Innovation brings women to an aisle in the store—auto care—they don’t normally frequent, and integration of a network of vendors gives Honeywell a ‘virtual factory.’

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.

Look for compensating behaviors in your product users. That’s an axiom for good package design that’s making a buzz in marketing circles.

Heinz’s new Fridge Door Fit ketchup bottle grew out of this approach. Plenty of other untapped opportunities also await. Success may require examining not only compensating behaviors but also the cost of doing nothing.

Consider motor oil. Every vehicle owner changes their oil regularly. Motorists fall into one of two camps on oil regularly. Motorists fall into one of two camps on oil changes: Some are do-it-yourselfers while the rest of us patronize the neighborhood quick-lube garage.

Ronald deVlam has a great idea for a motor oil package for the D-I-Y crowd: a dual-chamber container. One chamber holds new oil and the other is a receptacle for used oil drained from the vehicle.

The extra chamber serves two purposes. First, it eliminates the inconvenience of emptying used oil into a separate container and taking it to a recycling center. Or worse, dumping it in the trash or into the soil. Second, consider a motor oil brand that doesn’t enjoy much distribution through oil-change shops. A value-added retail package may convert some consumers who patronize oil-change garages into D-I-Yers and loyalists of the forward-thinking brand.

The dual-chamber container would include room for a postage-paid label to ship the spent oil to a recycler. This same recycling approach has created a legion of brand loyalists for Hewlett-Packard printer cartridges.

Opportunities to win new customers abound when you look at the consumer as both a shopper and a product user.

- Jim George, Editor in Chief

Product formulation specialists at Prestone Products Corp. developed several new chemical formulations that led to an advanced level of car-care products in Prestone’s De-Icer line. These include windshield-washer fluid with a dirt blocker that helps repel road spray and other salty, wintery grime.

The marketing department at Prestone set about positioning the new, stronger product formulations that make consumers feel empowered in keeping their car surfaces cleaner. Prestone and Group 4, a branding and design firm, interviewed consumers and settled upon the positioning phrase “Take Back Winter” for the extension of the De-Icer brand.

Polaris Industries Inc. leverages shape to create distinctive bottles commemorating its 50th anniversary. The 32-oz containers are shaped like all-terrain vehicles and snowmobiles to coincide with Polaris’ release of limited-edition ATV and snowmobile models.

The bottles are pearlescent gold HDPE and bear custom four-color, pressure-sensitive labels. Polaris selected the bottle stock and design in working with Lubrication Technologies Inc., its motor oil manufacturer and packager; Berlin Packaging; and Berlin’s Studio 111 Design agency.

Polaris says the cost of producing the bottles is 8–12% higher than for its regular motor oil packaging, but the distinctive package designs are popular with collectors.

Links: Berlin Packaging │ Studio 111 Design