All revved up and ready to go. That's the outlook for a major redesign for Osram Sylvania, which has unveiled a new packaging design for all of its 270 items sold at retail. The customer-friendly packaging redesign strengthens the Sylvania brand, particularly in the competitive automotive aftermarket sector.
The packaging redesign includes five tiers of products from standard to SilverStar Ultra for products from headlights to auxiliary bulbs. A number of variables factored into a new packaging look, says Denise Champagne, Osram Sylvania's Marketing Manager.
"Our goal was to redesign the packaging to mirror the premium traits of each one of our aftermarket products," Champagne says. "The clean, crisp designs form an identity for each of our products that will easily alert anyone purchasing a Sylvania light about its outstanding features. These new graphics will help educate consumers on the fact that they have choices when it comes to automotive lighting products."
"The new packaging is eye-catching and makes it much easier for consumers to understand which product is best-suited for their needs," says Carol Pregger, Principal Packaging Engineer for Automotive Lighting. "We are now using colorful, value-proposition icons on the front and back of our packages, denoting levels of brightness, down-road sight distances, and increased peripheral vision. These symbols help distinguish our products' best performance attributes."
Design firm Wallace Church collaborated with Osram Sylvania to conduct consumer research and help define the core of the brand identity. The printing method is offset lithography in three to five colors. Premium products have additional embellishments such as hot foil stamping and embossing, achieved with the help of prepress vendor Boston Color Graphics.
One objective was to minimize the packaging's environmental impact. Osram Sylvania achieved that goal by using a recycled-content board. Most of the polyvinyl chloride blisters continue to be made from a recycled-content material.
Osram Sylvania notes that the majority of primary, secondary, and tertiary packaging specifications changed as a result of this project. Secondary and tertiary packaging were revised to significantly increase cube efficiency, effectively saving fuel by allowing more packaged product to fit in a truck. The company expects that "up to a 78% cubic volume reduction" and associated fuel savings will be realized.
Overall, the new changes will reduce the amount of plastic in the packaging by having products encased in contoured, tighter blisters, instead of large, loose-fitting plastic windows. The blisters also make for a more theft-resistant package, according to the company.
All products are packaged in thermoformed PVC blisters that fit the bulb contours more closely, wasting less space and reducing blister gauges, Sylvania states. The company estimates the new design is reducing blister material by about 40% across its product line.
The packaging structure for many items changed from a face-seal to a trapped-seal package. Two pieces of paperboard trap the thermoform's flange, making it easier for consumers to later separate the materials for recycling. Osram Sylvania says the items offer a significant associated reduction in total package cube as defined by the Wal-Mart Sustainability Scorecard, allowing for more efficient transportation, and thus, fuel savings.
All the packaging components are supplied through J&J Packaging.
Osram Sylvania relied on consumer research and retailer input during the package redesign for the bulbs, which range from $9.99 to $49.99. In prelaunch tests, the company found that 97% of consumers tested were willing to trade up to premium products when viewing the new packaging and merchandising concepts.
By Rick Lingle, Packaging World
