Canisters of Whims cookies, from Pepperidge Farm, taper from a wide base and give the package a different shape in the cookie aisle. The canister’s shape and recloseable top make the package suitable for on-the-go snacking.

Carol Degener, Director of Innovation at Pepperidge Farm, says the container provides merchandising flexibility. The container may be displayed either on its overcap or upside-down on its base. Graphics are printed in different directions on both primary canister panels to accommodate either type of display.

Sonoco supplies the container, membrane, and overcap. The container includes an inner foil barrier layer laminated to a 15-pt SBS board reverse-printed in flexo in seven colors.

Link: Sonoco

The package design for Procter & Gamble’s Olay White Radiance, a skincare line marketed exclusively to China, communicates sophistication and elegance with visual cues that embrace Chinese women’s preference for simplicity in design and color.

This package reflects the Olay brand identity in China with clean lines using white, platinum, small volumes of color, and iridescent and pearlescent inks to signal product differentiation.

Brand design agency LPK won a design excellence award for its work on the package. The International Package Design Award was presented at the Health & Beauty America Expo.

Link: LPK

A label with distinctive styling adds excitement, curiosity, and intrigue to Mikey’s New York Steak Marinade, which is marketed in New York City.

Label designs depict the New York skyline and the colors recall the signage of the Ed Sullivan Theatre, as well as colors used in the New York State Lottery, says Michael Romano, Founder of Mikey’s Famous Marinades Corp.

The labels are pressure-sensitive semigloss paper, flexo-printed in five colors. A laminate protects the label from moisture and scuffing while adding luster.

Contributing to the package: Christopher Harri Design, Blue Ribbon Tag & Label, and Seal-It Inc.

Links: Blue Ribbon Tag & Label Seal-It Inc.

In order to reward early buyers of the Xbox game Jade Empire. Microsoft Corp. created a limited-edition, collectible package that sparkles with 3-D holography.

The game comes in a DVD case holding two CDs and an instruction booklet. The case features a holographic 6-pt paper insert from Vacumet Corp. The paper is lacquer-coated, micro-embossed, and metallized to impart the holographic effect.

The holographic “nine-up” sheet is offset-printed in six colors plus UV varnish and die-cut by AGI Media Services.

Precise registration gives the graphics razor-sharp edges. Technicolor did the assembly and packaging.

Links: Vacumet Corp. AGI Media Services Technicolor

The energy and sports drinks category is both growing and evolving rapidly. Globally, the category saw 493 new-product launches during the first nine months of 2005, compared with 609 for all of 2004, according to Mintel’s Global New Products Database. In North America, the 180 product launches during the January-September period had already exceeded the 174 introductions for all of 2005.

Following are some factors driving the market:

• All-natural products continue to increase.

• Marketers are increasingly emphasizing amino acid and electrolyte content.

• Fruity flavors are popular.

• Functional ingredients, such as Co-enzyme Q10, are adding value to energy drinks.

A durable, double-hinge, dual-dispensing closure is the functional and aesthetic star of the obelisk-shaped container for Cover Girl’s Outlast Liquid Makeup, from Procter & Gamble.

The design enables the clear barrier plastic container to stand on its closure, creating a package shape that’s distinctive next to competitors on the store shelf.

O-I custom-created the patented closure system for the 44-mL Cover Girl Outlast bottles. The closure system responds to P&G consumer research that indicated a preference for a dual-dispensing closure over traditional threaded closures.

Links: O-I

On packages of Kraft Foods’ Chewy Chips Ahoy! soft chocolate chip cookies, graphics signal the convenience of operating Kraft’s Snack ’n Seal resealable packaging. A large portion of the pack’s top may be peeled open to withdraw cookies, then resealed for freshness and on-the-go convenience.

Jeanine Maresca, Chips Ahoy! Brand Manager, says AC Nielsen in-home research determined that consumers want more convenient snack packages. The Chewy Chips Ahoy! package responds to this desire with 15-oz packs with a suggested retail price of $3.99.

During September, Shelf Impact! asked readers this question: Has a supplier ever approached your company offering unsolicited market research and a packaging format recommendation that resulted in a new packaging project?

Fifty-six readers responded, and 36 said this approach has never occurred, in their experience. A few others were unsure whether it had ever occurred and one reader asked, “You mean that happens?”

Other readers offered these observations about their experiences with outside solicitations:

“I am beginning to see an awareness in our senior management of the need for innovative but established package design.”

Foodservice company Raw Seafoods has plunged into retail markets with its Cape Cod Cuisine frozen foods, and Kane Kendall, Director of Marketing, says, “It’s been a totally different ballgame.”

With the laminated paperboard tray the company has chosen, the New Bedford, MA, fish packer is making an innovative splash in the dual-ovenable market. Eight products in the line use trays laminated with a polyester film of thin patterned aluminum, which harnesses and controls microwave energy by channeling it deeper into the frozen food for faster, more even heating. The tray technology comes from Graphic Packaging International.

The 8”x5 1/2”x1 5/8” tray is made from SBS board laminated with polyester/aluminum film. During microwave heating, the aluminum areas reflect the microwave energy into other areas while unshielded areas heat normally.

The complex honeycomb pattern of aluminum keeps edges from crisping while driving energy into the center of the entrée or other food product.

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

Just announced is the keynote speaker. Alex Isley, Principal at Alexander Isley Inc., will share his guilty pleasures, pet peeves, and inspirations in package design.

How can a regional brand of honey spread gain national distribution? Position it as a healthful and less-fattening alternative to butter and cream cheese.

That’s what Mel-O Honey Inc., Cannon Falls, MN, has done. It restaged its Mel-O-Crème brand of honey spread by altering the package size and materials, and expanding the package’s available color palette to intensify taste appeal.

“We needed a new brand identity that would not only resonate in today’s market place, but also introduce new peach and raspberry SKUs,” says Curt Riess, Mel-O Honey CEO. “We needed a label that would tell consumers exactly what the product is and why they should buy it.”

Studio One Eleven designed the look of the 7-oz polypropylene tub. The container matches the size of competing low-fat/cholesterol-substitute products and places the honey spread in store coolers. The new design also:

Ethnographic research is a technique that is fast gaining favor for providing reliable insights about how consumers view and use products. In simplest terms, ethnography is the study of human behavior in its natural environment.

Global wine producer and marketer E&J Gallo Winery, Modesto, CA, often uses ethnography as a prelude to package-design projects. Melinda Wooten, Manager of Consumer Research, told an audience at the recent Market Research & Development for Package Design conference in Chicago that ethnography helps the winery to increase brand performance, examine consumer insights for new-brand development, and explore alternative packaging possibilities.

Susan Kropf, President of Avon Products Inc., has a message for brand managers, designers, and retailers. You need to spend more time walking in consumers’ shoes if you want to make your products more than just functionally relevant to consumers.

In the battle for sales, retailers are rethinking how they stage products in order to maximize every square foot of sales. In some categories, that approach has reduced the number of linear feet either year round or made seasonal adjustments in shelf allocation.

In other categories, less space is being designated for point-of-purchase communications. Power tools are a case in point, especially in home centers.

Robert Bosch Co. faced this challenge when introducing its Impactor cordless fastening driver. The drill’s proprietary power mechanism broadens the tool’s range of applications. The drill also generates more torque and is suitable for more jobs than similar tools in its class, says Jeff Wilkinson, Director of Cordless Initiatives at Bosch. Yet the Impactor is also smaller and lighter, and it delivers less strain on the user.

Bosch wanted to communicate these benefits to professionals and serious do-it-yourself consumers.

The best packages compel consumers to sense the pleasure in using the product, giving them space to personalize meaning and build relevance.

Great packages communicate so effectively on a sensual and emotional level that a consumer can’t help but pick them up. They lend the product inside a special beauty all its own, so that consumers are drawn to the product because the package has made that product aesthetically pleasing.

Virginia Postrel, author of The Substance of Style, uses the phrase the “aesthetic imperative” to describe this dynamic between the consumer and the package. Following are three packages that reflect Postrel’s thinking.

A traditional supermarket offers 15,000 items. Let’s say the average shopper overlooks half of these during a shopping trip. That leaves 7,500 items.

The typical shopping trip requires 20 to 40 minutes. Let’s split the difference and use 30 minutes, or 1,800 seconds. Divide 1,800 seconds by the 7,500 items that are visible; each item is viewed for .24 seconds, on average.

How can a marketer compete amid all the clutter? The following five tactics can help capture short attention spans and increase sales.

• If a brand can own a color in consumers’ minds, it will easily stand out on shelf. Look at Uncle Ben’s use of orange.

• Often, an effective packaging differentiation strategy needs to transcend color. One option is to create a distinctive graphic element, such as the Tide bull’s-eye.

• Brand characters, such as Mr. Clean, can articulate a brand message and help to increase the package’s “findability.”

“Lovemark” just may supplant experiential branding as a marketing buzzword. Whereas experiential branding involves creating a brand with a unique emotional connection with a consumer, a lovemark is all about how you create that connection.

Marcia Roosevelt is Executive Vice President at Saatchi & Saatchi, which coined the term lovemark. With 20 years in new product development, she has come to believe that brands win consumers by creating a deep, meaningful relationship with them. Roosevelt contends that many brand managers have failed in the relationship game.

Since innovative thinking on ways to balance packaging and the environment is always in short supply, I was curious to see if Paper or Plastic: Searching for Solutions to an Overpackaged World by Daniel Imhoff would contribute something new. Though the book did indeed start out as a polemic against packaging, it quickly changed into a more productive—and provocative—course.

Imhoff, Executive Director of Watershed Media, reports on what is realistically possible in terms of the latest technology, from a new generation of zero-effluent mini-mills to the latest thinking in natural capitalism, eco-intelligence, design, and biomimicry, all as applied to packaging. (The biomimicry section alone will spur many ideas for the creative package designer.) Imhoff also covers the newest generation of bioplastics from a variety of suppliers, reviewing pros and cons of each material. Case studies show green packaging done right.

One of the leading colorant groups, Ampacet Corp., forecasts increased use of special effects and high-technology inks to further intensify the visual impact of bottles and other packaging forms, such as flexible pouches and cartons.

Globally, pearlescent and interference pigments have become the visual norm, says Linda Carroll, Market Development Manager at Ampacet. To satisfy consumers’ demands for increased multisensory interaction, these traditional additives will be used in non-traditional ways, such as in combination with fluorescence and other enhancers to add shelf “pop.”

Carroll also foresees a rise in the use of synthetic pigments to enhance color richness, along with the use of multisensory additives (aroma enhancers) to achieve shelf differentiation.

Recent color palettes have transitioned from cool undertones to ones of warmth and strength heading into 2006-2007, with variations of orange and purple in the lead.