When you think of the label's potential broadly, it can wield marketing muscle as a sophisticated and strategic weapon that offers brand managers another way to justify investments in packaging to senior management as a core element of product-marketing efforts. Why? The label's value advances beyond its traditional role as a decorative add-on.
Consider these two examples:
Labels on bottles of Honest Tea provide disruption in the crowded and visually "noisy" ready-to-drink tea aisle. The labels are visually "quiet" and communicate product authenticity as an organic beverage.
When Wal-Mart reduced the shelf space for the Anacin Advanced Headache Formula brand, Insight Pharmaceuticals removed the carton and introduced a full-wrap, extended-text label. All previous information is included on the label, and the brand gets visual "pop." The costs of folding cartons and inserts are eliminated.
Bottled beverages, says Seth Goldman, Honest Tea Co. President, often lose consumer trust by overpromising about the product. Honest Tea Co., working with Moxie TM, calls attention to the authenticity of its Honest Tea's USDA-Certified Organic ingredients. The label promotes the organic message.
"It starts with the product," Goldman says. "It has to be what the package says it is."
The film label's white background helps distinguish the brand from the sea of color across the category, notes Tammy Vaserstein, Moxie TM Principal. White connotes freshness and simplicity, whereas too much color says "artificial" rather than "organic," she adds. The label's black border visually anchors the product line. Simple typography matches the brand's promise, and luscious fruit illustrations, each with "T," add to the fresh organic appeal, identify each flavor variety, and contrast the white background. A sliding-bar graphic indicates how much epigallocatechin gallate (EGCG), an antioxidant in tea, is contained in each bottle.
Elsewhere, Insight Pharmaceuticals opted for an extended-text label in over-the-counter drugs as a matter of economics. The challenge: Wal-Mart reduced shelf space for Insight's Anacin Advanced Headache Formula brand. The retailer requested smaller packaging in several product categories. Insight needed to eliminate extraneous packaging and reduce the package "footprint" while also retaining required on-pack regulatory information.
The solution: Insight eliminated Anacin's chipboard cartons and introduced an on-bottle, extended-text label.
"We were fortunate to have a packaging engineer on staff," says Larry Freedman, Insight's Director of Business Innovation. "He knew that applying a wrapped label to a round bottle could be complicated, so we needed a good-quality product."
The split-based, pressure-sensitive labels, from WS Packaging Group, use a PLA-based lamination. The two-panel label features a pressure-sensitive "lift here" tab and a precurve top panel that enables the label to wrap around tight-diameter surfaces. The top panel wraps around the bottle. The base panel contains a die-cut in a portion of the label. On the bottle, that gap closes and enables the label to wrap around the bottle surface without being damaged.
A matte polypropylene over-laminate covers the silver metalized top panel to create a tactile feel and a matte image. The base panel contains a white, semi-gloss finish. Both panels are printed with UV- and water-based flexographic inks in 11 colors.
By Jim George, Editor-in-Chief
