In This Issue

Tell me a story – in five seconds! If a picture is worth a thousand words, then why do so many brands choose to use so many words to get their message across to the consumer?

They made the sale, but at what price? 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.

Packaging Gallery

Honeywell packs organize mom's car

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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.'

Traditional "guy" products around the store are gravitating toward package-design tactics that also get women's attention. In most cases, women purchase the product and men consume it. But a few product and category managers with especially keen eyes are discovering even subtler opportunities within male-oriented departments. They're creating packaging systems that attract women as both shopper and consumer—in the process introducing them to aisles they might not otherwise visit.

Honeywell's Consumer Products Group, Morris Township, N.J., is filling one of these gaps, in the automotive aftermarket aisle. The company has launched a line of innovative products that create a new subcategory—car accessories that help moms maintain order in their vehicles without a big investment in time and money.

Both products and packages in the line, marketed under the Blink brand, are designed in soft colors and gentle curves. These are feminine cues—in stark contrast to the male-oriented rigid shapes, darker colors, and packaging graphics that celebrate speed and grime. Such packages are commonplace in the auto-care aisle.

The recent launch of the Blink line follows 18 months of research and planning and results from two significant decisions. First, Honeywell shifted its original focus for the brand from male-oriented to women's more functional car-organization needs, habits, wants, and purchase behavior, creating products in the right packages to appeal to women. Second, Honeywell, working directly with a few principal partners, assembled the right network of vendors to solve the manufacturing complexities in working with many different product and package components in multiple material types.

Honeywell selected 4sight, a product and package innovation firm, as an integral part of its creative team. 4sight, in turn, chose Rand Direct, a contract packager, to fill, label, cover and seal the packages—and bring the efforts of all the sub-vendors together. Jim Brown, Honeywell's CPG director, new marketing, describes the work of these vendors as a "virtual factory" that Rand Direct integrated as "a seamless manufacturing operation."

The result, Brown, says, is a line of innovative products that help the 24/7 "soccer mom" organize her hectic life in the car while transporting kids to athletic fields and other activities.

When Honeywell first approached 4sight to develop the Blink line, the product manufacturer had already developed a packaging brief that communicated to males and cars through "TLC" activities such as waxing and polishing.

"Honeywell told us, 'We want to sell more products to women. We're not sure how, but we have this line of auto-care products,'" recalls Stuart Leslie, president of 4sight.

The first significant step that 4sight took in evolving the brand was to conduct group and one-on-one interviews, as well as observational research. Those steps identified the needs of consumers who would be purchasing and using Blink products. This new research uncovered an entirely different type of target consumer than Honeywell had envisioned—time-pressed moms who want to regain organizational control of their cars. Her world in the car is survival, and she focuses on clutter management and spill cleanup. Whereas a car is a true expression of self for men, busy women view their vehicle as a functional tool.

"We discovered that these moms are not interested in traditional car-care cleaning products," Brown says. "There just isn't enough time in the day for busy moms to spend it aggressively cleaning the family car. Plus, it's often cost- and time-prohibitive to have it cleaned professionally."

"So when it came to the packaging," Leslie adds, "we realized we had to spend for convenience, on things mom could control in the car."

The research identified five need states that each translated into its own wipes product and packaging platform. The products carry the "Mom's Car Solutions" brand mark. The lineup includes Mess Lifters stain remover auto interior wipes, Spill Grabbers superabsorbent wipes, Trash Tossers easy clip drawstring litterbags, Smudge Cleaners fingerprint removers, and Tidy Totes carry bags.

A portion of the line is packaged in polyvinyl chloride thermoform trays from Tegrant Alloyd Brands. "We were able to take a packaging concept and execute it in color thermoforming, whereas the traditional approach would have been injection molding," says Ken Sullivan, director of marketing at Tegrant Alloyd. "In the process, it saved Honeywell some money."

The trays contain injection-molded ABS clips and paperboard graphics cards. The range of packaging also includes PVC pouches.

Each package fastens onto a door pocket or seat back, can be stored in the glove compartment, center console, or in seat organizers.

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Consumer research uncovered one additional important finding. For women, form follows emotion rather than function. In packaging parlance, that means they want style and a touch of whimsy rather than utilitarian designs that often satisfy men. That discovery is reflected in Blink's curvaceous packaging, as well as feminine colors that don't necessarily match the car interior. The clip on the back of the Trash Tossers thermoform package, for example, is lavender and shaped like a bow.

The product line and packaging evolved from what Honeywell's Brown describes as a virtual-factory approach to manufacturing. Honeywell lacked a procurement team large enough to source all 20 components and services used in the product family, so 4sight managed the entire preproduction phase.

"We also worked with the Honeywell logistics team to understand the scope of implementing these new concepts from their standpoint," Leslie explains.

The Blink line required the sourcing of suppliers in injection molding, thermoforming, non-woven materials, non-woven converting, film, flexible bags, sewn bags, vinyl pouches, and product formulation. Multiple suppliers for each area were located and qualified.

As part of the qualification process, 4sight visited plants of the manufacturing partners to understand how to develop compelling packaging that maximizes Honeywell's resources. Rand Direct was selected from among 50 prospects as the contract packager. Rand packed out the entire line after receiving components from each sub-vendor.

Besides many materials suppliers, the project called upon HMS Design for graphics, branding, label design, photography, and color scheme. Lindsay, Stone & Briggs defined the brand name and led the early graphic design.

In early 2007, Honeywell rolled out the results of this massive coordination of suppliers and materials. The Blink line exhibits a sense of style and feminine forms that integrates well into both the capabilities of an extensive supplier network and the lifestyles of busy moms.

Tell me a story – in five seconds!

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then why do so many brands choose to use so many words to get their message across to the consumer?

By Dyfed "Fred" Richards Executive Creative Director, North America, Interbrand

Generally accepted research holds that an average consumer only has five seconds to identify your brand in the store, so why waste so much time giving them so much detail? Do brands really have that much to say? Do consumers really want to read that much information on a brand's package? More importantly, are they able to read it with worldwide literacy rates decreasing dramatically?

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For many brands, this verbal assault represents a passing phase—an opportunistic way to attract attention for a short-term gain in sales. Or, is it the result of advertising agencies playing packaging designers in an effort to impress the client with how smart and witty they can be? But at what cost to the brand and the loyal consumer? Recently, Heinz tomato ketchup, that stalwart of the supermarket aisle, decided to tickle the funny bone of the consumer with funny tag lines and cross-branding opportunities. This has since been replaced with the original copy, "Tomato Ketchup." I am curious how successful the packaging/advertising campaign was.

Does a lack of images to accompany the written word make a brand appeal to a more mature, smarter and more literate consumer? Certain iconic brands, such as Jack Daniel's, Tabasco and Absolute, would lead you to believe so. Each uses copious amounts of copy to reassure the loyalist that their product is still a high-quality original. Yet aside from the brand loyalist, is this amount of copy of additional value to audiences?

Even brand loyalists would be hard-pressed to cite any of the copy on packaging for such well-known brands as Absolut or Budweiser. While copy volume may enhance the perception of being established and having a great deal to inform the consumer, more often than not it simply becomes decorative, as in the case of Malin + Goetz lime tonic or Antipodes water.

I am not against the use of detailed copy per se, but if we are going to speak to consumers, then we should have something real and relevant to share – something that will strike a cord, invite them to share a secret, make them smile, give them permission to participate, help them feel smarter and more informed or ask them questions.

It requires a judicious balance of words and images to bring the magic of branding to life within that all-critical, five-second window in the store. I urge you to remember that "less is more" and to use simple, easy-to-comprehend messages on your packaging designs.

They made the sale, but at what price?

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.

This was the case on a recent trip to my local home improvement center. I needed a can of clear rustproofing liquid. It was easy enough to find the variety I needed, just by looking at the color-coded caps. I selected a can of clear rust preventer for $3.79.

Before I exited the aisle, my eyes fixed on a nearby shelf, where the same brand offered "rust inhibitor" in the same clear color and can size can as the rust preventer. The rust inhibitor sold for $4.79.

Neither the graphics nor the text on the label explained any differences between the two products. I asked two department associates, including an older gent who presented himself as knowledgeable about such things, to clear up my confusion.

"I honestly don't know what the difference is. Either product should work well," the baffled senior associate responded after studying the two cans. So, faced with a rather innocuous purchase decision either way, I selected the rust inhibitor but exited the store doubting whether I had purchased the right product. Could the rust preventer have suited my purposes just as well for a dollar less?

Here was another example of packaging that looked sharp on the shelf, but failed to communicate clearly how two similar products differ. I admit to probably being the exception rather than the rule in purchasing the more expensive product, believing it might "do a little more" for my money. But consumer research has shown repeatedly that most shoppers, when unsure of which product to buy, default to lowest-price mode.

Though this brand got my "trade-up" money, I wonder how many potential sales of rust inhibitor it has lost to consumer confusion. Moreover, this experience has left my trust in this longtime brand a bit shaken. Somehow, I feel a little deceived.

Color's messages is Proof keynote topic Just a few seats remain for the ninth annual Proof: Market Research & Strategy Development for Package Design conference. Proof, produced by the Institute for International Research, will be from Oct. 1-3, 2007, at the Wyndham Hotel in Chicago, and Shelf Impact! is again supporting the conference as a media partner. One of the pre-conference symposia keynote speakers will be Leatrice Eiseman, Director of the Eiseman Center for Color Information and Training. She will speak on "Color: Messages, Meanings, and Future Forecasts." Register now and learn more about the conference.