Learn from the masters
Weve all heard the old adage, \"Its whats inside that counts.\" Although that saying might be true, sometimes whats outside counts very much, too. Case in point: If a package fails to sway a consumer to purchase the product inside it, then the consumer will not get a chance to try that product.
The national brands long have used packaging design as a way to sway shoppers and build brand image. And many retailers now realize that good design is \"rapidly becoming the cost of entry\" on the store brand side, notes Rob Swan, vice president and executive creative director for Brandimage, part of the brand development practice of Des Plaines, Ill.-based Schawk Inc.
But many others exhibit \"an incredible lack of expertise,\" contends Greg Feinberg, president and CEO of Aisle 9, Thousand Oaks, Calif., adding that they believe they can handle the design process on their own.
Unlike national brands, which typically focus on four criteria for packaging – the ability to create shelf impact, as well as communication of the relevancy, distinctiveness and credibility of their value proposition – store brands often settle for \"ways to grab the consumers attention and look credible enough next to their national competitor,\" notes Eric Zeitoun, president of Dragon Rouge, New York.
\"They should spend more time thinking about what the packaging needs to achieve to enhance their relevance and distinctiveness in order to become a real and deliberate choice and not a choice by default,\" he adds.
Start with a blueprint
In reality, retailers could learn much from the national brands when it comes to package design planning and execution. Great national brands begin with a blueprint, Feinberg says. And that blueprint begins with a comprehensive understanding of the consumers they will be targeting. The ultimate goal? To create an \"experiential design\" – one that connects emotionally to these consumers.
| When Coca-Cola stripped down its can design to the basic essentials, it created a platform for telling seasonal \"stories.\" |
\"You have to speak to the consumer through your package,\" he stresses. \"This is not only communicating what you want your consumer to know, but communicating the emotion and a feeling that you want the consumer to feel when buying the product.\"
To communicate effectively via packaging, retailers also need to understand the physiology involved – how peoples eyes work, how people reach for things and more, Feinberg adds.
\"There are three things physiologically that a human does in order when they look at a product,\" he explains. \"They first see the photography. They next see the color and the design treatments, and then they see the text. So if you dont design seeing the hierarchy of how a human views a product, then youll be focusing on the wrong thing.\"
| A photo depiction of the food product can be a critical part of packaging design. |
Tell a story
Story-telling can be critical to creating an emotional connection with target consumers. Portland, Ore.-based Portland Roasting, for example, communicates on its coffee packaging the \"story\" of how its coffee is directly sourced from farms, Feinberg says.
\"Their packaging shows these international expeditions to these farms, meeting with farmers, getting to know them,\" he explains. \"It shows pictures, the schools theyve built based on the philanthropies that theyve implemented.\"
Speaking of pictures, Feinberg says he often sees packaging for store brand food products that fails to include a photo depiction of the product inside.
\"People dont necessarily know what the product is,\" he says. \"You can have a great design, but youre missing out on that visual aspect.\"
And bringing seasonality into the story can go a long way to build sales. Swan points to Coca-Cola as an inspiring example. The company essentially stripped its Coca-Cola can design down to the very basics several years back, creating a platform for story-telling on a seasonal basis.
\"So for summer, you see a flip flop or a beach ball or sunglasses or a grill,\" he says. \"All of these elements very simply start to show up on the packaging, and they dont hinder or get in the way of the core equity elements – they actually enhance them.\"
As a result, consumers look forward to seeing whats next from Coke each summer, Swan says, adding that the brand accomplishes the same mission with its winter-inspired polar bear on packaging and in ads.
Kimberly-Clarks Kleenex brand also taps into seasonal opportunities, he says.
\"Part of what Kleenex does is continue to look at the evolving landscape of interior design trends and interior decorating trends to understand whats relevant to consumers in a very contemporary way,\" Swan notes. \"The brand is constantly and dynamically evolving to maintain a sense of fashion and to help [consumers] stay in touch with whats new and whats relevant in the world of decorating.\"
The brands efforts have resulted in packaging shaped like wedges of fruit (watermelon, orange, etc.) for summer and like slices of cake for winter.
\"And then they take their technology platform during the holidays and do something with that,\" he adds. \"Everyone anticipates what Kleenex is going to do the next holiday season.\"
Make the shopping list
From understanding and targeting key consumers to creating compelling stories, the best national brands know how to design effective packaging. Store brands do have a disadvantage here in that they have myriad SKUs in multiple categories.
\"Its a catch-22,\" Swan stresses. \"Its what perpetuates the store brand stigma – they want to be big, but the bigger they get, the less specialized they become. And the less specialized they become, the less expertise they embody to the shopper who comes in contact with the proposition.\"
Still, borrowing from the national brands strategies, on perhaps a category-by-category basis, will go a long way toward improvement – and making the shopping list instead of being an at-shelf, price-based purchase decision.
\"Youre going to lose more often than youre going to win when youre in that kind of decision-making set,\" Swan stresses.
| A personal touch \"This vision of a push/pull end-to-end packaged strategy covers the targeting gaps that are not currently and effectively being addressed and absolutely dovetails into the strategic vision of neighborhood-specific localized shopper engagement, demographic micro-targeting and shopper retention,\" he explains. \"We gain our leverage from the perspective of the most obvious, unobtrusive starting point: the package itself.\" Via efforts such as QR codes, layered instant-redeemable-coupon promos, cross-merchandising plays and on-demand offer sampling, the company allows the shopper to \"pull through\" the brand experience, Hattrup says, and engage on his or her terms. \"We can turn it on [or] off [and] adapt and tweak everything on the package,\" he adds, \"and – individually, instantaneously personalized during production – tie it all together through mobile technology and, ultimately, social media in order to continue the engagement process even after purchase and at home, at the shoppers convenience.\" |