Online marketing and emerging media experts lay out strategies for captivating the experiential consumer in an increasingly interactive world.

If you believe in the adage “innovate or die,” you may want to look at personal care products for survival ideas. This “lifestyle” category is very personal to consumers, who are pushing marketers to provide customized packages that seem “just for them” and target consumer niches within the category.

Scotts Miracle-Gro Co. has found an innarvative way to help consumers protect the environment by using packaging. Its flexible-film bags of Scotts' lawn fertilizer educate consumers on how to properly apply the product by following the label directions.

Based on input from environmental groups and the company's consumer research, Scotts Miracle-Gro has added best- practice application instructions on more than 35 million bags of its Turf Builder@ brand of fertilizer products. The company features the messages on the top of the back panel of its fertilizer bags.

A demographic tidal wave of aging boomers is set to befall consumer packaged goods companies (CPGs) and package designers. As a result, you've been reading articles about topics like ease of use, designing for aging consumers' needs and universal design (we outlined universal-design philosophy in the January/February 2006 issue of Shelf Impact!). What techniques are available to help brand managers, marketers, and package designers design and test packages that aging consumers will receive well?

Do you gather consumer data using the more passive methods of 20 years ago? If so, that can make package innovation difficult, says Brendan Light, Vice President of Research and Strategy at BuzzBack, a market research firm. Light led an engaging session on the topic at a conference in New York called "Fuse: Brand Identity & Package Design." Discussions on innovation took center stage.

The closure is often a forgotten packaging Component when positioning a product as high quality. Not for Milchwerke Thuringen GmbH. The subsidiary of Humana Milchunion Group has introduced an aseptic beverage carton in Germany with a three- piece screw cap that enhances perceptions of product freshness.

The company is using the closure on cartons of its Osterland brand of long-life, full-cream milk; long-life, low-fat milk; and long-life, skim milk.

Considering that the venerable bar code’s first commercial packaging application predates the Korean War, one would think the printed zebra stripes are about as cutting-edge as ring-pull tabs on two-piece steel cans.

4C Foods Corp. boosted sales 7% for its 4C brand of seasoned salt-free breadcrumbs by refreshing the canister graphics to help reintroduce the long-time product’s benefits to diet-conscious consumers.

The redesigned canister graphics achieve two important objectives for the Brooklyn, NY-based marketer:

Start small,seek growth and above all, make your effort a team

A completely sustainable package should be sourced responsibly and designed to be effective and safe throughout its life cycle. It should meet market criteria for performance and cost, be made entirely with renewable energy, and be recycled efficiently. Each package is part of a cradle-to-cradle packaging system.

Agencies worldwide are toughening regulations on packaging. TT Club’s TT Talk newsletter cites the following examples:

Unilever dry mixes switch to metallized BOPP to improve barrier, aesthetics, and production.

Unilever’s array of food brands include Knorr, its number one-selling brand, and Lipton, two of the most trusted names found on supermarket shelves. The packaging for these top-selling brands is integral to consumer satisfaction, and for more than three decades Knorr and Lipton food products have been presented in sealed pouches made of paper/polyethylene/aluminum foil/PE (PPFP).

Point-of-purchase (P-O-P) displays that are shoppable from multiple sides have become requirements in club stores and with some mass merchandisers. Murray Biscuit Co. collaborated with Multi-Dimensional Resources, a designer and manufacturer of P-O-P displays, to bring this P-O-P tactic to grocery stores.