It’s the Packaging, Dummy
In a world with a nearly infinite selection of me-too products, brands must work harder than ever to attract and retain consumers’ and selling partners’ loyalty. Making this situation more complex is that shoppers make seven out of 10 purchase decisions in a split second as they scan store shelves. Then factor in retailers forced by “everyday low price” category killers to find new ways to stand out themselves.
Want an answer? Look to the packaging. The package's innovations can project a great user experience while making a unique promise.
For any consumer brand, packaging is a vital component of the branding strategy. Sure, advertising and sales promotions influence consumers, but once the shopper is in the store, packaging makes the sale.
The importance of package graphics cannot be overestimated, but in today's world great graphics are par. It’s the benefits that the physical package contains and the promise that it projects that can make the sale.
No matter what the product category, packaging structure has become a critical marketing tool—actually a marketing weapon that identifies and differentiates the brand, meets retailer requirements, and satisfies consumer-use needs, all at the point of purchase.
To do the marketing job, packaging clearly must have that quality what fashion maven Diana Vreeland called “pizzazz”: “an attractive combination of vitality and glamour,” a stylish, energized look that magnetizes shopper attention no matter how cluttered the environment.
During some 35 years of practice, we’ve discovered several fundamental elements that can be reinvented and creatively combined to give products packaging pizzazz:
Innovation Rethink the total structure of the package, especially its function and appearance. Remember the 1915 Coca-Cola bottle with its sinuous, easy-to-grip curves or the Similac infant formula, which turned an industry upside down by replacing the traditional can with a resealable plastic, molded bottle.
Enhanced looks the Colgate Palmolive, wishing to turnaround flagging sales of its Softsoap liquid hand soap, transformed the bottle and pump into a decorative icon that consumers proudly leave out on the counter. The result: category leadership.
Built-in retailer benefits To capture market share from the competition and gain promotional opportunities at big-box retailers, Kraft undertook a program to redesign its traditional glass mayonnaise jar. The resulting unbreakable package greatly increases carton and shelf density, and contains the in-use features that consumers want such as a wide mouth and an easy-grip shell. First-year sales reflect these changes.
Creating value in today’s consumer-driven marketplace has become a greater challenge than ever. In the past packaging concepts could be invented in design studios and supplier laboratories, with customers, via focus groups, brought into the process at a late stage, simply to validate concepts. But the balance of power has shifted to consumers, who have far less time to shop and thousands more products to choose from than just a decade ago.
Breaking through at retail takes the research-and-development team out of its natural environment and throws them into the customer’s reality, whether it’s at home, at work, in store…wherever the product touches their life. That’s the ultimate source of effective design strategies for products with pizzazz that leap off the shelf and command that split-second attention that makes the sale.
Gary Grossman, president of Innovation & Development (www.IDIusa.com), an Edgewater, NJ-based product strategy and packaging firm. He can be reached at [email protected].
