Charles Dale, an award-winning chef and restaurateur based in Aspen, CO, is co-founder of Dale’s Kitchen, which is set to debut a line of aseptic bag-in-box ingredient stocks used for soups and other dishes.

SI: What is your goal with these products?

Dale: To produce chef-quality products made by a chef for chefs without using preservatives or additives. Most of what is available today uses sodium, MSG or MSG-type additives, and real chefs shy away from those products because they are not up to the highest standards.

The marketing benefits of adopting radio-frequency identification (RFID) tagging technology at the individual product level will match or exceed the warehousing and stocking cost-reduction benefits, concludes a new study from DePaul University’s Kellstadt Graduate School of Business in Chicago.

“Adoption will occur far faster than expected due to the economic benefits and the new technology for producing RFID tags,” says Patrick Yanahan, President of USA Strategies, a study sponsor.

The history of the development of the UPC bar code was used to predict the adoption rate of RFID at retail for individual product identification.

The study found striking contrasts between the initial adoption of the original UPC bar code and the expected adoption of RFID tags on each package in the store. The study determined that:

• The cost of the tag was not the barrier to adoption time. More significant was the infrastructure required to get scanners and software systems installed in stores.

Company works closely with educators to develop graphing calculators. Equal attention is paid to packaging that will close the sale.

At Texas Instruments, the Educational & Productivity Solutions (E&PS) business faces the same pressure to increase sales as any of TI’s other entities. But E&PS also operates under two special constraints:

1. A key selling season takes place during a compressed time period—the back-to-school time frame—when shelf clutter dominates retail stores.

It’s said that buying decisions are made at retailers’ shelves and that packaging is the ultimate influencer. While statistics vary among reports, they all agree that packaging influences the majority of purchasing decisions (from 70% to 85% of the time).

This power comes from the fact that package design is a powerful communications tool. In selling environments, design contributes to brand and product visibility, impact, and memorization. It also stimulates the senses, creates expectations, and generates perceptions of quality, performance, and value. In short, packaging relies upon design to eliminate doubt and compel purchase by establishing credibility.

What is credibility? I’ve found several definitions that, while slightly different in tone and direction, are altogether accurate:

1. The power to inspire belief.

2. Offering reasonable grounds for belief.

3. Sufficient capacity to be effective.

One axiom in consumer products marketing today is this: Know your consumer. Be honest now. How well do you, really?

Perhaps you noticed our survey results in the September issue of Shelf Impact! The good news is that 69% of the 200-plus readers who responded said they observe or talk to consumers in retail stores about their packaging likes and dislikes at least one to five times each year. Many of you interact with consumers more than 10 times annually.

Conversely, 16% said you talk to consumers less than once a year and 15% reported that you never talk to them.

Just how well do you really know your consumer? What compels them to pick up your product? Whether they believe your brand is contemporary or dated? Credible or untrustworthy?

Gina and Charles Hall created Hill Station Ice Cream hoping to bring the highest-quality ingredients and wildest flavors to the most discerning ice cream lovers. The Halls wanted the Hill Station name to evoke remembrances of travels in the tropics, where hill stations are places to escape the oppressive equatorial sun.

However, Hill Station Ice Cream tubs failed to communicate these tropical associations. The Williams Murray Hamm design agency in London created a brand for the ice cream that’s staged around the hill stations.

Photography of handmade signs points travelers to nearby hill stations. Signposts emphasize grown-up adventure while tropical sky backdrops hint that unusual ice cream ingredients from the tropics await inside the tub.

The market for the Hill Station brand is less seasonal, so the packaging design can be more informal. For example, the order in which information is presented on the tub is sometimes changed. In addition, each flavor has a unique picture.

Consumer and market research firm Mintel noted two significant packaging trends in chocolate confectionery products during the first six months of 2005. The newest one is co-branding, the combination of two brands into one product, often from the same company, as well as the extension of a brand from one category into the chocolate confectionery sector. This tactic enables multiple products under the same corporate umbrella to gain some enhancement on a single package.

Here’s one recent example. Hershey has introduced Twosomes Limited Edition Candy Bars with Health Toffee bits, and Hershey’s TwoSomes with Whoppers. The candy comes in a 1.4-oz flexible package.

Add grapes to the growing list of fresh-cut produce showing up in graphically appealing, consumer-friendly, convenience-oriented packages that fit in automobile cup-holders.

Welch Foods is rolling out single-serve “grapes on the vine” in 5-oz portions in modified-atmosphere, clear plastic cups. Refrigerated shelf life is 17 days for red grapes, 12 days for green.

Colorful film labels adorn the lid and the cup’s sidewalls. A flexible film lidding is heat-sealed to the filled cup before the rigid lid is snapped on.

The product has a suggested retail price of $1.75.

WD-40 Co., San Diego, delivers a revamped 12-oz steel can from Crown Holdings with a permanently attached, built-in straw tube.

“We’ve learned that more than 80% of WD-40 users have lost the straw at some point,” says Tim Lesmeister, Vice President, Marketing.

The Smart Straw, from Mar-Lee Packaging & Consumer Products, contains a standard aerosol valve from Summit Packaging with an actuator piece that uses a plastic extender tube. It tilts to spray in a larger coverage area or a more precise application.

The Smart Straw package’s suggested retail price is $3.99, compared with $2.99 for the can with a detachable straw.

Link: Crown Holdings

Classic packaging designs are resurfacing in some categories to make new products look old and attract consumers through nostalgia. In health and beauty aids, the Body Shop uses a clip jar for three products in its Spa Wisdom line. The jars, from RPC Bramlage, are styled on the classic hermetically sealed, metal-handle glass storage jar.

A galvanized-metal handle and thermoplastic elastomer sealing ring top off the PET jars, screen-printed in two colors.

The 125-ML jar is for Africa Spa Honey Butter, the 200-ML jar holds Africa Spa Rich Body Balm, and the 350-ML jar contains Africa Spa Salt Scrub.

Link: RPC Bramlage

New York wine merchant Sherry-Lehmann nearly tripled gift-purchase sales with “DigiSmart” gift cards that give more shopping flexibility while complementing the chic of the upscale Manhattan store.

The cards, from AGI Media Packaging, a division of MeadWestvaco’s Consumer Packaging Group, come in a folded, four-panel board package bearing custom graphics. A square die-cut in the front panel offers a framed view of the gift card, which rests inside a PVC tray.

The graphic design on the gift cards and package is based on paintings of 19th Century bohemian artist Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec.

Link: AGI Media Packaging

Polaris Industries Inc. leverages shape to create distinctive bottles commemorating its 50th anniversary. The 32-oz containers are shaped like all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles to coincide with Polaris’ release of limited-edition ATV and snowmobile models.

The bottles are pearlescent gold HDPE and bear custom four-color, pressure-sensitive labels. Polaris selected the bottle stock and design in working with Lubrication Technologies Inc., its motor oil manufacturer and packager; Berlin Packaging; and Berlin’s Studio 111 Design agency.

Polaris says the cost of producing the bottles is 8–12% higher than for its regular motor oil packaging, but the distinctive package designs are popular with collectors.

Links: Berlin Packaging │ Studio 111 Design

Laboratorios RTB in Spain got the distinctive package it wanted to launch its Giorgi Fix Out Shampoo with an unusual closure design that works as a “tag team” with the bottle shape to convey the essence of a rocket ship.

The product manufacturer says it achieved the unusual look by selecting a conical push-pull dispensing closure from Crown Zeller and then designing a bottle to complement and highlight the closure.

Giorgi uses HDPE 250-ML bottles and plastic film labels across the product line. The packaging is produced in bright yellow and blue to match the brand’s colors.

Link: Crown Zeller

Does your packaging speak adequately to baby boomers and compel them to buy your product? Following are eight tips for marketing to baby boomers. They are adapted from the report “Design Your Packaging for the Ultimate Target Audience—Boomers.” The report is available through Women in Packaging Inc.

1. Don't associate boomers or consumers older than 50 with being old. Boomers view themselves as younger than they are (typically, by 20 years). They don’t want to be referred to as old. Use positive words and avoid an “over the hill” context. The term “mature” works well with this audience.

2. Make it easy to use. Emphasize convenience or ease-of-use. Boomers like to spend time on activities such as cooking. They just don't want to spend a lot of time getting things together to do it.

Effective packaging can transform a product from a commodity to a status symbol, from a “me-too” offering to one that stands out on the shelf. Mintel, a market research and consumer data company, notes that over the past few months, it has seen an increasing number of packages that provide unique benefits to both the product and the consumer.

This development is particularly evident in beverages. For example, FreshBru has introduced extensions to its Seriously Twisted line of beverages. The bottles feature twist-off caps that contain a reservoir of flavor concentrate.

As a traditionalist, I find the bottled water phenomenon absurd. As a packaging geek, I marvel at the endless array of packages that designers dream up to hawk water to millions of consumers.

I spent time during my recent family vacation to Japan visiting grocery stores and “100 yen shops” (Japanese dollar stores), looking for unique packaging. No package could hold a candle to the spherical, baseball-sized water bottle I spied in neat rows on a smoothie bar counter.

These OGO brand “waterball” packages are impressive on a number of fronts. What first appears to be oversized-text graphics is really an optical illusion. Reverse-direct-printed in two-point type on the PET waterball’s back panel is the ingredient “analysis” for the super-oxygenated water.

OGO’s offers a line of oxygen-enriched products, including oxygen “shots” in pressurized metal canisters. Netherlands-based “O-Company” claims that OGO water contains 35 times as much oxygen as “regular” water.

The Centers for Disease Control projects that the number of U.S. consumers age 65 or older with doctor-diagnosed arthritis will more than double, from 15.7 million in 2002 to 33.3 million in 2030.

Designing packaging to accommodate this market is a good idea. The first step toward designing for users with arthritis is understanding the problems they face. In research at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, we found that users with arthritis struggle with many actions associated with transporting or opening packaging. These include pinching, twisting off tops or caps, and lifting heavy objects.

In order to accommodate people with arthritis, packaging solutions that require one or more physical activities that challenge them should be avoided. However, it is often impractical to avoid all these activities. In such cases, task requirements can be analyzed and the packaging solution modified to better meet the abilities of the intended market.

El Paso Chile Co., El Paso, TX, already was supplying freezer buckets filled with prepackaged margarita fixings to the liquor department at Target stores. The gourmet- products company also provides a line of drink mixes packaged in glass shaker-style bottles with standard lug closures. Target wanted a cocktail-mix packaging idea that could increase sales. The only stipulation was that the container be made of plastic.

El Paso worked with Berlin Packaging and Berlin’s design division, Studio One Eleven, to create a package design to satisfy Target’s objectives. Studio One Eleven created a three-piece packaging system for El Paso’s new Cocktail Chemistry line of beverage mixes. The consumer simply adds vodka and ice to the container, shakes, and pours the mixed beverage into a glass.

If you want to operate at the leading edge of consumer product companies who integrate packaging into a total marketing strategy, the third annual Package Design 2006 Conference & Technology Exposition may have the answers you need for your company’s packaging challenges. The event will be Jan. 30- Feb. 1, 2006 at the Hilton Clearwater Beach Resort in Clearwater Beach, FL.

Package Design 06 will focus on the tools, techniques, relationships, and total solutions approaches to innovative and successful package design. Sessions and topics will focus on cutting-edge and emerging structural and graphic package design, processes and tools for production efficiency, superior performance, safe distribution, and point-of-purchase impact.

World Kitchen has extended its equity in bakeware into silicone products. For its new Baker’s Secret Silicone Bakeware sub-brand, called Baker’s Secret Flexible, the Reston, VA, marketer created an eye-catching e-flute paperboard sleeve, printed offset in five colors.

Silicone bakeware’s bending capability enables it to fit into small storage places. That is a strong point of difference with metal bakeware, and both the Baker’s Secret Flexible product name and the packaging communicate this difference on multiple levels.

First, rather than simply depicting standard graphics, the sleeve, designed by Anthem Worldwide, leverages the sub-brand name prominently. A wave-shaped die-cut pattern on both edges of the sleeve creates the imagery of a product having flexible properties.

“The product’s material properties offer the ultimate convenience,” says Jyoti Sharma, Baker’s Secret Flexible Brand Manager. “It’s oven-and freezer-safe, dishwasher-sturdy, even microwaveable. It bends and folds easily to store in even the most space-conscious kitchens.”