By Vanessa Doll
How can CPG pet food brands create ownability through packaging design?
CPG pet food brands can create ownability by making their packaging and product design distinctive enough for consumers to recognize and remember. The strongest strategies are to break from category conventions, adopt proprietary features, and customize memorable design elements. In a crowded pet food category, ownable design helps brands stand out, build recognition, and create loyalty.
Today’s CPG pet food brands are vying for attention in what feels like the wild west of food packaging. Helping consumers recognize your product will build loyalty, and you do so by creating ownability for your brand.
Think “outside the box.” Whether you can invent something entirely your own or adapt from elsewhere in a way no one else has thought of, the uniqueness of your product, branding, and design will make consumers notice.
How can pet food brands break from category conventions?
Pet food brands can create shelf disruption by stepping outside the visual conventions consumers expect from the category. Unique photography, unexpected color palettes, custom illustrations, and unconventional packaging structures can make a product feel fresh while still giving consumers enough familiar cues to understand what they’re buying.
The pet food category is also growing and evolving quickly. According to the American Pet Products Association, U.S. pet food and treat sales reached $68.3 billion in 2025, with the broader pet industry reaching $158 billion. Many new pet food brands marry their package design with expectations set by category leaders to feel familiar.
At Global Pet Expo, traditional pet food packaging design was alive and well—from silhouetted imagery of pets to expected color choices and even lookalike fonts. While category cues can make a product easy to navigate, leaning too heavily on them can make every brand start to look the same.
Breaking from category norms is a solid strategy for disrupting at shelf. You don’t have to reinvent every element, either. Borrowing an unexpected cue from a broader category can create just enough distinction to make your product memorable.
A die-cut window for treats to show scale is a common expectation but not something you see as often in kibble. There, it can communicate the authenticity of ingredients, add a playful component to the design, or just be slightly different from everyone else.
How can proprietary packaging features create brand ownability?
Proprietary packaging features create ownability by giving a pet food brand a distinctive physical or functional asset that competitors don’t have. Differentiate your product from the competition with unique packaging or a new formula. A proprietary structure captures consumers’ attention and stands out from the competition. Still, it does require an investment, and if it’s not category appropriate, it can spur cynicism. It’s a delicate balance.
One smart approach is to adopt cues and structures from a similar but different subcategory. Smaller-scale gusseted bags or eco-friendly boxes for kibble can be ownable in the dog food category if no one else uses them the same way. (Boxed Water in a milk carton is an excellent example of creating ownability through a cross-categorical structure.)
You could also create proprietary features by adapting stock packaging with a unique closure system or a custom printing technique. These features help with premium products, making them feel more exclusive and of higher quality.
A signature shape to the treat or kibble also creates a ton of ownability and carries the brand’s strength through every touchpoint. Bocce Bakery’s B-shaped treats are a great example of this. When the product itself becomes recognizable, the brand doesn’t have to rely on the logo alone.
Which design elements should pet food brands customize?
Emotion drives the pet food category, giving brands multiple opportunities to create a deeper connection with primed consumers at every design touchpoint. A custom font designed exclusively for the brand identity immediately creates recognition and a WOW factor.
Super unique photography, unexpected color palettes, and custom illustrations are additional design elements that evoke emotion in a consumer and create distinct memorability. If your custom elements are original enough, it can also escalate your brand to feeling more like a category leader the second another brand tries to do something similar.
Temptations cat now dominates the cartoon-style cat for treats. Greenies owns the deep green by going in on an unexpected color in the category. Those distinctive choices became recognizable pieces of the brands rather than simply decorative packaging elements.
One caveat to over-customization: There is much to communicate on pet food packaging, so navigation is not the place to do something completely original, but anywhere else is game. Consumers still need to quickly understand what the product is and what makes it right for their pet.
Why does ownability matter for growing pet food brands?
Ownability matters because pet food shelves are becoming more crowded, with new product forms, functionalities, and benefits emerging at lightning speed. The number of products on store shelves is multiplying daily in the rapidly growing billion-dollar pet food industry. Distinctive packaging helps pet parents recognize your product, choose between similar options, and remember your brand. The goal isn’t simply to look different—it’s to find a few distinctive elements and make them unmistakably theirs. This is how you give your brand a stronger seat at the table … er, shelf.
For more insights on pet food branding, check this article out.
Vanessa is Partner & Director of Relationships at Freshmade. From bar owner to account lead, strategist to agency owner, she’s spent years in the trenches with leading CPG brands modernizing and optimizing their positioning to maximize growth.
Freshmade is a CPG Branding and Strategy Design agency focusing on food branding and package label design. We design for digital, from campaigns to websites, and have an in-house photography studio. Our goal is to accelerate growth for our clients through mouthwatering, thoughtful brand building and design. Notable clients we have designed CPG packaging for include Bolthouse Fresh, Evolution Fresh, Hartz, Publix, Mastronardi (Sunset), Annie Chun’s, Factor, and many more
