With the increasing access to instant information through the internet, pay TV and mobile devices, media consumption continues to become more fragmented, meaning that it’s harder than ever to find the best way to communicate with customers.
Because of this, effective packaging is crucial for a brand’s success and is much more important than just a physical shell to contain or protect the product.
When marketing budgets need to work harder and stretch further to reach their target market, packaging is often the only guaranteed touch-point. Consumers can pick it up, read the brand story, be educated about the product they’re buying, and understand the brand positioning.
It’s a well-quoted fact that packaging only has a four-to-six second window to grab the consumers’ attention and engage with them on shelf. In this short time, packaging must act as the silent salesperson to grab busy consumers’ attention and scream “pick me up and take me home”, so it’s essential it does that effectively.
Additionally, Australian consumers are more savvy, more sceptical, less loyal and have a bigger choice of brands than ever before, so brands need to work harder to engage with consumers and packaging is a key component of that. So, how can you make sure your brand stands out from the rest?
When Saltmine Design Group was asked to create packaging for Frucor Beverages’ new isotonic sports drink, it needed to create a challenger brand that would shake up the current sports drink duopoly.
The packaging was to be key to the launch as Frucor’s
budget didn’t extend to above-the-line communications.
Saltmine
worked with Frucor through the entire brand development process and
the result was Maximus, launched in late 2012, an unashamedly manly
brand in a massive one-litre format compared to the market standard
600ml.
Its label is shrink-wrapped around the top third of the bottle only to let the bright red, blue and yellow colours of the product variants named ‘Suck it up’, ‘Bring it on’ and ‘Go Hard’ show through.
The Maximus brand mark is contained within a shield device, as a symbol of masculine strength and force. The typefaces used are bold and masculine: they are used to tell the brand story on each pack and shout the product benefit of 50 per cent more electrolytes.
As a challenger brand, Maximus’ visual identity needed to be big and bold for maximum shelf standout. It has certainly achieved this and in most accounts its share of shelf is now rivalling the big players.
Looking to the future, I predict the next five years will be interesting for packaging design trends as our retail landscape continues to be dominated by powerful retailers whose continued focus is on driving profit and increasing private label share. It will be interesting to see how consumers react.
While I am sure that there will always remain a group of consumers who are price-driven and seek private-label products, I expect that there will be continued growth in that other group of consumers who become frustrated with “sameness” and reduced quality that supermarkets will provide in an effort to keep prices down.
These shoppers will look to alternative sources for their goods. Local grocers, butchers, farmers markets and so on will all continue to surge. And this situation should lead to a growth in beautiful, local, boutique brands that will talk to consumers on a personal level and deliver premium quality to them.
We’re already seeing the premiumisation trend across most FMCG categories. Increased segmentation continues to be an important platform for growth and premiumisation has been instrumental to companies developing unique products and driving up category value. The briefs for packaging design for these products continue to drive stunning creative solutions.
In its recent insight presentation, Packaging – The Important “P”, Mintel identified packaging as a “key element for brand differentiation” and said that packaging will become an even more important element in the marketing mix.
A solid example of how packaging and branding can transform a product is bottled water. Through the use of packaging, water is no longer a commodity and becomes a brand as a result of its packaging. A huge feat in a society that would have scoffed at the thought of buying water in a bottle little more than a decade ago.
Mintel also identified four key global packaging trends: intelligent packaging, moral packaging, elevation and packaging for the individual. We’re already seeing these trends in the Australian market place:
Intelligent: Berocca’s Twist ‘N’ Go packaging successfully moved the brand from the healthcare category to the chilled drinks category.
Moral: Mount Franklin’s new Easy-Crush bottles use 35 per cent less plastic than the previous 600ml bottle and give consumers a sense of doing their bit for the environment through producing less waste.
Elevation: Huggies has released limited edition nappy designs for Christmas and Australia Day, which bring fun to and engage consumers with the brand.
Packaging for the individual: KeepCup reusable coffee cups let the individual personalise and order their own cup online.
We’ve got an interesting time ahead in the packaging design industry and I believe that brands that utilise packaging as an important marketing communication touch-point will do very well in the competitive market landscape.
Sara Salter is managing director of Saltmine Design Group.
