Bottled wines typically achieve packaging distinction through the bottle shape or the label.

A streamlined PET bottle for Kraft Foods' 50-plus salad dressings achieves a 19% reduction in weight over the previous packaging and also provides multiple consumer conveniences.

GE Caulk Singles are replacing squeeze tubes and caulk guns for convenient, on-the-go application.

As the packaging and displays that designers create move downstream toward the store shelf, they are increasingly stopping off at a contract packager's facility for pack-out.

Let's face it.

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

Procter & Gamble is extending its Downy Simple Pleasures brand with a new line of "fabric enhancers" marketed under the Radiance Collection subbrand. The three scents in the line are formulated with assistance from perfume houses and delivered through a proprietary technology that deposits microscopic capsules of perfume onto fabrics during the wash/rinse cycles.

Patrick Sbarra is President of New Creature, an in-store marketing and P-O-P display company that helps Wal-Mart, Sam's Club, and their suppliers to "sell more stuff." Here, he discusses factors that are impacting in-store packaging decisions.

Coca-Cola is bringing more convenience to the beverage aisle with a resealable 500-mL aluminum can for its Burn energy drink.

Land O'Lakes is expanding distribution for its butter brand while also marketing more directly to today's smaller households by reconfiguring the packaging.

Take a look around your product category for the true leaders.

HP believes that the consumer's first interactions with a new product are so critical that the company's packaging department has a "user experience designer."

What are the differences in packaging design between the U.S. and Europe?

Shape is the differentiator on another package in the beverage aisle with Dr. Pepper Snapple Group Beverages' 21-oz angled glass bottles of Rose's Mojito. The brand is a line of non-alcoholic mojito mixers.

How can packaging raise the bar for exclusive salon products? By positioning them as "lifestyle brands" to drive the overall marketing strategy, both in salons and in homes. Mario Tricoci Hair Salons & Day Spas offers an engaging example of how to do it in exclusive, personal-care products.

Club-store sales have reached $115 billion and are increasing nearly 5% annually. The channel's growth presents opportunities to marketers who package their products to meet the special challenges of the club-store environment.

Salon Selectives is returning to store shelves after a four-year hiatus with new products and updated formulas among its 18-product line of shampoos, conditioners, and styling and treatment products. Packaging also updates the brand.

ConAgra needed a package offering both purchase appeal and user convenience for its Ro*Tel Ready to Eat Queso Dip. It found the answer in a custom-molded polypropylene cup with a shrink label.

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.

A closer look at the newest trends in today's packaging.

White-coated aluminum cans provide the canvas for labels with glitzy graffiti graphics that introduce AriZona Beverages' All City NRG green-tea-based, pomegranate-juice-flavored energy drinks.

When LypSyl, a 100-year-old Swedish lip-balm brand, debuted in the U.S., Lornamead Inc. tweaked product formulations and rolled out enticing and functional packaging.

Packages that intuitively inform consumers about the products they contain have an edge in boosting brand sales. A key tactic these packages share is the ability to focus on a single message.

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.

What is the role of product packaging, given the fast-changing face of retailing and consumer demand now?

Here's a clever design in pouched microwavable heat-and-serve sauces and gravies. Royco sauces, from Master Foods, a division of Mars, in South Africa, are packaged in retorted pouches. Before microwave heating, the consumer snips the pouch corner for venting and pouring.

Well-executed packaging graphics can "sell the taste." In the highly competitive chilled-foods aisle, f'REAL! Foods, Orinda, CA, achieved this objective when switching from preprinted cups to shrink sleeves for its 10-oz serving of frozen dairy products sold at convenience stores. The family line uses polyvinyl chloride sleeves, provided by Fort Dearborn, gravure-printed in nine colors to maximize visual impact through the glass doors of cooler cases.

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!

The challenge for third-generation DelGrosso Foods: Increase distribution to gourmet supermarkets and specialty food stores. The solution: The company developed ultra premium, natural Italian sauces, marketed under the La Famiglia DelGrosso brand name, and then introduced them in packaging that reflects both the quality ingredients and family pride vested in the products.

Guardsman is a "heritage" brand in the furniture-care products industry. The brand was founded in 1915 in Grand Rapids, MI, and Valspar Corp. wanted to make it more contemporary.

Taste appeal is everything for Galliker Dairy Co.'s Galliker's White Tea with Blueberry iced tea brand. Galliker delivers this "curb appeal" with full-body PVC shrink-sleeve labels from Seal-It Inc., a division of Printpack Inc.

The 10-color rotogravure-printed labels feature artwork of an Asian tea-set vignette on a background of pagodas and blueberry graphics.

The print graphics include the Galliker's name in prominent red color. Galliker markets the tea in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, and West Virginia.

Over time, a brand can become "dated," and BeautiControl Inc., Carrollton, TX, reached that point with its 15-year-old Skinlogics Lip Apeel line. The company updated the brand with custom packaging that also responds to consumer complaints about products that dry out.

Some of the brightest branding and design minds in the business will highlight this year's FUSE: Design & Culture/Brand Identity & Packaging conference, produced by the Institute for International Research (IIR), will be April 13-16 at Pier 60, Chelsea Piers, New York City.

A clever garden-spray-hose delivery system and a striking shrink-sleeve label give distinction to The Scotts Co.'s multipacks of Miracle-Gro LiquaFeed All Purpose Plant Food.

The no-mix, no-measure product and packaging heighten consumer convenience by minimizing steps during product use. A plant food hose feeding adapter (sold separately) has one screw-thread aperture that connects to the hose. A second aperture attaches to the top of the opened bottle. Water and plant food blend within the adapter for delivery through the feeding spray nozzle.

Nine-color rotogravure printing enriches the polyvinyl chloride sleeves around the 16-oz bottles. Fort Dearborn Co. provides the sleeves.

"LiquaFeed has been the most successful new product launch in the history of our company," says Carlos Hernandez, Scotts Marketing Director. "The innovative packaging design is an important part of the product's success."

Suggested retail price is $9.99 for a four-pack and $5.99 for a two-pack.

Hormel Foods Corp. brings the colored pull-tab to the chili aisle with several varieties of chili in full-panel, steel easy-opening 15-oz cans. The red tabs provide a visual difference on store shelves.

"We felt that the red tab really brought attention to the can end," explains Marty Wolesky, Hormel Product Manager. "We stated the clear objective of being ready for chili season, and we worked closely with Silgan Containers to ensure a smooth and timely conversion with our production facilities."

Silgan provides the ends, tabs, and cans.

The redesigned paper label for the new chili can retains the familiar Hormel red background. The label emphasizes the chili's healthful benefits in ribbon colors that coordinate with each product variety. Suggested retail price is $1.49 to $2.49.

High-volume retailers are beginning to operate as brands rather than places, and this shift is profoundly impacting consumer packaged goods.

Purchases made at hardware, home-improvement, and automotive stores usually are planned, measured transactions. Wrench Mints, from the Los Angeles, CA-based company of the same name, attempts to break the mold and bring impulse buying to those store channels with a tin-plate container of breath fresheners.

Shape works with the Wrench Mints brand name to sell the product. Both the tin-plate container and the mints resemble the look of a wrench. Eddy Rubin, President and CEO of Wrench Mints, conceived the idea for the product and packaging.

Holding 35 to 42 miniature mints, the silver container is manufactured by an unnamed company in Hong Kong. The pack measures 3.7" x 1.5" x 0.45" and has a suggested retail price of $1.99. After the mints are gone, the container doubles as a holder for hardware fasteners such as nails and screws.

The mints have been introduced in the Peppermint and Cinnamon varieties, with more on the way this year.

When a brand favored by professionals goes mainstream, communication challenges with the new audience can be considerable. The products are usually of premium quality, with a corresponding price point. The right packaging is essential in introducing the brand to mainstream consumers.

How much weight does the sustainability factor carry with consumers?

Theft deterrence and product visibility were key requirements in a two-part, snap-fit, thermoformed package for Microsoft's new Windows Vista software sold in select Latin American markets. The use of recycled PET sourced from industrial scrap adds a measure of sustainability to the new pack.

Spartech Packaging Technology makes both the base and lid. The base has a large undercut, into which the lid is snapped once the product has been loaded. A thief would need considerable time and dexterity to separate the lid from the base.

Also important to Microsoft was that the package be easy to load and close using existing assembly and packaging systems. Mission accomplished, says Patti Sullivan, Microsoft Senior Packaging Project Manager.

"As with any design and packaging project, there were rounds of testing and fine-tuning, but from start to finish, Spartech consistently delivered and met required criteria," Sullivan adds.

In Germany, Lambertz gains elegance on the store shelf with ebony-colored, rounded-corner tins for its premium Best Selection brand of chocolate biscuits. With a crackle finish, the tins emulate the look of rich leather.

When suppliers talk proactively with the right people, the result often is packaging that stands out in a crowd—with money-saving efficiencies along the way.

You've got limited education budget and time, yet you want the essential information about trends driving packaging that gets results with today's demanding retailers and consumers. If this describes you, Shelf Impact!'s Package Design Workshops are just for you.

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.

It's all about stewardship, life, and energy, and it's playing out in the beauty and health and wellness categories.

Product manufacturers are scurrying to show consumers they have embraced the “green” movement. Frito-Lay joins the parade. The company is adding a “Green-e” designation across the full line of its SunChips multigrain snack packs and becoming one of the first national consumer packaged goods brands to include the Green-e logo on packaging.

Coca-Cola’s goal: Reposition its Nestea brand to communicate a positioning of “feel-good freshness” to attract new consumers in the refrigerated beverages section of the store.

Hispanics have purchasing power of $860 billion, according to the Selig Center for Economic Growth at the University of Georgia, and all I get on my package is the translation of the words “black beans” to frijoles negros?

Inspired by the company’s own century-plus heritage, a new PET bottle and label design add a twist while also reflecting on tradition for Mountain Valley Spring Water, from Mountain Valley Spring Co., Hot Springs, AR. The new look has expanded the brand’s distribution from independent home- and office-delivery distributors into retailers such as Whole Foods.

“We synthesized the pillars of our brand to be ‘quality,’ ‘heritage,’ and ‘Americana,’” says Jim Karrh, Chief Marketing Officer. “That means that everything we do, including our packaging, has to reflect at least one of those pillars—and do so in an authentic way.”

Created by Flowdesign, the new PET bottle combines the redesigned label of Mountain Valley’s recently redesigned glass bottle. Green-hued plastic and an hourglass profile give the PET bottle a contemporary flair. The top portion of the bottle mold depicts rolling mountains topped with pine trees and the words “Since 1871” embossed above the label.

Mountain Valley’s Veriplas Containers molds the bottle on-site, and Valley Label converts the glue-applied film label.

Using a color-matching firm, Maybelline, New York, NY, created a custom look for its new Define-A-Lash line of mascara products. Anodized packaging components were created by electrochemically converting an aluminum metal surface to its oxide.

During the anodizing process, oxygen combines with the aluminum, forming aluminum oxide on the surface. Then the aluminum is dyed. The anodizing process maintains the brand equity in the packaging’s color by preventing fading, chipping, scratching, and peeling.

The mascara package features an aluminum cap that is anodized with precision color matching by Anomatic Corp. This process creates a seamless flow of bright green from the cap to the plastic base.
To accommodate the package design, Anomatic and Techpack, which supplied the tubes, created the cap to exacting specifications.

Suggested retail price is $7.99 at department stores.

VasoActive Pharmaceuticals, Danvers, MA, has gained additional market distribution for its three OTC topical lotions—Termin-8 (for athlete’s foot), A-R Extreme (for temporary relief from minor sports-related muscular and skeletal injuries), and Osteon (for osteoarthritis and other muscle and joint pain)—by redesigning the packaging for more vibrancy, dimension, and color-coding. With new packaging, the brand’s OTC topical lotions signal product efficacy and health benefits over competitive products.

Retailer brands continue to post solid dollar-volume increases in a number of categories across all distribution channels. The growth is due in part to retailers’ added emphasis on branding, in which packaging is playing a stronger role than ever in differentiating retailers and creating value.

The promise of smart packaging has always been impressive. Now, at last, some pretty intriguing commercial applications are starting to surface. There's More. Click to continue reading "Smart packaging—lessons in enhanced functionality"

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.

So you come home from the store with a new toy for your child’s birthday. You know exactly what it looks like because you can see it through the package. You were actually able to play with it at the store in the package to see if it was “cool enough” and the right level for your child. The clear all-plastic thermoformed sealed clamshell package allowed you to touch various controls on the toy through strategically designed slots. The high visibility functional pack has significantly enhanced the shopping experience and aided the purchase decision, all without opening the package. When your child unwraps the present he or she can get a good feel if they like it or not by playing with it (at least to a degree) through the package.

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.

Betta Foods, an Australian manufacturer of ice cream cones and specialty confectionery products, is adding convenience to candy packaging with a resealable zipper on its Natural Real Fruit Flavored Liquorice AllSorts and Liquorice Bullets varieties.

"The benefit of a resealable feature is twofold, says "John Roumelle, Marketing Manager at Betta Foods. "It serves as a visual differentiating factor at point of purchase and it allows our brands to stand out based on the added convenience."

Working with Zip-Pak, Betta Foods adds the zipper to a BOPP/CPP pouch with a trapped print lamination. The packages are flexo-printed in eight colors.

According to Zip-Pak, the zipper costs about .125 cent on a 6"-wide package, compared with 12¢ to 15¢ for comparable food storage bags.

The challenge: The Stratis Group, Caldwell, NJ, wanted to reinforce the essence of Hawaiian fruit on the label to boost sales for its Hilo Gold Noni Juice. The solution: a decorative full-sleeve shrink label to stimulate maximum purchase impact.

Stratis turned to Seal-It, a division of Printpack, for the label. Hawaiian Noni fruit, also called Morinda citrifolia, inspired the graphics.

The PET-G label is heat-shrunk around the bottle. Rotogravure printing in seven colors and the gloss of the film give the label extra visual intensity.

In order to be truly effective, packaging has to literally deliver the heart and soul of the brand in a way that forges strong, emotive connections with the consumer. The days of delivering a hierarchy of features and benefits on packaging in a dry manner, sans emotion, are over. But where do emotive cues come from?

Too many packages fail to adequately clarify what the product inside does and, by association, declare a price-value relationship that helps consumers confidently purchase the right product.

With consumer markets fragmenting into ever-smaller niches, the need to understand who your consumers are and what motivates them to purchase has never been more important. You can learn about the latest research and strategy development approaches in use today at the ninth annual Proof: Market Research & Strategy Development for Package Design conference.

Simoniz, Bolton, CT, has developed a line of car-care products with a high-performance formulation that creates high gloss on auto surfaces. The company is using packaging to bring branding dimension to the advanced product formulation as a communicator of value and a squeaky clean shine—and to enhance product protection in distribution.

Betta Foods, an Australian manufacturer of ice cream cones and specialty confectionery products, is adding convenience to candy packaging with a resealable zipper on its Natural Real Fruit Flavored Liquorice AllSorts and Liquorice Bullets varieties.

For Teen Everyday Skincare System skincare products, packaging is the messenger for inspirational messages and a bit of attitude.

Organic Valley, LaFarge, WI, has found an innovative way to extend its brand reach and bring the healthful benefits of milk to the ballpark. The dairy packages about 8 oz of milk in aseptic cartons for distribution at Fox Cities Stadium in Appleton, WI, during baseball games of the minor league Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.

When Wall Street is pressuring you to quickly revive a recently purchased slumping brand, the tendency often is to default to tactics such as “me-too” packaging. That was anything but the case at Procter & Gamble.

If you work in research, strategy development or design, the ninth annual Proof: Market Research & Strategy Development for Package Design conference is for you. Produced by the Institute for International Research, Proof will be from Oct. 1-3, 2007, at the Wyndham Hotel in Chicago.

Merix Releev cold sore medication changes to pilfer-resistant film-laminated packaging to meet retailer demands.

Why, in product categories like OTC drugs, does packaging innovation seem to occur only after tragedy strikes? This was explored in our April 2007 issue, and it brought the following response from Bob Nall, Vice President of Packaging Design for Mattel Toys’ Boys Division:

Claudia Kotchka is a 29-year veteran at Procter & Gamble. As Vice President of Design Innovation and Strategy, her job is to “build design into P&G’s DNA.”

Suave’s redesign shows that cost savings don’t have to compromise consumer wants.

Last month, we also asked for your thoughts on this question: Do new packages tend to originate through the supply chain (push) or through consumer/retailer demand (pull)? Why, and has the point of origin changed from five years ago? Your answers were split about evenly between push and pull. Here are some of your responses.

Clarity in communicating what a product does is crucial when product and category are unique. Consider aquaICE, Dublin, OH. The company took a fresh look at its premium ice cubes in the shelf-stable form of purified water filled into sealed trays and boxed for sale. At home, consumers freeze the trays as needed and place the cubes directly in beverages.

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.

Exclusivity sells because often, the package is the product. Shelves at Sephora, a chain of beauty products stores founded in France, showcased an eye-catching example during the 2006 holiday season.

Many of you had interesting answers to another question we asked: What do you think about when justifying whether a different package structure makes sense for the product you are working on?

Are you looking to break away from the clutter? Consider challenging conventional wisdom and surprise consumers of your product. So says Minda Gralnek. As Vice President and Creative Director for Target Stores, she leads a design team that challenges the conventional image of discount retailing.

Drawing inspiration from brand of yesteryear is now the future

Customize and offering something extra. Tyson, General Mills, Hershey, and Keurig show what works.

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.

The Institute for International Research (IIR) has announced additional speakers for its 11th annual Fuse: Brand Identity & Package Design conference April 16-18, 2007, at Pier 60, Chelsea Piers, in New York City.

Laminate bags intensify the visual appeal, aiming to stimulate category growth

Overall flat consumption and ever-increasing competitive pressures in the U.S. beer industry have driven the market leaders to rely more on packaging as a tool to boost sales.

More than half of all purchase decisions are made in the store, and clutter is the reality of the shopping experience. What should brand marketers and package designers think about to be successful in this environment? It boils down to 10 principles.

Back in 2000, a new term found its way into branding lexicon. We had entered the “design economy.” Time magazine painted an elegant portrait in describing it as “the crossroads where prosperity and technology meet culture and marketing.”

The leading edge of in-store pizza marketing is shifting to the refrigerated aisle in supermarkets, with fresh deli pizzas, and focusing less on the freezer case. Uno Foods, Brockton, MA, offers a good example of how packaging is playing a pivotal role in this trend.

Do structure improvements translate to a positive return on investment? The answer is a qualified yes, according to a new consumer study of packaging innovation conducted by Perception Research Service (PRS) and the Institute of Packaging Professionals(IoPP).

Across the range of product categories studied, the most consistent finding was that packaging innovation could significantly impact shoppers’ price expectations and purchase decisions. In more than half the cases, new packages drove increases of 20 cents or more in anticipated product pricing.

The study also found that innovative packages dramatically impacted shoppers’ brand selections (with packaging and pricing in view) in more than half the categories studied. However, the study also demonstrated that “the power of packaging” could work both ways. In cases, innovative packages significantly detracted from shopper preference. Clearly, success is packaging innovating as an end in itself.

By speaking with shoppers about specific packages and functional benefits, the study provided insight centered two primary questions:

1. Which packaging innovations are most likely to make a different?

2. How dose packaging innovation link to decision making?

To address the first objective, PRS and IoPP asked shoppers about packaging features and benefits that are more important to them within the eight product categories studied. Some trends emerged:

· In food-related categories (such as sugar, raisins and potato chips), product protection and tamper resistance consistently ranked as top priorities. These were typically cited as “extremely important” by more than 75% of survey respondents.

· In non-food categories, product protection was typically secondary to ease of opening and dispensing.
On a broader level, the survey results show that asking shoppers “What matters to you?” is probably less valuable than identifying unmet functional needs within specific product categories.

The study demonstrates that innovative packaging systems can directly impact shoppers’ price expectations and product selection. Thus, if innovation is done properly, it is very likely to provide a properly, it is very likely to provide a positive return on investment (ROI) through increased market share or the ability to raise prices to cover incremental costs.

The most significant example of the positive impact of innovation is in the sugar category. An analysis of information from respondents indicates that the new packaging structure for the Domino brand addresses an unmet category need for a recloseable package. It also yields the following results:

· Despite a smaller size, the new Domino package drove a significantly higher price expectation ($3.38) than that for the former packaging ($2.96). While Domino had actually lowered pricing by 10 cents when introducing the new package (due to the smaller size ), this finding suggested that Domino could have actually raised prices—and been very likely to pass along the costs of the new structure without compromising sales.

· When respondents were faced with actual retail pricing and asked to choose between the new Domino package and a lower-priced, store- brand competitor’s package , packaging structure impacted the purchase decision significantly. Domino went from being selected 55% of the time in the former package to being the choice among 74% of respondents in the new package.

Read more about the study results. To purchase this study, contact Young at syoung@prsresearch.com or 201/346-1600.

- By Scott Young, President Perception Research Services

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.

Icon brands that stay relevant and create symmetry between products in the brand “family” continue to endure in consumers’ hearts. Gerber, a long-trusted brand, is a recent example with a new packaging system for all three of its lines, which help consumers to shop the category more efficiently.

Where does Disney Consumer Products get the inspiration for its packaging? Sheila Ullery, Health and Beauty Director, mentioned at the HBA Expo in September that Disney creates the image first and then builds products and packaging around it. This approach is in stark contrast to most consumer goods companies, which create the product first, then try to figure out an image to go with it.

Packaged goods become abstract when even the smallest supermarket stocks thousands of SKUs. In this disconnected environment, consumers gravitate toward products with identifiable origins.

Here's a worthwhile exercise: Ask yourself and your package design team, "What If?" The challenge is to use great packaging ideas being introduced elsewhere not as a template for your own projects, but as inspiration for what could be for your packaged products. If you had no budget and no limitations, how would you engage shoppers and create shelf space that really grabs a consumer and makes an impact? Here is a list of "What Ifs" to ponder:

Lebanon Seaboard is the top-selling brand in lawn and garden supplies, yet the company decided to survey consumers for their perceptions of the brand. The results told Lebanon Seaboard that the package had shortcomings in consumers’ minds and would require structural modifications. Among consumers’ observations:

Launches of new products have been particularly active over the last year in the facial-care aisle. The category is enjoying growth on two fronts: products formulated and packaged for men, as well as in-the-home, salon-style treatment kits.

As Wal-Mart ramps up its environmental sustainability initiative, the retailer is telling brand owners that they need to evolve into smaller packaging with reusable/recyclable materials within two years, or risk losing precious shelf space in Wal-Mart stores.

The ClearRX pharmacy bottle introduced at Target has won rave reviews from both consumers and pharmacists for its ease of use. Through color-coded rings on the bottles and easy-to-read labels with a logical hierarchy of information, weighted visually by importance, consumers know which bottle in the medicine cabinet is theirs, and how much medication to take and when.

If there’s a word that’s overused in marketing and design circles when it comes to packaging, the word is “innovative.” I recently had a telephone conversation with Roy Parcels who, as a designer for decades, knows a thing or two about the relative place in history of any purportedly innovative package.

Method gets custom-designed body wash bottles is stores within 18 weeks of concept by finding a principal vendor who understood and executed the marketing concept.

Creating a great design is one thing. But an often-overlooked next step in assuring the market success of any new package is aligning with suppliers who understand the marketing objective behind the design and can execute it under increasingly tight time-to-shelf requirements.

    One marketer that continues to set the standard for packaging that delivers on the brand message is San Francisco-based Method Home Products. The company is a small player in home-care products that has carved its niche by introducing a designer look to a category previously dotted by products in industrial-looking packaging.

    Method recently determined the time was right to extend its namesake brand into personal-care products. It had a distinctive bottle design for a line of body wash, created by industrial designer Karim Rashid. But it needed a packaging manufacturer to produce the right bottle and get the design from concept to shelf within 18 weeks.

Method turned to Amcor PET Packaging and its new personal care business unit to introduce its line of gel and cream body washes in 15-oz custom, tear-shaped PET bottles.

“As a small player, we didn’t want to be thrown in with the big boys,” says Gerry Chesser, Method’s Vice President of Operations.

Method supplied Amcor with 3-D models of the bottle style it wanted. However, the bottle design’s gentle curves presented a challenge in blow-molding. Amcor made the bottle workable for its blow-molding operations by using special design software and through Internet conferencing with Method.

As the number of products continues to proliferate, available shelf space for new packages is shrinking.

Can anything be done that won’t perpetuate physical parity and a de-emphasis of personality for your brand? The answer is yes, if you think innovatively about package structure.

Consider milk. Instead of just “regular milk,” the typical cooler in today’s supermarket contains these varieties: 1%, 2%, skim, fortified, flavored, soy, non-dairy, lactose-intolerant, goat’s milk, and organic. With no space, perhaps your brand won’t be ordered, or one of your SKUs will be cannibalized to make room for a different brand.

What can you do to ensure that your package works in this environment?

Here’s what Gary, a sales associate at Stop & Shop, might do. A large shipment of regular milk cartons has arrived at his store, and he needs to display it. The problem is there isn’t any room left.

Gary rationalizes that each carton is square in shape and has a triangular-shaped gable top. In the cooler’s lower bay, Gary turns some cartons upside-down and places them on top of upright cartons. They fit perfectly. On higher shelves, he lays cartons down and rotates them 45 degrees. Again, they fit perfectly. Gary also discovers that the cartons can be stacked another layer higher.

So, foremost, your product needs to find a place on the shelf. But then the shape needs to be flexible enough to adapt to many configurations.

Once in the store, your product’s packaging needs to exude visual aesthetics or use “language” that leverages the brand’s positioning and serves as an iconic element in the shopper’s mind, regardless of its “misplacement” on the shelf. No matter how it is displayed it has to look like it was supposed to be stocked that way.

Unilever may be onto something in the quest to maximize space on cluttered store shelves. At Wal-Mart, Unilever has introduced its All Small & Mighty brand. The 32 fl oz of liquid inside each bottle is 3X concentrated. That means 32 fl oz of All Small & Mighty, retailing for $3.97, cleans 32 loads of laundry, while 100 fl oz of regular All cleans 32 loads for $4.37.

All Small & Mighty fits perfectly with Wal-Mart’s lowest-price/value proposition. From a packaging standpoint, here’s the real deal. Twenty-one of the 32 fl oz All Small & Mighty bottles fit in the same shelf space as eight of the 100 fl oz All bottles. In identical shelf space at my local Wal-Mart, the retail ring per shelf set is $83.37 for All Small & Mighty vs. $34.96 for regular All.

This scenario appears to be a winner all the way around. Wal-Mart improves sales per square foot. With fewer out-of-stocks, Unilever sells more bottles of detergent. Consumers see the brand as innovative and view the lighter, smaller package as easier to carry and space saving in the home.

This marketing tactic is a natural to extend into other household cleaning products. Can it be adapted for other categories? A glut of products is eroding shelf space in virtually every category, so the ability to manipulate a product to reduce the package size might make the difference between a retailer stocking your brand or someone else’s.

--By Jim George,
Editor-in-Chief

A significant direction for high-volume retailers is the move to supercenters. Michigan-based Meijer claims to be the inventor of the supercenter concept, and increased competition from other retailers led it to revamp its private-label packaging.

One tactic was to add a top-tier line to its private label offerings. “Adding the second tier of private-label is one of the directions you are seeing at retail now,” says consultant Mike Richmond of Packaging & Technology Integrated Solutions (PTIS).

“The new Meijer Gold line is an execution of that strategy. It projects a great upscale look with label graphics in categories such as salad dressings and coffee,” Richmond says. “Package graphics rely on a gold-colored band across labels and the Meijer Gold brand in script on the label. This contrasts with the traditional Meijer flag on products.”

In December, Shelf Impact! also asked readers the following question: How do you successfully balance relationships with your retail partners in their dual roles as merchant for your (your client's) brand and marketers of their own competing store brands? Twenty readers shared their thoughts, and here is a sample.

“Communication and win-win marketing.”

“I don't bring up the competition, but I offer similar, although slightly different, products.”

A growing challenge facing packagers today is creating a “billboard” on measured-purchase products that are displayed outside of the package. While consumers can examine the product before deciding whether to purchase it, marketers lose billboard space when the product itself rests on a hook or display shelf.

Black & Decker, Towson, MD, believes it has solved that challenge by revamping the design of point-of-purchase (P-O-P) communications for its power tools. Sara Simonsen, Brand Manager, says, “Our main objective was to look consistent, to put more emphasis on the Black & Decker brand, and have the P-O-P be easier to understand from a consumer standpoint.”

The ability to quickly understand product features and to differentiate between brands in higher-priced tools such as electric hedge trimmers is important to consumers. Equally important to brand owners and retailers alike is packaging elements that are durable enough to withstand the wear and tear when consumers repeatedly pick up a product to inspect it in the store.

The Private Label Manufacturers Association’s 2005 PLMA roundtable report, “From Merchant to Marketer: Exploring the Evolution of Modern Retailing”, originates from a panel of experts working in a cross-section of industries, from product manufacturing to market research to consultants, trade journalists, and financial analysts. Among its conclusions, here is what the roundtable’s 20-page report says about the evolution of modern retailing and private-label branding as a component in the mix:

1. The transformation of retailers is continuing. U.S. retailers have evolved profoundly over the past decade, in the process placing more power in the hands of retail chains in terms of how they operate their stores. Store brands have benefited significantly from this trend.

2. The longtime model of trade classes is no longer relevant. Instead of the three traditional classes of trade—supermarkets, drug stores and mass merchandisers—a more accurate representation recognizes contemporary environmental influences in which retailers understand that the consumer, rather than the store or the manufacturer, inspires the brand.

Retailers are increasing the sophistication and flexibility of their own brands—in part through strikingly upgraded packaging. Growth continues so strongly that private-label brands are challenging the marketing axiom that the only way to build brand equity with consumers is through widespread, national production distribution.

This observation comes from the Private Label Manufacturers Association’s 2005 roundtable report, and the numbers from both the association’s own studies, other reports, and from individual retailers support the roundtable’s findings.

• Store brands account for 19.6% of units purchased across all product lines and distribution channels, according to the PLMA. The figures exclude Wal-Mart, which no longer participates in retail data-reporting programs.

• Retail industry analysts interviewed for the 2005 Packaging Strategies report “Contract Packaging: Strategic Opportunities and Profit Potential,” estimated that in 2004 private-label brands accounted for about 40% of Wal-Mart’s sales.

Studies on consumer behavior are finding that distinguishing your product can be a dual-sided effort. Consumers often act differently outside of the store than they do when shopping inside.

In-store triggers that can alter consumer behavior fall into two categories: habit and environment. Both are equally influential in shaping consumers’ shopping habits. Habit triggers are just that—habit. Consumers continue to buy the same brands until something makes them change their mind. Environmental triggers have the power to break habits and begin new purchasing patterns. For example, a child standing in the cookie aisle could remind someone of cookies they used to eat.

It is clear, judging from the insights awaiting you throughout this issue of Shelf Impact!, that consumer products companies face increasingly complex packaging challenges in navigating today’s retailing environment. Underscoring the entire playing field is the fact that retailers, through increasingly sophisticated store-brand tactics, have become foe as well as friend to marketers.

Canisters of Whims cookies, from Pepperidge Farm, taper from a wide base and give the package a different shape in the cookie aisle. The canister’s shape and recloseable top make the package suitable for on-the-go snacking.

Carol Degener, Director of Innovation at Pepperidge Farm, says the container provides merchandising flexibility. The container may be displayed either on its overcap or upside-down on its base. Graphics are printed in different directions on both primary canister panels to accommodate either type of display.

Sonoco supplies the container, membrane, and overcap. The container includes an inner foil barrier layer laminated to a 15-pt SBS board reverse-printed in flexo in seven colors.

Link: Sonoco

A traditional supermarket offers 15,000 items. Let’s say the average shopper overlooks half of these during a shopping trip. That leaves 7,500 items.

The typical shopping trip requires 20 to 40 minutes. Let’s split the difference and use 30 minutes, or 1,800 seconds. Divide 1,800 seconds by the 7,500 items that are visible; each item is viewed for .24 seconds, on average.

How can a marketer compete amid all the clutter? The following five tactics can help capture short attention spans and increase sales.

• If a brand can own a color in consumers’ minds, it will easily stand out on shelf. Look at Uncle Ben’s use of orange.

• Often, an effective packaging differentiation strategy needs to transcend color. One option is to create a distinctive graphic element, such as the Tide bull’s-eye.

• Brand characters, such as Mr. Clean, can articulate a brand message and help to increase the package’s “findability.”