Can design help bring a 20% to 25% sales premium at retail over competing brands?

One strategy for creating a successful lifestyle brand focuses on a reinforced sense of well-being. One section of the store where this message can work well is household products, and a stellar recent example is WD-40's X-14 bathroom-cleaning products.

Why do we indulge the clearly undesirable tendency to create "me-too" products with mundane packaging to match? Recently, I came across some interesting perspectives.

If fresh research is to be believed, more than 50% of U.S. consumers claim they would surrender all forms of convenience packaging if doing so would benefit the environment.

Know your consumer—and even those who aren't your consumers. That has been a recurring theme among branding and marketing professionals whose thoughts have graced Shelf Impact!

If you're a brand manager or package designer, you can play an important role in creating packaging that achieves branding objectives and also uses less packaging materials or incorporates reusable or recyclable materials. So says Amy Zettlemoyer-Lazar, Sam's Club Director of Packaging.

Consumers long have expressed frustration with the mess that comes with opening, closing, and handling bacon packaging. Oscar Mayer takes a corrective step with its StayFresh Reclosable Tray.

How much weight does the sustainability factor carry with consumers?

I recently struck up a conversation with a manager at a company that helps some major U.S. marketers produce consumer packaged products. Steps for integrating sustainability initiatives are wonderful, this manager said, but they quickly can break down in the "silo" mentality that's still prevalent at so many companies today.

About 70% of brand marketers launched new innovations or line extensions and 44% repositioned their brands in 2007. But marketers also say in a new survey that their main regret of 2007 was failing to invest more effort into understanding what makes their customers tick.

Brand and category managers who want to grow market share should be paying close attention to two trends occurring in stores today. The first trend is an increase in more sophisticated store brands stressing value. The second one is the revival of the “center store.”

What better time than this holiday season to serve up some thoughts on innovation by drawing parallels to food?
Design and innovation are passions of mine, in addition to food. Among their similarities, they both require a balance of science and art, and both often end with a somewhat unexpected, truly remarkable, serendipitous outcome. The following steps provide a glimpse at some core ingredients needed to produce successful brand innovation.

A new book breaks through the clutter to offer practical strategies, tactics, and resources to jump-start your sustainable packaging program. Included are case histories and interviews with leading corporations that have adopted environmental stewardship programs.

“Touchpoints” is a term that’s become popular in marketing and packaging jargon, and I’ve discussed it previously in this space. There are two definitions. In marketing vernacular, touchpoints describe each occasion a brand marketer communicates a brand message to a consumer.

Valerie Jacobs makes her living by helping consumer product companies identify and capitalize on consumer trends, and the Director of Trend Analysis at LPK notes a rise in the number of “natural” products. Not in the sense of natural versus organic, but natural as a barometer of aesthetic enjoyment.

The marketing value of packaging is a largely untapped frontier in OTC pharmaceuticals. Packages delivering cognitive value can support a great product—and drive sales.

They’re 16 to 24 years old. They’re brash, mature in life experience, difficult to shock. Collectively, this coming-of-age group within Generation Y is millions of consumers strong, and if your brand doesn’t speak their language, it may fall behind with this group as its spending power grows. Packaging profoundly impacts which brands.

Do you want to become a more nimble and cost-effective marketer by outsourcing your package development function? If so, a new conference, CP 07: Succeeding With Contract Packaging, will give you plenty of ideas for when and how to make contract packaging work for you—from major product manufacturers to small, virtual marketers.

Six new packages strut their stuff. Packaging has become more closely aligned with corporate business strategies. Increasingly, it has a seat at management ’ s table.

Today’s retailer demands continually challenge food manufacturers to innovate and respond to current in-store marketing trends. The pressure often falls to both the manufacturer and its suppliers to develop and implement solutions rapidly.

Popular thinking among today’s package-creation teams is that the package must work for the consumer as both shopper and user of the product.

By Terri Goldstein, Strategy Principal, and Missy Anapolsky, Chief Creative Officer The Goldstein Group

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.

In recent televised interviews, separate groups of progressive younger children were shown logos or icons of some of the country’s best-know brands. As the moderator displayed cards Showing each image, she asked the children sitting before her to respond with the name of the brand.

Packaging managers from four leading consumer goods companies said during a panel discussion at the “Fuse: Brand Identity & Package Design” conference in April in New York that marketers and designers often work too independently of each other. This results in a creativity gap that can derail effective package development before the process reaches the packaging line.

Marketers should focus packaging communications on consumer product uses rather than ingredients, features, and price.

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

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.

Each month, Shelf Impact! concludes with a survey inviting your feedback on questions that are important to brand packaging professionals. We report the results on Screen 15 of the following month’s issue, and “You Said” has become one of the most enlightening features in Shelf Impact!

Two short survey questions following this month’s issue should interest anyone who is a decision-maker on the creative side of packaging. First, we want to know the most three important challenges facing your packaging team in 2006. Then, we invite you to take a few minutes to describe what steps you’re taking to overcome those challenges.

In November, Shelf Impact! also asked readers what tactics you have in place to measure packaging “wear out” before product sales decline. Thirty-eight readers answered this question, and 15 of you said you have no process in place for measuring package wear out. Here are some of your responses:

“We have none in place. As manufacturers, we rely on feedback from our customers (e.g. Home Depot, True Value, Ace Hardware, etc.) with regard to packaging improvements and changes.”

“Ongoing online research.”

“Focus groups every two years to measure perception and acceptance by the consumer.”

“We're in the process of testing several options and doing feasibility analysis.”

“Close customer contact.”

“Packaging equity research.”

“We just keep an eye on sales and react as necessary.”

Building brand equity is marketing’s most important job. Brands with high equity have higher share-of requirements, higher margins, and higher profitability.

Yet, Gordon Wade, Partner at the EMM Group, observes that brand equity scores long have been declining. In a highly informative recent workshop, Wade listed these reasons for the decline:

• The cost of conventional media is skyrocketing.

• The effectiveness of using conventional media is declining, and with it, return on investment.

Is the image on this screen a chicken cadaver or the promise of a great meal? It’s the packaging that can change the perception by delivering on promise.

The promise is the value that elevates a product—a thing that is manufactured—to a brand that lives in the minds of consumers, says Allan Boyle. He is Head of Creative Design for Nestle Global Brands, and he offers marketers and package designers the following “reality checks” to create packaging that lifts consumers’ product perceptions.

1. Sell the emotion. Boyle says appetite appeal has clearly become a leading link between consumer and purchasing intent, yet many package designs aren’t daring enough. Great food photography and styling, for ingredients and prepared food, for example, are the secrets to showing that “magic moment” when the consumer interacts with the product.