Packages across categories are getting smaller, and the trend toward more portable beverage and prepared-food containers will drive the increased use of plastics in rigid food packaging in the U.S. market.

The leading edge of healthcare product marketing is beginning to tap the power of the package as a marketing vehicle.

In Germany, design's distinctive appeal on a glass bottle has given Bonn-based "true fruits" fruit juices a 72% market share among fruit smoothie drinks sold at gas station convenience stores.

The 250-mL bottles are marked by printed lines that act as visual indicators of the percentage of individual fruit portions contained within. The design emphasizes the clarity of the glass.

"The bottle is an important part of the product," says Marco Knauf, General Manager of true fruits. "It underlines the quality of the content and stands out strongly from the packaging monotony on the store shelves."

O-I designed and developed the flint glass bottle, which uses Applied Ceramic Labeling decoration for the ingredient amount lines and graphics. It's topped by a twist-off metal closure.

Suggested retail price is about $3.50 to $4.25.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

Demand is growing globally for health-in-a-bottle products—those sold in daily dose formats on the basis of health claims, as a segment of the umbrella category of products that help maintain intestinal health. Marketers are introducing more health-in-a-bottle products as consumers appear increasingly interested in looking after various aspects of their well-being by consuming a health drink each day.

The salient feature of much of the new product development in children’s lunchbox and on-the-go foods is the prevalence of health claims and movement toward healthier foods. Marketers are leaning on packaging to help deliver messages about these benefits.

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.

If you make health foods fun through creative marketing, will kids swallow 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.

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.

Niche marketers are introducing a variety of new beverages in part because of a supply chain that supports their needs. One of them, MD Drinks, Santa Monica, CA, has introduced Urban Detox, a science-based, all-natural functional beverage marketed as a remedy for hangovers in stores on the West Coast and in the Southwest. Urban Detox is a subbrand under the Function umbrella.