Package design solutions can deliver brands that fulfill consumers’ inmost desires; reaffirm their values or a feeling of achieved aspirational status, a sense of enjoyment, and a growing relationship. These elements satisfy deep emotional needs. Therefore, brands that embody the lifestyle the consumer has, or aspires to, resonate strongly because consumers identify with them at the deepest level.

Lifestyle in digital

Apple’s iPod is a lifestyle brand for millions. The iPod digital music player has changed the way people bring their music with them wherever they go. With the launch of the iPod nano model, Apple’s first-generation cube design gave way to a slick, ultra-slim, black package that features high-quality photography of the iPod unit on the front and back panels and a silver apple on the spine and cover.

This package has industry analysts remarking that “small (tech packaging) is the new big.” The chic, minimalist designs of Apple’s latest products and packaging are now next generation, through visual cues that attract trendsetter consumers.

Strategy: Since cell phones, MP3 players, Blackberries, and other digital, hand-held devices are getting smaller and more sophisticated, shouldn’t packaging for these products be going in that direction as well?

Lifestyle food brands

Consumers have been interested in making healthier lifestyle food and beverage choices, spurring tremendous growth in the natural and organic food sectors. Savvy brand managers of mass-market food brands have responded to this trend by providing healthier choices for time-starved consumers. This trick is to make these nutritional products stand out on crowed supermarket shelves.

Consider bottled juices, V8’s new V-fusion vegetable and fruit juice made yield some valuable ideas. The proprietary structural shape of the bottle is distinctive. Columnar, textured, and easy to grasp with one hand, even at 46 oz, the package stands out in the crowded juice aisle. Brightly colored pressure-sensitive labels feature colored pressure-sensitive labels feature colorful representations of the fruit/vegetable combos within each flavor profile. The packaging quickly makes a unique and decisive selling point: The customer can get a full serving of fruits and vegetables by drinking one 8-oz glass of juice. Convenient, healthy, 100 % juice.

Strategy: Just as the bottled water category has benefited from proprietary structural packaging as a quick identifier of the brand, so might that concept lend itself to more products in the juice aisle. A unique lifestyle product that offers a complete serving of fruits and vegetables in one glass deserves a unique package. Think form, function

Read on for more of Ted Mininni’s packaging strategies for lifestyle brands

By Ted Mininni President, Design Force Inc.