Package Branding is the love child between the package design and the corporate identity of a company. The package essentially can be immediately identifiable as belonging to the parent brand. This typically takes the form of a sub-branded package that encapsulates the attributes of the company. An example would be a sustainable, environmentally conscious, socially responsible food producer having a multi-use, 100% eco friendly package branded in 100% vegetable based inks.
Does package branding work? Is it relevant?
Have you ever received a package that made you feel so good to open it? Maybe you’ve held onto the beautiful package to be repurposed in some other way. Maybe it brings back a special moment shared, or it felt so good in your hands. Whatever the reason, you just can’t let it go. Carefully crafted package branding is usually the reason the piece is so memorable to you.
Package branding is a strategic brand introduction or extension of the overall brand positioning of a company. If a package can capture the essence of a company and deliver it’s core advantages to the consumer’s hands in an enduring/memorable way successfully, it can be a powerful voice for the brand.
Why is package branding so important?
Packaging is an extension of your brand. It demonstrates to the consumer that they’re appreciated, valued and important. Even a sense of community and belonging can be achieved.
What is good package branding?
Consumers are intelligent and have been developing a heightened sense of awareness for detecting when corners have been cut, over promises have been made and bait and switch schemes have been applied. This is why an honest and authentic message is so important for breaking down barriers and establishing a connection.
Some of the key objectives any brand manager should probably be striving for developing a successful package branding outcome could be…
- Trust
- Confidence
- Uniqueness
- Consideration
If your efforts can achieve these goals, you’ll surely be in a strong position to succeed with providing the consumer with exactly what they need.
Where to start?
The best place to start developing a strong package branding experience, is to really do your homework on the consumer’s who would most benefit from the product or service.
If you asked anyone to share what was the most memorable package that they ever opened up was, they’d be able to answer you.
Moreover, they could probably volunteer how reviewing the package made them feel and why. These questions offer terrific insights into what they deem to be important to them, often revealing an excitement or passion for the brand.
Pitfalls? Make sure to follow through!
One of the biggest pet peeves is when a company has a very well considered and executed brand presence, high quality positioning with the price tag to go with it and their package branding is an afterthought.
Hardly leaves the consumer feeling important or appreciated. Think of the package branding component as the thank-you card for patronage.
What else makes package branding important?
Package branding can give your company an opportunity to express itself in different ways to appeal to broader audiences. For instance, you could have one package branding piece positioned to appeal to one type of consumer and another package branding piece positioned to be appealing to another. The only caveat to this, is to be consistent with your brand promise. If you’re eco conscious, you’ll want to make sure this holds true for all of your package branding.
Added benefits of putting yourself in your target consumer’s shoes.
Although each and every one of us are unique in different ways, many of the suggestions and insights above are not geo specific. Working hard to establish a connection with your audience is something appreciated by everyone. Even if you slightly miss the mark, the effort and sincerity of the package design and branded communication will get noticed.
Authenticity goes far!
What happens if you’ve significantly missed the mark with your package branding design?
A great saying comes to mind… when one door closes, open a window. On a rare occasion where the message gets lost on your targeted consumer, new and enthusiastic audiences can emerge for the product.
One example that comes to mind is a terrific natural and socially responsible skin care company with an eye on a millennial female demographic that missed the mark, but hit it huge with millennial male athletes! These nice surprises demonstrate that although it’s good to look at big data, it’s advantageous to open your mind up to other inputs beyond the numbers. Everybody is looking at the same numbers.
Ingredients for effective brand packaging design:
- Clearly leading the eye with communication hierarchy
- Simplicity of communication
- Multilayered visual elements
- Zero superfluous components
- Avoidance of trendy gimmicks
- Minimal reliance on special effects
- Well considered colour theming
- Simplified font usage
- Adaptive and scalable
A primary focus for any creative communications piece, especially these days, should probably be saying more with less. An effective exercise should be to assess every single element to find a way to use one word instead of a sentence to describe something. Be ruthless with an eye on clarity.
The average consumer is reaching information overload and burnout. To remain conscious of this while designing really can prove to be advantageous.
- Clearly leading the eye with communication hierarchy:
So often, it’s tempting to fill every nook and cranny with information in an attempt to share everything that’s terrific about a product. However, it’s important to keep in mind that with every additional element the primary messaging and focus gets diluted. When too many elements show up on a panel, functional communication of the critical messaging can become compromised.
It’s kind of like being in a room with a bunch of people shouting at you while hearing similar shouting happening in other rooms. Our visual attention works the same way with packaging. Clarity and concise messaging breaks through the noise.
2. Simplicity of communication:
As you add layers, the piece will start to look more refined and intentional, helping to lead the eye. Careful not to add too many visual embellishments such as rule lines and directional aids.
3. Multiple layered visual elements:
Once all of the elements have been optimized, the fun begins. Instead of creating the package design as a flat piece, if you can think of it like a 3D chess board, with more prominent pieces on the pack being moved onto the higher layer dimensionally, this automatically adds visual interest.They’re are some common elements shared among really great designs and include some or all of the examples below.
4. Zero superfluous elements:
If an element cannot be strategically explained, it probably shouldn’t be there. Unnecessary elements demonstrate one of two things subconsciously to the consumer. We’re not sure what is appealing to you because we haven’t done our homework or the company is covering up insecurities related to its product by just trying to make something that may or may not look good to the consumer.
This is really where the design mills, crowdsourcing and speculative designers get separated from the proven, upper tier designers that have really learned about your business and what makes your audience tick with a very strategically tailored solution. It’s early, but consumers are starting pickup on the cues left by “clip art” packaging as more of the elements make it into more and more pack designs
5. Avoidance of trendy gimmicks:
This goes hand in hand with the superfluous elements mentioned above. Photographic filters, illustrative effects, graphic embellishments can become passé fast which dramatically decrease your designs shelf life.
6. Minimal reliance on special effects:
This point is a bit dodgy. Textures, patterns, digital embossing, drop shadows when used strategically and sparingly can be engaging and interesting to look at. It can enhance the overall impact of a piece and offer controllers for where you’d like to position your brand packaging. For instance, you can dial up sophistication with the use of embossing and metallic finishes or bring things into more midstream value with patterns, or introduce a simple texture into a lower end product offering. However, if these are mixed, or heavily used, this can start to diminish the effectiveness of the design and look dated fast.
7. We’ll considered colour theming:
By adding one part colour theory, one part competitive research, one part demographic psychology you get strategic colour theming. There is a lot of thought that needs to go into choosing colours for the brand packaging. For instance, red in China is good luck, while in Mexico it’s associated with death (red roses). Colour choice can be a game changer and it’s so important that the design takes on appropriate and engaging colours that work well together and avoid negative associations to the product found within. Lots of homework for this one!
8. Simplified font usage:
Great typography typically requires less visual wayfinding elements like rule lines etc. This is because a clearly established header, sub-header, body text hierarchy will effectively lead the eye in a naturally conditioned way. Some of the best brand packaging out there uses different fonts sparingly any generally stay within the font families options that are available (ex. Bold, italics, caps, lower case, etc.). Again, this choice passively enhances the leading of the consumer’s eye with little to no distraction.
9. Adaptive and scalable:
Finally, the design must be considerate to existing and future line extensions, marketing strategies and overall company product offerings from other categories if they exist.
Questions like:
- How will we differentiate categories, products within those categories and seasonal/limited time offerings if applicable? This question is so important and helps designers and marketers not paint themselves into corners.
- Will the on-shelf footprint interns of size and configuration remain the same or different?
- How versatile is the brand packaging identity? Can the colours, fonts, layout change while respecting the integrity of the brand?
The boxes have been checked. Now what?
The plan has been followed, the design execution is right on brief. It’s surely to be 100% successful, right? Even with all of the above considerations, there are very few guarantees. So let’s address a possible worst case scenario.
One of the worst case scenarios would probably have to be a public relations crisis of some kind. This could start as a bad review from a social influencer with many followers that could make your branding, design or advertising campaign go sideways quickly?
So after you’ve carefully crafted your strategy based on hours of Q+As, stress tested new ideas and put in countless hours making sure your message comes through loud and clear, #@it happens, a negative review that threatens to undermine all of your effort and take things down a road you never intended. It’s a brand manager, entrepreneur, or director’s worst fear.
What do you do? Do you promptly and passionately respond? Let it slide? Take your time to evaluate the criticism and work toward a messaging course correction? All or none of the above?
The tricky thing about this scenario is it’s tough to really learn more about the motives of the bad reviewer. Do they genuinely have gripe? Have they been rightfully offended by your package design or creative advertising campaign or is it simply a ploy for free swag? Maybe a malicious competitive affiliate or possibly a case of mistaken identity?
Whatever the reason, I believe many of us can agree that a prompt, humble and sincere response of understanding would oftentimes be a good start. From there, it would be ideal to reevaluate your package brand design to see if there’s merit in the review.
The positive mindset:
If you’re able to reframe the bad review as a cry for help. This will help to put you in the right frame of mind. Once your blood pressure stabilizes and you’ve applied those stress relieving meditation techniques, it’s probably the best time to respond.
After you’ve sufficiently started with understanding their position I have seen where a simple, thoughtful and sensitive response that offers some kind of solution to their issue has been very successful. For instance, say you own a confectionery brand and someone writes about how terrible your product tasted.
You, as the company owner, director or brand manager could ask them more about their experience and offer some insights into why the flavour may have been compromised. For example, maybe the chocolate bar was subjected to outside conditions negatively affecting it’s taste. Did the person have a tainted pallet (like drinking orange juice right after brushing your teeth)? Asking these questions will demonstrate your commitment to making things right and learn about how your product is being received… a terrific opportunity to show openness for improvement.
It’s not a guarantee for success, but maximizes your chances for success.
