5 Actionable Ways to Improve Your Packaging
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What is the purpose of your package? Is it to protect your product, create shelf visibility or carry important information? In an ideal world it should be all of the above and more. Packaging is often undervalued and regularly left to the last minute, leaving an unexplored landscape of opportunity for increasing brand awareness and customer interaction.
Packaging design should go hand-in-hand with product design. After all, it is almost always the first (and sometime only) physical touchpoint a customer will have with your brand, so that first impression is invaluable to the reputation of your brand and the longevity of your customer loyalty.
In effect your Packaging has the potential to be your biggest brand ambassador.Packaging is more than a container; it is a persona for your product. It needs to portray the personality of your brand - What are your core values, what audience are you trying to reach, what is your story? Carefully considered packaging design can stir up emotions of excitement, joy, delight and amazement that will boost the perceived value of your product and encourage new and existing customers to spread the word and boost your brand awareness and recognition.
As packaging designers and brands, we also have a responsibility to protect our natural environment and whenever possible, innovate to produce sustainable and more environmentally conscious packaging.
So, if you don’t think your packaging is quite cutting it, here are five actionable and measurable ways to improve your packaging.
Poor packaging design can sabotage sales, but strong design and presentation can extend product value, build anticipation, and strengthen brand reputation.
Take brands like Apple, Nike or Samsung. With clever advertising, strong shelf presence and a well-executed packaging design you can have customers in anticipation and lining up for a new product before they even known what it is.
Consistent and statement design builds brand loyalty and often locks customers in, because in those designs, they have reflected the brand’s personality, which resonates with the target audience and reinforces brand value. Buyers will recognise authenticity and done effectively it will have a huge impact on your customer-to-brand experience and build loyalty for years to come.
Brand communication needn’t be complicated, so whatever you do don’t over-design your packaging. Keep it simple, bold, and purpose driven. Express your brand’s personality and connect with your audience.
Customers no longer look for services and products alone, they search for experiences. Packaging presents the perfect opportunity to extend your customer experience with and unexpected and exciting unboxing.
The Unboxing has quickly become a core element of the modern brand experience with consumers taking to social media to share their excitement, first reactions and ultimately to become organic ambassadors for your brand. It’s a powerful media channel that brands can control, leading the customer through a journey of discovery and an enticing welcome to the brand.
Experiment with geometric shapes, interactive elements, and surprising opening mechanisms that extend your brand story and invite the customer to learn more about your product and your core values.
By creating packaging that’s screen friendly, you further feed into the digital community in an accessible way for you to drive deeper into the customer relationship, promote peer-to-peer recommendations, influence, advocacy, and loyalty. You also make your packaging more data-driven and measurable with crucial social proof that strengthens your understanding of the customers wants and needs for continued development and further reinforcement of your brand.
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Augmented reality (AR) is an untapped goldmine of possibility for enhanced customer experience. With a smart phone in every customers hand and a wide range of options, it can not only boost your customer experience, but most importantly, it’s measurable!
Tracking the ROI on packaging has been the biggest challenge to designers, marketeers and brands for some time, but with the power of AR, it’s possible to track the effectiveness of your packaging design and provide measurable feedback on how your customers are engaging with your brand.
By investing in an omni-channel customer journey, you can provide content when and where your customer wants it. On-packaging AR enables brands to leverage content marketing in new and fully immersive ways. Show customers your latest promotional video, allow them to engage with a brand mini game, enter competitions, find out the nutritional value of your product, or leverage partnership opportunities with other brands, agencies and partners.
It’s a simple but effective way to extend your customer experience and build brand value.
Marketing is all about stimulating the senses to provide an enriched customer experience and encourage brand engagement.
Finishes can differentiate your product profile in the marketplace. With a wide range of possibilities, a finish can give your product a premium feel, a luxury look, a modern and innovative angle, and extend your brand and product values to the very first touch.
The options for finishes are continually expanded, with more and more companies now offering eco-finishes as well. With hot foil, cold foil, spot UV, Matte or gloss you can create tactile intrigue that encourages the customer to interact with your product and build curiosity, and excitement. It doesn’t stop there either, don’t limit yourself to printed finishes, could you include an emboss, a cut-out pattern, or a product window? The options are endless but a warning to the wise…
You don’t need to go wild with finishes. Choose just one or two and the impact it can have on your shelf presence and reputation can be huge.
If Blue Planet II has put one thing on everyone’s mind, it’s plastic straws. But the message goes far beyond the plastic straw; sustainable materials, over packaging, energy consumption, environmental alternatives, animal welfare and recyclability are on everyone’s agenda. So how does your packaging measure up in this new eco-era?
Paper based packaging and alternative organic materials are leading the way in this industry. Review your packaging design at every opportunity for more environmentally conscious solutions. Is your packaging using excessive materials? Could you use a recyclable alternative? Does it have to be plastic? Can you reduce your energy consumption with a more efficient solution, or can you even make a circular economy within your business by re-using and re-purposing materials, machinery and processes?
Sustainable packaging not only helps us save our planet, but it also tells your audience a huge amount about your company values, intentions and integrity.
Do you think your packaging hits all five points? If so a big thumbs up to you, keep up the good work, and if not look to the areas where you can instil change and in turn increase the value, purpose and ultimately profitability of your packaging.
Blog Author: Alethea Price is the Marketing Marketing at Burgopak Packaging Design studio and joined the growing team in 2017. With a background in Psychology and Human Behaviour, she combines her fascination for human understanding and creativity to help brands express intention and purpose in everything they do. https://www.linkedin.com/in/alethea-price/
About Burgopak
Burgopak is a world leader in design and manufacture of innovative patented packaging for products of all shapes and sizes. From tickets, bank and gift cards, to champagne, luxury cosmetics, healthcare, legalised cannabis and technology. With a highly creative and experienced design and project management team, Burgopak designs to brief, to provide an engaging opening experience to your customers, creates a higher perceived value of your product with clever cardboard engineering, and makes your life easier by managing the process right from conception to completion.
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