In This Issue

Packaging brand value in today's economy Consumers are purchasing less and doing it more judiciously, but they're still buying.

Getting cozier with consumers: How two companies are moving forward If ever there were a time in recent memory when consumer packaged goods companies should become awfully tight with their audience, it's now.

Clemson opens design and graphics institute Clemson University, Clemson, SC, has opened the Harris A. Smith Building, home to the Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics.

Package Gallery

Contemporizing a classic brand, with a 10% sales spike

By Jim George

It is possible for a flagging iconic brand to become relevant again to consumers. Lornamead has done just that, and achieved a 10% increase in unit volume prior to a promotional campaign for its Finesse lineup of shampoo, conditioner, and styling products. The company has succeeded by following three steps involving packaging: It has evolved the brand's communication structure, simplified communication, and maximized strengths of each package surface—plastic, aluminum, and steel.

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After purchasing the Finesse brand and doing consumer research, Lornamead determined that women ages 35 to 54—the brand's core audience—were "open to giving Finesse another try," says Karen Murabito, Lornamead Group Brand Director. "People remember the blue package, but we needed to make the brand contemporary and easy to shop."

Lornamead, working with Little Big Brands to drive the design approach, accomplished this objective by moving to a flatter container for its 13-oz and 24-oz bottles. The smaller size has been reduced from 15 oz, and the new bottle structure provides additional economies by using the same cap and label size for both the small and large containers. For the shampoo and conditioner, the design of the high-density polyethylene bottles, from Silgan Containers, enhances the bottles' flask-like shape. The shape is inverted for the conditioner bottle, Murabito notes, to easily identify the shampoo and conditioner containers in the shower. Color also distinguishes the two products, with light blue for conditioner and dark blue for shampoo.

The design across the family of Finesse products retains the visual equity in the brand's signature blue color but introduces a "self-adjusting" icon, which Lornamead refers to as "the burst." The burst, Murabito says, is critical in creating the visual movement that communicates the self-adjusting properties of each product formula. The color of the burst matches the color of the text signaling each product variety. Together, they improve the shoppability of each product.

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Stronger brand-blocking also draws attention to the 23-SKU product family. A significant decision was to anchor the burst on the same horizontal plane for all packages. Finesse is a relatively long brand name, says John Nunziato, Creative Director, Little Big Brands, so it has been vertically stretched to improve readability.

Besides the plastic shampoo and conditioner bottles, the Finesse lineup includes aluminum cans of mousse from CCL Container and steel cans of hairspray, from Crown Cork. Each presented different printing challenges, which is evident in areas such as the silver border ring that enhances the burst's visual impact against the blue package surface, Murabito explains. Lornamead consulted Inwork for comparative analysis testing to get the best impact from the silver ring on each package structure. National Label prints the silver color using UV flexography and silk screening on a pressure-sensitive label applied to the plastic bottles. The ring area is left unprinted on the steel cans to expose the metal surface.

"We wanted to use the aluminum surface in this same way as well, but the aluminum cans are printed dry offset, and with dry offset, you can't use spot-white color behind the variant and icon. So, we had to move to a dry offset-printed silver on the aluminum," Murabito says.

INTELLIGENCE ON DESIGN Packaging brand value in today's economy By Ted Mininni, President, Design Force Inc.

Consumers are purchasing less and doing it more judiciously, but they're still buying. What compelling reasons can marketers give consumers to purchase their products versus their competitors' in a tough business environment?

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Consumer packaged goods companies should conduct research now to assess their value proposition. The research should answer the following questions:

• What are customers responding positively to about the company's brand(s)?
• Have customer perceptions changed recently, in light of the economic downturn, about the company brand(s)? If so, why and how?
• What could be implemented to meet customers' expectations to better help them achieve their goals or fulfill their desires?
• How relevant is the packaging?
• What are customers' shopping habits now and how have they changed?

Surprisingly, this kind of research can lead to innovations that are not costly but make a substantial difference to consumers in both products and packaging. Identifying and adding the attributes that have meaning and importance for consumers translates to their finding more value in the brands that do so.

Now might be the best time to consider revitalizing packaging. After conducting research, it becomes possible to communicate the brand's clear advantages over competitors'. Then, packaging can build in additional value. There are numerous ways to accomplish this.

When Heinz stood its iconic ketchup on its head by changing the package structure, the new bottle signaled more value to consumers. No more struggling to get at the ketchup stuck at the bottom of the bottle; the new packaging makes it easy to use every bit of the product. The package also is designed to fit inside the refrigerator door, and it represents a terrific design coup.

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When Hasbro's Transformers re-emerged as a bona-fide blockbuster after being discovered by a new generation of boys, the packaging likewise saw a "transformation" in the use of structure, color, and graphics. Though Transformers Classics feature the stacked Transformers logo from the 1980s, flip-up tabs reveal the character's robot mode. Products on full view in breathtaking colors signal packaging that is avant-garde for today's Millenials, born between 1977 and 1998.

Remember: Consumers have not stopped purchasing. They're just cutting back because of economic constraints. They're becoming more discerning, and that necessarily means they are looking for more value. It's time to encourage current customers to maintain their brand loyalty and uncommitted consumers to switch brands. Therein lies the opportunity. For companies that conduct the proper research to communicate and deliver value, their costs incurred will be efficient, effective, and pay large dividends now and into the future.

Read Mininni's full article on packaging brand value.

thinking in 360° Getting cozier with consumers: How two companies are moving forward By Jim George, Editor

If ever there were a time in recent memory when consumer packaged goods companies should become awfully tight with their audience, it's now. Until the economy finds enough traction to begin climbing out of its deep hole, more consumers will live on tighter household budgets and they'll re-evaluate what goes into their shopping cart accordingly. Their definition of "value" might change along the way.

Estée Lauder Companies and Lornamead are two brand owners seizing the opportunity to take a harder and more direct look at how and why consumers select the products they do, amid the current state of affairs.

I visited Estée Lauder, ironically, on the day when the company announced changes in executive management. Two vice presidents, Henry Renella and John Delfausse, explained that Estée Lauder often worked on instinct and experience in product and package development. Under newly announced CEO Fabrizio Freda, the company is reorganizing to put teams in place that will seek consumer input about product and package development and also share learnings across brands.

"Instinctually, we tried to figure out what we should be putting into the package," Renella said. "Now, we're going to have hard data do that for us."

After Lornamead purchased the struggling Finesse brand, one of its first objectives was to talk with consumers about what they remembered about the longtime brand, what they still like about it, and what changes they wanted in the brand's packaging. You can read the details in this issue, but the top line is that Lornamead held onto the brand's equities that stood out with consumers, such as the blue packaging, and made functional changes, such as an upside-down conditioner bottle design, that provide the value that today's consumers want.

There's that word again—value—a central focus in this issue of Shelf Impact! What's to be learned from new efforts at Estée Lauder and Lornamead is for packaging teams to renew their efforts to understand as well as possible what value means to their consumers, and then deliver on it. In Lornamead's case, the results already are tangible—early returns show a 10% spike in sales volume in drugstores. That is a highly desirable development at a time when consumers are making every dollar count.

Getting every ounce of value out of packaging in the current economy will be discussed significantly at our first Package Design Workshop of 2009, April 23 in Atlanta. We hope to see you there!

Clemson opens design and graphics institute

Clemson University, Clemson, SC, has opened the Harris A. Smith Building, home to the Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics. There, students and researchers will study how packaging is designed and manufactured, and also how products will be perceived, marketed, and consumed in the future.

This is the only university program in the country that will bring together packaging science, graphic communications, materials, environmental science, manufacturing, marketing, and psychology to study packaging methods, said Chip Tonkin, the institute's Director.

The institute initially will focus on four areas:

• Designing environmentally sustainable packages
• Developing electronic films that can be printed on packages to create displays, track shipments, or apply environmental or biological sensors
• Testing the impact of package design on consumer attention, buying patterns, use, and disposal in the institute's consumer-experience lab
• Integrating the multiple steps in package design and construction into a single work flow

"We think in these four areas we can make a name for ourselves," Tonkin said. "Nobody has really looked at packaging as a core competency."

The 28,000-sq-ft building is named for Harris A. Smith of Atlanta, GA, who is former Chairman, President, and Chief Executive Officer of Smith Container Corp., founded by the Smith family in 1907. He sold the company a few years ago and saw an opportunity to create a global center for packaging innovation by investing in Clemson.

Tonkin said the goal is to make the institute self-supporting through revenue from faculty research, assistantships, intellectual property, industry fees, and contributions.

Clemson President James F. Barker said the packaging design and graphics communications programs deliver about 100 highly sought-after graduates to jobs in the industry every year.