Packaging as the Brand’s Face: Shape versus Design?

How can a branded product for which there is no advertising campaign, attract the consumer’s attention?

How can a branded product for which there is no advertising campaign, attract the consumer’s attention? How can a product be recognized in the retail shop if the packaging is not shown in the advertising campaign? In addition to its traditional functions like protection, packaging as a marketing tool is gaining increasing importance as a communicator.

Whether with advertising or without: the product claim must be communicated through the packaging. Once it winds up in the trolley, the first hurdle has been passed. The second hurdle comes at home, when the consumer opens the packaging he has bought. If it matches his expectations in terms of opening behaviour and contents, the chances are good that he will put the product back on his shopping list the next time around.

First wellness milk with its own shape worldwide

Conditions are not the same throughout Europe. While brand loyalty has decreased in Germany, things are quite different in Spain. Spaniards have brand awareness and are willing to pay more money for brand products. This is how José Armando Tellado, marketing director of Corporación Alimentaria Peñasanta, S.A. (CAPSA), justifies his company’s investment in an entirely new packaging system. Natur Línea, a wellness milk drink in the premium sector, is the first product in the world to come in a packaging that really attracts people’s attention with its own shape made of a composite material. Usually, dairy products come in drinks cartons in the same shape. Now, a new system allows for 40 different shapes – and hence for just as many clearly distinguishable brands.

A stopper for an independent appearance?

The slim, oval and conspicuously designed packaging meets CAPSA’s requirements for the placement of its new, upmarket product. As the wellness milk is shelved with the durable products rather than in the cooler shelf, its visual attractiveness gives it an advantage: it catches the consumer’s eye.

Matthias Enste, European Product Manager with SIG Combibloc, explains that the new packaging system is only suitable for upmarket brand products. After all, the wellness drink made by the Spanish dairy costs about twice as much at food retailers than a traditional dairy product. Enste is not optimistic about the chances of this shaped brand packaging conquering the German dairy market any time soon. The German market is mostly dominated by no-names or regional brands, he says, whereas strong national brands are far and few between. This, he says, also applies for fruit juices. So it seems that the German mentality of ‘save-as-save-can’ is deterrent to the development of independent, outstanding packaging brands.

Conspicuousness on the shelf

Nevertheless, beyond the Coca-Cola bottle, there is an unambiguous language in Germany with the Maggi bottle, the WC duck, the Pringles tub or the Panettone packaging, where the shape is immediately associated with a certain product, as Olav Jünke of the PR agency Ondesign from Hamburg explains. He favours allocating greater significance to the shape and advocates new shapes, without neglecting the graphic design in the process. Some classics, such as the Odol mouth wash bottle, has been around for decades with a shape that immediately catches the consumer’s eye, even in crammed shelves.

The packaging is often underrated, yet it plays an important role in suggesting a product and a brand to consumers in the shop. As there is advertising for only 20 percent of products, 80 percent of them must market themselves, shouting ‘buy me’ at the consumer in the world of self-service. Therefore, attractive packaging design is indispensable in making a product known. If, on top of this, there is a unique shape, this will be an extra benefit when it comes to attracting the consumer’s attention on the shelf.

Packshot and advertising

For many years the fact that packaging and advertising are an important combination was neglected. For products that have been advertised, for instance, the packaging plays quite a significant role in so far as it allows the consumer to recognize ‘his’ product. This is why Professor Klaus Brandmeyer of Brandmeyer Brand Consultancy, Hamburg, strongly advocates the packshot for advertisements. According to Professor Brandmeyer, advertisements without the product or a picture of the packaging are money down the drain. And how are consumers supposed to find the product they saw on TV among the plethora of goods offered in the supermarket, if they have no idea what the packed product looks like? The most atmospheric commercial is no good if the consumer does not even know which package to look for.

Experience from the cosmetics sector shows just how important the packaging is for brand placement. Although consumers swear they can smell their perfume from among thousands of others, tests eliminating the packaging show that they will not recognize it. Nevertheless, perfume and bottle must match. A hip summer fragrance simply does not go with the classical packaging of a Chanel No. 5, and it is even more impossible the other way round. Never underestimate the consumer’s packaging awareness. Many a fragrance is bought largely because of the finely shaped bottle.

The tray, the secret saviour

It is easily underestimated just how much know-how a successful packaging concept requires: in addition to sound knowledge of the product’s environment and its placement on the shelf, it not only requires the basic design concept, but also knowledge regarding the three-dimensionality of a package and its special possibilities on the shelf. Other companies’ success stories are often copied. But it does not always make sense to put yet another yellow soup mix in the shelf alongside other yellow soup mixes. Add the know-how required of retailers in handling products and packaging – in times of ever decreasing staff numbers. Companies that are aware of these factors may use less extravagant packaging for their products. Had the trapezoid packaging for sanitary towels, which was supposed to form a square with the neighbouring package, known that it would not be placed on the shelves correctly by retailers, it would have suggested to the packaging designer, design me well, but do it in a different shape – or put me in trays in pairs so I am always presented correctly!

The role of packaging is bigger than is generally accepted and than rules and regulations such as the Packaging Ordinance suggest. In particular, beautiful packaging has been designed for organic products over the past few years, which is in stark contrast with the packaging purism of these products in the late 80s. Instead of using only cardboard or glass, the ideal material for a given application is sought now. Today more than ever, packaging communicates lifestyle(s). As an indicator of the zeitgeist, it shows where a society stands. Novel materials, shapes and designs give a brand its own look and feel. In contrast, a depressive mood creates less confident brands and can obstruct the diversity of shapes.