It can be noticed that stand-out varies strongly by category and that it is affected by ‘Marketing Presence’ as well as ‘Design Quality’. One example is in 2009 Tropicana changed their packaging, and the rebranding actually caused a 20% dip in sales which estimated around a US$33 million loss. One of the key reasons that the Tropicana relaunch failed was because they removed the orange and straw branding. Follow up studies indicated that loyal customers had a strong emotional attachment to that branding and ended up purchasing a different product due to lack of familiarity. This shows that consumers will only buy a product if they like the packaging – taste and health benefits alone don’t stand a chance.
There are three key elements to successful packaging and they all have different drivers. You pack needs to first draw attention, then needs to engage the shopper and finally close the sale. The design elements you need to consider for attention differ from those for engagement and conversion.
For example, in a typical supermarket they carry around 30,000 products that are all competing for consumers attention, and brands can design their packs to be attractive and trendy to communicate their messages and capture shoppers’ interests. Here’s how you can be ahead of the crowd:
Be different. Be bold.
Brands that have a different colour pack from their competitors actually have a higher stand-out from consumers. Although the product is similar being different and changing colour, font style and shape from the competition can serve you well. Brands who have made these changes have much higher stand-out and marketing presence, while brands who did neither didn’t benefit at all – resulting in less purchases.
However, delving into product purchasing – there is no connection between liking a pack design and creating stand-out.
Stay Relevant.
Keeping your packaging relevant to the product is important. Using the right design will allow you to speak to the market demographic you are targeting. Something that looks out of place will confuse the customer and give off the wrong message.
Creating a product specific design will trigger your customer and speed up their decision-making process to buy.
Create a connection.
When designing packaging for consumable products, it’s important to try and make a connection between the colour scheme / design on the packaging, and the taste of the product. Seeing these colours will evoke different emotions and feelings in people, and make the product more appealing, if the customer can look at the product and almost taste the freshness or sweetness of the product, then you’re more likely to make a sale.
A consumable product should satisfy the needs of the customer, even if they don’t really need it! This would result in an impulse purchase, which is how a lot of FMCG products are sold.
Unconscious cues
The shape of an alcoholic drinks bottle for example makes a massive difference as to how people perceive your brand - traditional or modern, indulgent or no frills - the right bottle shape gets this across in an instant. The effort that goes into this does not go unnoticed; it has a massive impact on sales despite consumers not really knowing why.
Our Cognipack test shows what you can pinpoint what you’re getting right on the pack, or maybe what you have to improve - including subconscious cues like bottle shape or colours.
Introduce new selling points
Imagine you were selling food products and everyone is talking about the taste, health benefits and that it is made in the UK. If you introduce a fourth element such as its carbon neutral and then just by introducing this new element you can disrupt what people are thinking about in the purchase situation. This can help you get more attention for your product (no wonder we are seeing so many new product messages all the time).
We don’t really buy food products because we need them, we are looking to satisfy emotional factors such as joy, indulgence or health. Targeting your audience and introducing new categories that match will create an increase in sales because they now resonate with the product.
How can we help?
At Emotional Logic, we have an agile and cost-effective tool suite for all explicit and implicit testing needs. Our digital tool suite can be implemented 100% online and delivers deep insight including implicit purchase drivers in a fast, easily accessible format and with directly actionable results. Carrying out this research can identify exactly what contribution your design elements (pack format, name, colour) have on purchasing decisions, allowing you to adapt designs to eliminate design elements that don’t add financial value or portray the correct messages.
Whether you need insight to adjust your strategies for existing brands to the new normal or are thinking about launching new products we can help you get it right. Emotional Logic is a specialist behavioural insight agency and we offer a range of cost-effective research solutions to ensure your strategy connects with the constantly shifting needs of the consumer. Please get in touch for a free consultation.