1:48.0	but we're having a really hard time getting off the shelf.
1:50.0	I think one of the things that we love to see is really understanding,
1:53.0	like, what is the challenge?
1:55.0	Like, give us a problem to solve is what we always say.
1:58.0	Like, tell us why we have to do this right now versus a year ago.
2:01.1	Tell us what's going on in the category.
	...

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