Like it or not, consumers constantly scrutinize your brand, and a lot of this scrutiny happens at the store shelf. So pay attention, perfect, and continue to reinvent your brand through great packaging. Avoid the inevitable—packaging “wear-out.”

Pre-emptive action requires long-term strategic planning. Understanding your category, the needs of your consumer, and the competitive environment holistically are key to rethinking your approach to packaging. Strategic thinking upstream will enable you to evolve, refresh, and reinvent your brand downstream. This ensures that both your brand and your packaging stay competitive and fresh in the mind of the consumer.

Factors that signal the need to change your packaging strategy are often a complex mix of market trends, shelf placement, brand positioning, and market influences. What are some of the indicators driving this decision?

Teaology Tea offers an alternative to the tea bag with “on-the-go” portability in single-serve tea. Six wallet-size sachets each hold 8g of tea—enough to make six 16-oz drinks.

Consumers pour the sachet of tea into a glass of water, stir, and the drink is ready to consume. The sachets come in a recloseable paperboard “travel wallet” about the size of a checkbook. Their small size makes them pocket- and purse-friendly.

Link: Interbrand

Consumers are becoming more discerning in selecting from mid-tier brands in many product categories. They now expect the excitement they find in premium brands. Procter & Gamble, noting this trend in dishwashing liquid, enlisted Interbrand to review the core equities in its Joy brand and develop a package redesign. The results were as follows:

• A whimsical typeface reminiscent of twists of citrus rinds, which leverages the brand’s citrus scent.

• The introduction of a drop-shaped character, “Droppy,” that brings citrus slices “to life” on the label.

P&G says the redesigned package communicates Joy’s attribute of optimism in achieving shiny dishes with a fresh scent.

The aluminum bottle has improved sales in energy drinks. Pittsburgh Brewing Co. (PBC), Pittsburgh, extends the aluminum bottle into beer, with longneck 12-oz bottles of its Iron City brand. The bottles are dry-offset printed in three colors plus gloss varnish.

PBC’s objective is a package that can compete against the glass bottles of import lagers. CCL Container produces the bottle using aluminum from Alcoa.

PBC believes aluminum bottles will boost beer sales. It has reduced margins on a case to sell for just $1 more than 24-packs of glass bottles. Yet, the aluminum bottle is 2.5 times more expensive than glass.

Links: CCL Container
Alcoa Rigid Packaging

Link: Decorative Sleeves

The full-body shrink sleeve label is providing visual pizzazz on more and more packages. Ennis Foods Ltd., Donegal, Ireland, demonstrates that this labeling tactic can provide functional value in a kit package with Rumblers Chips ‘N’ Dip.

The product comes in a two-piece clear plastic bowl and base, each containing its own lid. One compartment holds the chips while the other contains the dip. A shrink-sleeve label, from Decorative Sleeves, holds the bowl and base together until the package is opened.

Link: Anthem Worldwide

Consumers associate the words “innovation” and “performance” with Paper Mate. The brand wanted to leverage those attributes in reintroducing its FlexGrip sub-brand of pens with softer grips while highlighting its ShareGuard antimicrobial technology used in the grips.

Design firm Anthem Worldwide created a visual packaging hierarchy that achieves these goals. The FlexGrip and ShareGuard logos appear below the Paper Mate logo on the front panel. A graphic of a shield provides a distinguishing appearance. Finally, a blister card displays the pens in a fanned-out pattern to heighten visual appeal.

Miss Meringue, a San Marcos, CA-based division of Jacques Gourmet, took on this packaging challenge: Create greater distinction on the shelf in order to drive impulse purchases of its Miss Meringue brand of cookies.

The result is an eye-catching package that has caused Miss Meringue to more than double sales projections for the brand.

From Think*Plan*Deliver, the pouch’s metallized polyester film delivers striking highlights in the design via six-color gravure printing and the gloss of flexible film. The pouch becomes portable with a zipper from Presto Products.

Links: Think*Plan*Deliver
Presto Products

Brand managers and package designers, mark your calendars for two events early in 2005 that are designed to help you optimize your packaging’s impact, with optimal efficiency.

1) Package Design 2005 is Feb. 1-3, 2005 in Clearwater Beach, FL. The conference—consisting of targeted sessions from key package designers and consumer product goods companies—is produced by Package Design magazine and Packaging Strategies, and is co-hosted by DuPont and supported by Shelf Impact!

The right color sells—or does it? Researchers attempted to get some answers recently by conducting 400 one-on-one consumer interviews at beverage coolers in South Carolina service stations. The researchers focused on one of the most often overlooked components of packaging for marketing impact—the closure.

Consumer buying preferences are significantly influenced when single-serve bottled beverages contain a clear, colored closure instead of an opaque closure, according to the study commissioned by chemical manufacturer Milliken & Co.

The right package structure can help build incremental sales opportunities for a product when brand managers know how consumers use their product and they leverage that knowledge in creating new “touchpoints” with consumers.

Guys like gadgets. Guys like triggers, toggle switches, and levers. Guys go bonkers over gadgets that incorporate triggers, toggle switches, and levers.

The Gillette Co.’s dome-top, lever-action, energy-drink-can-look-alike package for its Right Guard Extreme Cool Spray Rush appears to be a winner. Here's why.

At the point of purchase, Rush stands apart from its malodorous-fighting counterparts at first glance due to its stature as a squat, round, seamed metal container more common among shaving gels. It weighs 4 oz., but when topped with a domed and ribbed cap decorated in a deep blue, it bears a striking resemblance to the 8.4 oz. “trim can,” popular in energy drinks.

After a long design incubation, Pepsi-Cola relaunched its Mug brand of root beer with a new label designed to appeal to both teen boys and their mothers who buy soft drinks for them.

The result? A 3% increase in sales of the brand.

The old packaging design centered on an illustration of a drink mug with foam running over the top. Pepsi marketers, however, identified a mid-teens boy as the target for Mug root beer.

Q: Consumers say they are not willing to pay for more package benefits. How can we identify benefits consumers will pay for?

A: It’s true that consumers won’t pay for simply “more” benefits. But, they will pay more for the right benefits. How do we determine which benefits are most valuable, and by how much?

First, look to uncover and stratify the product attributes that really matter to consumers, both perceptually and in use. Clever research tools help. Is it on-the-go eating? Low mess? Easy sharing? Freshness? That will give you a sense for what kinds of value the new features have to deliver on through packaging. Then, understand how all products in the category perform on these attributes. Identify gaps. Concept development should address the target attributes, or what we call Innovation Platforms.

The right package structure can help build incremental sales opportunities for a product when brand managers know how consumers use their product and they leverage that knowledge in creating new “touchpoints” with consumers.

The best packages consider needs throughout the value chain, and Pittsburgh Brewing Co.’s “Rack Pack” is a recent example of another package that succeeds. An innovative plastic-ring carrier allows a dozen 12-oz beverage cans to be joined together by one ring in a 2x6 configuration.

The ring, from ITW Hi-Cone, is made of a proprietary blend that includes low-density polyethylene. Previously, carrier rings held six cans in a 2x3 arrangement.

Marketing is a matter of perception over product. Generally, a better-branded, -packaged and -positioned product will get you a higher return on investment (ROI).

Yet, few package development teams work from a blueprint for creating, let alone maintaining, a brand that consumers find desirable. A desired brand creates value and continuous cash flow. But without a process for getting there, new brands and repositioning efforts can fail.

Consider this eight-step process for success for developing a formal process that builds a desired brand.

1. Product and concept research. Refine you idea and show it to consumers. How do they use and purchase the product?

2. Package-check research. Have focus groups check existing branding and packaging in your category. They should identify key visual equities that will be retained and help you understand a category’s “visual vocabulary.”

3. Position and strategy. Leverage your product and package-check research to develop strategies that position your brand in the consumer’s mind. Differentiate in a meaningful way.

Traditionally, private-label brands have presented either a “value” or a “standard” proposition to consumers. But the Private Label Manufacturers Association says a third proposition—“premium”—is helping to drive private-label growth.

This tactic goes beyond private-label brands merely creating “me too” packages that closely resemble national competitors. PLMA’s research indicates that individual retailers have begun copying the packaging ranges—standard, value, premium—of each other’s store-brand offerings. Activity is especially hot at the premium end.

Wal-Mart is keen on packaging that shows the value of a product with simple communication that gets harried consumers through the store faster. Spectrum Brands, wanting to convey the longer-lasting attribute of its Repel brand of insect repellant, features cans, bottles, and blister cards in forest green with photography of a thick, lush forest, says Angela Proctor, Product Manager.

In Wal-Mart’s view, the packaging signals a different category of repellant, apart from “everyday” competitors. Wal-Mart stocks Repel in its sporting goods department—away from the clutter of competitors in the housewares department.

Challenge: Directive from senior management to find new ways to merchandise a new line of paint in new packaging.

Action: Rather than take the typical “cherry-picking” approach, Mary DaRif, Director, Marketing Services at Sherwin-Williams, walked the floor of the P-O-P Show, Chicago, with an open mind. She visited nearly every exhibitor booth. DaRif discussed the details of the company’s new packaging and asked each vendor how it could help market her brand message effectively at the point-of-sale.

Result: DaRif returned to Sherwin-Williams with five solid ideas.

Bob Connolly, Executive Vice President of Marketing and Consumer Communications at Wal-Mart Stores Inc., dispels a belief among some marketers and packaging suppliers that there’s a “code to crack” in getting products on the retailer’s shelves. Connolly says success is possible by concentrating instead on four areas of prime importance to Wal-Mart and its shoppers.

• Ready, Set, Go!

Time is the new currency for consumers. Both Wal-Mart and its shoppers want packaging that saves them time. From Wal-Mart’s that means tactics such as time-saving secondary packaging. One example: PDQ product trays, which set up quickly and minimize waste that needs discarding. For consumers, it means packaging communication that lets them understand your brand message and select a product within six seconds.

The package can boost sales by signaling extra value

Here’s what you’re telling me. Brand managers and their package design teams are getting too busy to read lengthy articles in traditional print magazines.

Simple communication tactic helps create a product-to-shopper connection