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Sponsored by: Pulp+Wire
Updated: April 29, 2019 25th Anniversary Issue

Pulp+Wire

PHOTO courtesy Pulp + Wire Pulp+Wire team members, above, make sure the colors are perfect for the newly redesigned brand and packaging for Texas-based company, Bearded Brothers, relanching to market this spring.
PHOTO courtesy Pulp + Wire Creating social content, left, for Back Bay Roasters's new-to-market roasted, bagged coffees and ready to drink teas, coffees and lattés. Based in Boston, the brand features coastal blues and a preppy vibe.

Bringing Brands to Life

For 15 years Pulp+Wire has been transforming business identities into distinctive, successful, three-dimensional consumer brands.

The firm specializes in discovering the unique personalities of natural and organic consumer packaged goods (CPG) in the food, beauty, lifestyle, and emerging cannabis space. Pulp+Wire focuses on conveying these qualities through award-winning brand strategy, logo development, packaging, print collateral, web, and digital marketing.

Founded in 2004, the Pulp+Wire team describe themselves as brand alchemists. And they’ve worked their magic for CPG start-ups on both coasts, as well as popular local brands such as: GrandyOats, Allagash Brewing Company, Covetrus (formerly Vets First Choice), L.L.Bean, Stonyfield Organic, Ocean Spray, Luke’s Lobster, and many more.

Branding and packaging should be an immersive experience. As a marketer, you need to understand what makes that brand unique, why a customer needs it in their life, and then help guide the experience.
— Taja Dockendorf, Pulp+Wire Founder,
Owner and Creative Director

Pulp+Wire Founder, Owner, and Creative Director Taja Dockendorf brings first-hand perspective to this work, drawing on her early industrial design days, entrepreneurial roots, and ability to help brands discover and tell their unique story. After earning degrees in both graphic and industrial design, Taja honed her creative direction and strategic brand-building with agencies in both Boston and New York, before returning home to Maine and founding Pulp+Wire.

“Every brand should be viewed as three-dimensional,” she says. “Branding and packaging should be an immersive experience. As a marketer, you need to understand what makes that brand unique, why a customer needs it in their life, and then help guide the experience.

“A targeted voice, tactile elements, attention-grabbing creative, and a great product, all combined, make a winning brand.”

Clients are recognizing the importance of shaping the customer experience, she says. Which accounts for Pulp+Wire’s steady growth over the past 15 years. The firm now employs 16 strategists, designers, programmers, digital marketers, and social content creators, and soon will more than double its office space in Portland’s Old Port to accommodate both current and future growth.

Many of those team members draw on big-city agency training similar to Taja’s. The vast majority of them are women, meaning they also represent a key demographic for the natural and organic CPG marketplace.

The firm’s roots in that market extend to Taja’s co-ownership of Relevant Brands Inc., an incubator and consultant for natural and organic CPG products. She also co-owns a spin-off, Bitter Love Sparkling Bitters, whose beverage products are now in 250+ stores throughout the East Coast and sold online nationally.

“We’re truly invested in the consumer packaged goods market, we know the industry, the players, and we like to shape brands that have the power to change the world for the better,” Taja says.

Many of Pulp+Wire’s clients have been attracted to the firm through word of mouth. In fact, Pulp+Wire does increasing business with large, multinational brands who engage Pulp+Wire to work with their innovation teams — hoping to break into the natural and organic sector, one of the fastest-growing parts of the food product industry.

Taja says a large area of growth for Pulp+Wire has also been in the cannabis industry, especially now that the recreational market for cannabis is growing. Pulp+Wire has worked with numerous local and national cannabis brands, helping to guide and plan for future market growth and early-stage market visibility.

But for Taja, the success of Pulp+Wire isn’t measured by the numbers of clients or employees. Pulp+Wire’s goal is to help brands discover who they are, and what makes them unique in a crowded landscape.

“We love helping brands find their path, and how to grow them to market. It’s like throwing a puzzle on the table and then figuring out how all the pieces fit,” she says. “As long as we can continue doing that, we’ll continue creating award-winning work right here in Maine. And we’ll still be able to get to the ocean, lakes, mountains, and home to our families for dinner, creating the balance that brought us all back to Maine in the first place.”

Pulp+Wire

2 Milk Street Portland, ME 04101
Taja Dockendorf, Creative Director
Branding and Marketing
Founded: 2004
Maine employees: 16
www.pulpandwire.com