Providing sensory perception to increase brand differentiation and add a touch of luxury to traditionally packaged products, Sleever Intl. has launched a line of faux leather-relief shrink labels. These labels join the trend of packages creating distinction through tactile surfaces that enable shoppers to “feel the quality.”

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.

The bottle and label work together in positioning the Aloe Breeze beverage line from Phoenix Beverage Co., Phoenix, AZ, as “the first USDA-certified organic drink line that harnesses the power of super-nutrient aloe vera and infuses it with exotic, naturally flavored waters.”

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.

Consumers strongly prefer glass for beer and liquor. The ‘cold threshold’ makes plastic ideal for water but not for beer. Soda lovers are divided on packaging choice.

Anyone who is looking for evidence that huge sales gains are possible in a commodity category should study the success at Glaceau. The regional marketer restaged its Smartwater bottled water brand, expanded distribution in specialty food stores, supermarkets, and in Costco warehouse club stores in the central and southern United States—and sales increases are exceeding 100%.

An unprecedented 30,000 new products are expected to flood store shelves in 2006. One of the primary tactics feeding this staggering total is brand extensions. The thinking today is to build additional sales for a brand that has reached saturation in one category by introducing the brand through a new and related product in another category.

Mountain Valley Spring Co., Hot Springs, AR, returned to its historic roots to improve the presence of its Mountain Valley Spring Water brand in the crowded bottled water category. Working with Flowdesign, the marketer redesigned the entire brand communications for its bottled water.

A retro bottle shape and graphics hint of those used in the brand’s original bottle style in the 1800s. The glass bottle’s shoulder bears the words “Since 1871” embossed three times around the bottle and “America’s Premium Water” embossed two times around. Retro-looking fonts and graphic spirals embellish the brand’s signature oval in the middle of the label. Custom illustrations of trees and mountains provide the backdrop for the label, printed in a light green ceramic ink that wraps 180 degrees around the front of the bottle. The design includes a slimmer bottle neck.

Getting the logo bright red proved challenging in applied ceramic labeling, because bright red ceramic inks require lead, which is banned in some areas of the United States. Vitro Glass, the bottle manufacturer, solved the challenge by using a ceramic label application process that doesn’t require lead-based ink.

As a traditionalist, I find the bottled water phenomenon absurd. As a packaging geek, I marvel at the endless array of packages that designers dream up to hawk water to millions of consumers.

I spent time during my recent family vacation to Japan visiting grocery stores and “100 yen shops” (Japanese dollar stores), looking for unique packaging. No package could hold a candle to the spherical, baseball-sized water bottle I spied in neat rows on a smoothie bar counter.

These OGO brand “waterball” packages are impressive on a number of fronts. What first appears to be oversized-text graphics is really an optical illusion. Reverse-direct-printed in two-point type on the PET waterball’s back panel is the ingredient “analysis” for the super-oxygenated water.

OGO’s offers a line of oxygen-enriched products, including oxygen “shots” in pressurized metal canisters. Netherlands-based “O-Company” claims that OGO water contains 35 times as much oxygen as “regular” water.

Fonte Tavina is a positioned as a premium brand of mineral water. One of the ways in which the brand signals high quality on tables in homes and fine restaurants is by upgrading the cap from a commodity packaging component to a value-added design element of the bottle.

The cap uses colorful, transparent, polypropylene caps from Milliken Chemical to give the bottle an aesthetic edge amid an ocean of competitors in bottled water. The caps bear translucent screw closures from Bormioli Rocco.

Clear, colorful caps replace opaque caps that were either aluminum or polypropylene with solid pigments.

Link: Milliken Chemical

Club stores and other upscale retailers like unusual or exclusive products. The WaterBall is a package that illustrates the point.

It is being designed for distribution through big-box stores where bottles would be sold off pallets. From the WaterBall International Group, the WaterBall is a blow-molded, PET ball holding 3.3 gallons of water.

Its advantages at retail are its size and shape. It weighs about 28 lbs, compared with 40-plus lbs. for a 5-gallon water jug, and its smaller size may appeal to women. The WaterBall can be produced in either a ribbed or a smooth configuration.

Shape helps Evian distinguish bottled water on the store shelf—at $2.50 per unit—in a glass bottle formed as a monolithic ice-like sculpture with a red-tinted PET overcap. The triangular bottle is reminiscent of alpine mountaintops from which Evian water flows.

A division of Landor Associates designed the recyclable bottle, molded of thick glass by an overseas subsidiary of Saint-Gobain Containers. A “clean” front-panel design lets shape tell the brand story, supported only by a “no-label” pressure-sensitive label.

Link: Landor Associates
Saint-Gobain Containers

Shelf Impact! discussed the effectiveness of cause-related marketing through packaging in our January issue. For some consumers, their passion is “environment-friendly” packaging. Biota Brands of America Inc., Telluride, CO, is rolling out its Biota brand of bottled water in bottles molded of NatureWorks™ polylactic acid.

Derived from corn, the bottles will disintegrate in 80 days after use, Biota says. Biota receives PLA preforms injection-molded by its sister company, Plant Friendly Products.

The bottles’ pressure-sensitive labels, flexo-printed in at least eight colors, are also compostable.

Links: NatureWorks
Planet Friendly Products