The impact of the crisis on package design

It is often said that in a time of crisis that private labels increase their share of the market, and whilst this is indeed true, in fact, as we look back over the last 40 years, we see that private labels have continued to capture a growing market share, year after year, crisis or no crisis!

So in the world of brands and packaging, the real effect ofa crisis lays not in the encroachment of Private Labels, but in changing attitudes of the consumers themselves. When uncertainty occurs, consumers call into question the value they receive from brands and question the cost they have to pay.

Consumer values change in a time of crisis, when ‘staying-in’ becomes the new ‘going out’, when ‘mend and make-do’ replaces the excessesof consumerism. This creates a new definition of value, which polarises attitudes, driving consumers to trade up in emotional meaningful categories and trade down in essentials or less meaningful categories.

If brands are to rise above this purely rational consumer attitude, theywill need to offer real differentiation combined with meaningandrelevance to their consumers’ lifestyle needs. This means paying close attention to rituals and desires and creating a brand experience that eclipses rational decision-making and instead builds on a brand’s equities and enhances consumer’s trust. It also means having great respect for the relationship that exists between the consumer and a brand; this is no time to start throwing away the visual equities that offer reassurance and foster trust.

Brands that ignore their consumersand do not pay attention to this consumer relationship will pay dearly for their ineptitude, as we have seen recently with Tropicana and now Gap, who abandoned their equities and product promise in their packaging and with it, all notions of differentiation, resulting in the seeming loss of consumer trust and a branding disaster.

Sustainable and Honest

The reasoning behind the movement towards dressing-down or almost un-branding seems clear, this movement looks to the days of the Great Depression, when it seemed un-fitting to have design that was too complex or extravagant and complicated when austerity reigned so cruelly. Clearly, the lure of those great iconic designs like Raymond Lowy’s Lucky Strike with its ‘stripped back to the basics’ direct simplicity are hard to resist.

What the movement forgets, is that this is no longer the 1930’s, today consumer’s are much more marketing savvy, consumers are used to the three tier offers of the retailer (premium – mainstream – discount), and by adopting this, ’stripped back’style, which is now the visual language of the discount brand, they are throwing away equity and ignoring a relationship that has taken years to establish. Such simplistic visual cues are not the territory of the brand. Brands today need to justify their price premium by offering, quality, differentiation and added value both perceived and real.

Whilst consumers are looking for reassurance and added valuein their brands, they are equally looking for honesty. This is why it’s becoming increasingly important to offer packaging that is environmentally sound, physical packaging that is itself, ‘stripped back to the basics’ and is re-usable and/or recyclable. Consumers see the environmental problem as vast, and feel impotent and unable to act, whilst many consumers will fall into the SWET (shopper with ethics) category, the majority feel they don’t have enough information about brands and packaging to make a decision. So by building in environmental and sustainable elements into packaging and communicating these to consumers, brands will enable consumers to ‘take part’ and contribute. Consumers will choose and support such brands who are making an effort to be more sustainable.

McCain Bio:Responding to consumer concerns by creating a compostable pack (biodegradable in 90 days), respecting the European regulations in material and labelling.

Co- Creation

Getting consumers to ‘take part’ has been around in product design for some time now, today we give this method a new name, ‘Co-Creation’, or consumer inspired design. There is no doubt that working with the consumer to develop a different perspective for a brand can bring forward new and innovative ideas, for example; Lego Factory, where you can download digital designer software and design your own models. (http://designbyme.lego.com).

The idea of listening to consumers seems obvious and simple, but whilst new ideas can be developed in this way, we must remain aware that ‘the consumer doesn’t know what the consumer doesn’t know’. The real benefits of co-creation are that it offers an opportunity to have a view into consumer's thoughts and desires and to discover the needs that they don't even know they have yet. Most of all, it develops a brand’s relationship with their consumers by making them feel like they are part of the process and part of the solution and therefore connected to the brand.

The real impact of the crisis on package design is that it offers opportunities for brands to stand back and assess who they are, to create a dialogue with their consumers and to hone their offer to meet the needs of the new market that will emerge as the recession subsides. This is no time to simply sit back and wait to see what will happen.

Rowland Heming -Design Board - 2010©

See also: http://rhpkg.wordpress.com

Shopper Marketing – The ‘not so’ silent salesman

The role of the package in store

What motivates shoppers to go to the supermarket?

Well mostly it seems, it just to buy a small number of items on a day to day basis (62% of all shopping trips, according to Unilever’s 2004 US study – Trip Management - The Next Big Thing), these shoppers are quick and determined, they know exactly what they want and enter the supermarket, hopefully knowing where to get it.

But, Herb Sorensen in his book “Inside the Mind of the Shopper” (Wharton School Publishing), seems to suggest that most supermarkets ignore this fact and instead, design their stores for the shoppers who need to “stock-up” (which the Unilever study identifies to be only 13% of shopping trips). It does make it appear like supermarkets are deliberately trying to fight against the will of the quick trip shopper (who are remember, 62% of shoppers!), by burying essentials all over the shop, putting as many obstacles as they can in front of them in order to try to make them visit the whole store!

Old style merchandising only adds to the shopper’s frustration (this is where supermarkets move essentials around the store from one week to another), forcing the shopper to go on search expeditions, rather than helping them to shop efficiently. The end result is a shopper rushing through the store focussed mostly on, only what they search for, becoming stressed out and frustrated and trying to get to the cash desk and out of the store as quickly as possible. But despite all the supermarket’s efforts to make shoppers ‘walk the store’, most quick trip shoppers (more than 50%), will not visit,or will skip over sections of the store that don’t interest them. Clearly, there are some issues here that supermarkets need to reflect on, but the question that this type of shopping behaviour poses for me, is…

…what does all this mean for brand and packaging design?

Today packaging has become one of, if not, the most effective components of ‘shopper’ or ‘in-store’ marketing, and because of this many brands are putting greater emphasis on Shopper Marketing and therefore, their packaging. Because, with less and less opportunities for brands to create in-store promotions, packaging is fast becoming ‘the’ most efficient way for a brand to get noticed.

Going back to Unilever’s figures (62% of the shoppers who only focus on quick tips), it makes sense, that with this type of shopping behaviour, the chances of a brand being seen in store is becoming more and more difficult. The now famous Dupont study of the 1970’s calculated that on average a pack had about 6 seconds to be seen, but with the growth of supermarkets and the changing patterns of shopping, that figure has to be a lot less today!

It is my belief that brands need to start to think differently, to abandon the old thinking that you create and promote a brand and shoppers will come to you. Instead, brands need to try figure out how they can help the quick trip shopper majority, by making their brands easier to find with better stand-out and the ability to be understood in an instant.

This, for me means, brands need to first consider what shoppers “do” and then design from their point of view, taking into account what I call, “their” 3 pillars of the shopping moment:

1 Finding what I want

2 Understanding what I’m buying and being convinced it’s what I want

3 Being reassured that I’ve made the right choice

1 Finding what I want

If you focus on the shopper’s needs, they start with the need to “find” the product they want, this process usually starts at somedistance from the shelf, whilst the shopper is moving through the aisle looking for, first the category, and then the brand. It’s essential therefore, that brands understand the shelf they are on, and that they find ways to be, at the same time, part of the category, but also distinctive and memorable within it. Simplicity, contrast and readability are key here, shoppers need to be able to identify their brand and product type immediately, and this can only be achieved by adopting a clear communication strategy, a distinctive design structure, a unique colour (or colouring), straightforward imagery and always strong confident branding. The objective, in this first moment, is to be seen, identified and to be clear about who and what you are, that’s all!

Your package needs to “help the shopper find your brand” and to attract them to it, clearly in this situation, over complication of messages, (too much text or trying to say too much on the front panels), is the enemy of impactful packaging. With most shoppers in a hurry, they will be looking for visual solutions that are quick and easy to understand!

2 Understanding what I’m buying and being convinced it’s what I want

In the “second moment”, your package will have a different role, having stopped (or slowed), the shopper; you will now need to explain your offer (or perhaps you have a range of offers). Because, at this point in the process the shopper knows which section they are in, the role of the package now has a different function to perform; to show your product at it’s best, explaining what it is, what it does in a direct and clear way. The shopper’s eye should find the pack simple and quick to read, with the minimal of eye movement - avoiding “eye wandering” that risks taking a shopper’s eye to the pack next door – this involves understanding how focal points work, creating a clean and correct hierarchy of information, but without adding complication. If you do have a range of offers, make sure that product changes are easy and for the consumer to understand, be consistent and as always, remain simple.

3 Being reassured that I’ve made the right choice

If your package has managed to past the test of the first two stages of the shopping moment, you will now have the shopper’s attention, so, here’s the moment to help their choice along. At this point the shopper is right in front of your package (perhaps they have even picked it off the shelf), but they are close enough up to it now to see the finer details, the quality of the illustration or diagram, little garnish that adds to appetite appeal, the symbol or text that promises a benefit etc…. The objective here is to make sure the shopper is reassured of the great qualities of your product and the benefits it will bring to them, so that they can make the final act of the shopping moment – putting the pack into their basket!

Just as the shopping process is a moving and 3 dimensional act, so the package is also a 3 dimensional medium, with the package now in the shopper’s hand the other panels of your package also become very important. Too often packaging is designed as a “front panel” only (in some cases major brands have even used different /cheaper, studios to create the other panels, or POS materials, in an effort to save costs), but it seems to me that when you accept the importance of the package in Shopper Marketing, this practice seems like shooting yourself in the foot, as a brand should always be consistently presented across all sides of a package and across all media!

For the shopper, the package is not only a “facing on the supermarket shelf” but, part of the product they buy, and subsequently, part of the brand itself. They will take into their homes, they may well see and touch it regularly, or use it every day, elevating the package’s role to being the everyday ambassador of the brand.

The other panels of the package are important because they offer reassurance; they allow the brand to connect with consumers and to enhance the product experience. This is why the same amount of attention needs to be paid to the rest of the package as brands normally do to the front panel, by working on the design of each surface to be sure to holistically express the brand’s personality and positioning. Going beyond imagery, it also means creating great copy that is not stuffy, but developed in a way that it makes the brand “come alive” and is relevant to the consumer.

Once you think your package has achieved the correct impact across the three pillars of the shopping moment, take this thinking one step further, think about testing your package “in-store” (where the package has to work), and equally, once again think holistically, and test the whole pack, not just the front!

The realisation by retailers and brands of the effectiveness of Shopper Marketing has pushed the package to the forefront of customer communication; packaging now has a crucial role, catching the consumer’s attention, representing the brand (in store and in use), as well as building consumer confidence and loyalty. By changing the way we think, and designing “for the consumer and the new realities of the retail environment”, packaging’s effectiveness can only get better and its’ importance only grow, clearly, the future role of packaging, both in-store and in the home, is to become the ‘not so’ silent salesman.

Rowland Heming©

...and it's all over in a matter of seconds!

See also: http://rhpkg.wordpress.com

BRANDS: PAYING ATTENTION TO COLOUR

When you come to think about it, colour is one of the most effective tools that package designers and marketers have at their disposal, and yet it is probably one of the most overlooked. Knowing that colour can be used to identify and position a brand, and that it can be used to create an emotive response in a consumer’s mind, informing, reassuring and creating desire, you wonder why we just don’t pay enough attention to it!

Colour is so important because it’s such a strong part of the way that we see our world. We are born with the ability to see colours, and in some cases we are able to understand their meaning without anybody telling us why? Compare this to our other forms of communication, speaking, reading and writing, in order to understand these communication tools we need to be initially taught by our parents and others and continually need to build up our knowledge for the rest our lives… but colour… well colour speaks to us on another level, the level of our sub-conscious minds. Red indicating danger and exciting our senses, greens expressing freshness, blues offering a calming effect or pastels giving us a feeling of softness…

So fundamental is our ability to recognise and understand colour that we even find the need to use it as part of the way we describe the things around us: We say we are “green with envy”, or we say that things are clearer in “Black and White”, sometimes we “get the Blues” and when we are angry we say that we “see Red!” This is because colour is linked to our primeval instincts, and our need to recognise safety, danger, happiness, sadness etc… so using colour to describe what we want to express, makes our verbal description clearer, creating an emotional response in the listeners mind.

Clearly then, colour is an essential communication tool that no designer or marketer can afford to ignore. It makes sense, particularly if you are into creating a product branding or packaging, that an understanding of the language of colour is fundamental to making communication clearer and in helping to create success by extracting the desired emotional response from your target audience towards your brand.

Making colour work for you:

Once you have understood the power of colour, you can use it to make your brand more effective on shelf, here are some of the great ways colour can be used to effect to position your product and to achieve ownability and stand out:

Positioning:

Depending on the intensity, tone or combination, most colours can be used effectively to position a brand, (masculine or feminine, soft or strong, luxury or mainstream, etc…), therefore, understanding the properties and interpretations of each colour will allow you to choose the correct colour (or mix), that best expresses your desired positioning – (see; Glossary of colourinterpretations).

Owning a colour:

A brand that adopts a colour can never really “own” it, as colour in nearly impossible to register on its own, but with the careful use of proprietary lettering, images and structure, the brand can own a total look which, by association, includes the colour palette. For example Heineken, Nivea, Coca-Cola etc…

Using colour to inform:

Colour can be used to express brand or product characteristics, strong colours suggesting seriousness and stability, lighter colours expressing delicacy and softness, multi-colours suggesting playfulness and youth etc…

Using colour to explain product variants:

Larger ranges can become confusing if colour is not used effectively to segregate the offer, this is where colour can help consumers understand a range, be it divided by flavour, products or any other segmentation. Colour change can be total between one pack and another, if the variant communication is the most important, or can be just a percentage of a pack, if consistent branding is desired.

Achieving stand out with colour:

Sometimes it will be necessary to follow the colour norms of a product category as it is understood by consumers. Here finding a new mix may help make your brand individual and different. Where possible, it’s always good to make a colour analysis of the store shelf, there may just be an opportunity to introduce a colour that is new to the category, helping to achieve real stand out.

Colour Blocking:

Colour can be used to create a “block” effect on-shelf, where a dominant colour is used across all products in a range, in this way a brand can be instantly recognisable on shelf, even at a distance. Good examples of brand blocking are Ariel, Barilla, Fructis etc…

The world of colour is a world of deep emotional significance to us all, I believe it’s time to re-assess the way we think of colour and to see it as one of our essential tools, allowing us to communicate with consumers on a sub-conscious level by offering a non-verbal communication platform, that helps build an immediate understanding of a brands positioning.

Glossary of colour interpretations

One of our most interesting colours, we attribute to black many meanings; authority, power, submission, secrecy and even death. So on the one hand it can be sombre and on the other it can be seen to be chic. Priests, teachers and even saucy chamber-maids wear black as do also witches and vampires. In most films it’s often the Black-Knight or the one wearing black, who is cast as the villain.

If you are looking to give your product authority and a qualitative look, look to black, just like Godiva, Jack Daniels, Guinness, Coke Burn, Calvin Klein and many other premium products.

Mostly associated to innocence, purity, cleanliness, sterility and peace, white’s meaning (like black), can be varied and different across cultures, in the West brides and angels wear white, whilst in the East it’s the colour of mourning. The dove of peace is white, and in films, the good-guy is dressed in white, and we say, the White-Knight will come to the rescue.

Products we use intimately or put on our skin are often predominantly packaged in white, like Dove, or La Prairie. The brand Innocent also uses white to underline its purity and simplicity.

It was the English physicist, Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), who worked out that white light could be broken into the colours of the rainbow, by passing it through a prism. Today, we describe the main colours of the rainbow (Red, Yellow and Blue), as primary colours, and the colours achieved by mixing the primary colours (Orange, Green and Violet), we call secondary colours, and each have their own values and meanings:

Representing passion, fire, love, danger and anger, red is an emotionally intense colour, which can raise blood pressure and make breathing faster. In this way, red stimulates the need act faster and is a favourite colour for fast food outlets. Red is also contradictory, it is the colour of the heart, love and also the colour of the Devil whereas, in other cultures it has different meanings. Red is the colour of socialism, red denotes warning and in China, red is the colour of prosperity and is seen to bring good luck.

Red helps brands bring attention to themselves, it shows confidence, youth and energy. Ferrari, Coca-Cola, Virgin, Cote D’Or, Lays and Red Bull all use red to great effect in this way.

The sun, the Earth’s giver of life, is yellow, and therefore it’s not surprising that the colour that represents positive energy, creation, it’s optimistic and cheerful, but it has been known to increase the heart rate and raise body temperature. It can represent hope, like tying a yellow ribbon on a tree in the hope that someone comes home safely, or it can be alternatively be used to signify cowardice.

Too much yellow can be overpowering in packaging, so brands often use yellow in association with other colours to create visual stimulation, a feeling of energy and stand out. Duracell combines yellow with black to suggest power, Weetabix, a breakfast cereal, helps get your day started with simulating yellow, Lipton Tea is positioned as a positive drink and uses yellow, successfully combined with associations of the sun, to suggest positivity adding green leaves to suggest naturalness.

The sea and the sky are blue, colouring our world blue when seen from space. Blue is peaceful, calm, tranquil, meditative it causes the body to produce calming chemicals. In it’s darker shades it suggests stability and trust, in lighter shades it’s suggests coolness and freshness, for example, in Feng Shui blue is associated with healing, refreshing calmness and serenity.

On it’s own blue can sometimes be too calming for brands, so we often see the colour mixed with other tones. Mix blue with white (Nivea), for purity and trust, with yellow (Chiquita), for excitement and gaiety, with red (Citibank), to convey trust with energy.

Being a secondary colour, orange takes on qualities of its two primary components, red and yellow. Orange is therefore seen, as warm, and sociable, but also vibrant, energetic and stimulating. In this way orange signifies change, the oranges of autumn leaves tell us summer is changing to winter and who can fail to feel emotional as the setting sun marks the change between the positive vibrant day with the approaching warm glow of a restful evening.

In branding pure orange is used to get attention in a positive way and is often used for products promoting positive energy like Fanta. In Ukraine orange was associated with change becoming the symbol of the “Orange Revolution”. Tropicana nearly lost its vibrant energy when it proposed to change the well-known orange pack to a pale yellow version, but consumers soon pointed out the mistake and the old pack was quickly re-instated.

Nature expresses itself with green, it says abundance and life, green is reassuring expressing fertility, calm and relaxation. The green shoots of spring offer promise renewal and things to come. Just as the leaves change their colour as the season moves on, the lighter greens of spring (with a more yellow influence), signal positivity, hope and freshness, whilst darker greens of summer (with a more blue influence), offer stability, calm and balance.

When brands want to show their closeness to nature and naturalness, green will dominate, like Activa from Danone or Green Giant, also today, all things ECO tend to be green. When brands want to emphasise freshness, a lighter green will be used in combination with other natural colours, like blue or orange, as can be seen, for example, with Garnier’s Fructis brand.

In antiquity, purple was one of the most expensive colours to produce, which explains why purple has always been associated with royalty, authority, rank and money. In both it’s forms, violet (leaning more towards red), and Purple (leaning more towards blue), it is both feminine and romantic combining the power of red with the calming effect of blue.

Brands using purple take on some of the quality characteristics of the colour. Cadbury’s or Milka chocolate, Taillefine yoghurt, or the violet of Häagen Dazs Ice Cream.

Rowland Heming © 2010

See also: http://rhpkg.wordpress.com

Value: The old rules no longer apply

Have you noticed how our shopping habits are changing? : Consumers today are choosing to trade up towards the purchase of quality and luxury products, but at the same time these same consumers, are also accepting more and more to buy private label products and to shop at the hard discounters. It seems our definition of Value is changing, increasingly private labels are being seen as a quality alternative to major brands.

In the past decade hard discounters have created “value innovation”, moving a long way from the brown boxes and poor quality of the past, to offering the seductive combination of low prices matched with good quality products. The result is that we can see a growing polarisation of the market, with a growth in both luxury and value brands and a shrinking of the middle market.

Proof of this “value innovation”, can be seen in a recent UK taste test, where hard discounter’s products beat many major brand names, with the daily tabloid newspaper, “The Sun”, announcing that: “Aldi mince pies tasted nicer that Harrods’s mince pies!”

This format adopted by hard discounters like Aldi and Lidl, entails offering consumers “no-frills” products, 90% of which are their own private label brands. They reduce the number of products on offer, and achieve economies of scale, through streamlined operations, effective sourcing and better use of shelf space.

Their pioneering business models have also seen them creating long-term partnerships with their suppliers, with dedicated supply lines that bring a co-operative approach to product design and supply. All un-necessary costs have been eliminated allowing discounters to offer extremely low prices, matched with an increasingly higher quality. This means lower profit margins but this is easily offset with greater volume growth.

Today, hard discounters are a well-established part of our lives, with approximately 17% of us shopping with them across Europe. In Germany, the home of Aldi and Lidl, 80% of German consumers (most of who are white-collar workers), do their shopping at hard discounters, This desire for value has seen Aldi double its European presence, and lead to Lidl opening one new store every day in the last 15 years. It seems “value” is now a major purchase driver and quality is no longer seen as the exclusive domain of the major premium brands.

In times of recession like today, consumers tend to become protectionist and cocoon themselves from risk by eating more at home and pampering themselves with small luxuries. Thrift drives them to experiment with products from the hard discounters, and once they have experienced the quality on offer, many never return to their old shopping habits.

This new definition of value means that often consumers will trade up in emotional meaningful categories and down in essentials or less meaningful categories. They have become well informed and more conscious of what they buy, across all categories and segments. Today there is now no shame or embarrassment in being seen to be careful with money. Consumers are happy to mix and match both value and premium products, and take pride in being able to show they are selective and wise in their purchases.

The difference in price between major brands and private labels is no longer justified by the added value of a brand name, it has become a “brand tax” that many consumers are no longer willing to pay. J.N Kapferer said in 2004, “For consumers there are only two types of brand: those which justify their price premium and those that don’t”, this implies that brands who want to remain on consumer’s shopping lists will need to change. They will need to justify their price premium by investing in creativity, innovation and quality, they must embrace research and development and look to re-create relevant and important differences that give consumers a real reason to buy.

In so doing brands can add “tangible value”, but this alone is not enough, there must also be a drive to build “intangible values”, vision, personality and tone of voice that their consumer’s can associate with and will be relevant to their evolving lifestyles.

Already we can see major brands and mainstream supermarkets are introducing “value” sub-brands that offer major reductions on standard pricing, in an effort to attract consumers away from the hard discounters; For example, Unilever’s Iglo brand has launched an “Essentials” range and Proctor & Gamble’s Tide has launched its “Basic” range. Carrefour, finding itself under attack, has also recently redefined its private label strategy, launching its “Carrefour Discount” range to fight back at the threat from hard discounters.

With shopping habits changing, “value” has become an important criteria for consumers, polarisation of the market means that brands can no longer “bury their heads in the sand” and hope to return to old business models of the past when the recession ends. We believe the old rules will no longer apply!

So, what are the principals that brands can apply to a “Value” positioning:

1 Don’t fight a loosing battle: It is almost impossible to win a price battle against discounters and private labels – their cost structures are much lower, giving them much more pricing room to manoeuvre and win.

2 Think of value as much more than price: Rather, it is the relationship between price and benefit. “Value Innovation” is about “Value Plus” – value, plus benefit, design, service and variety… Studies show that reliance on heavy price promotions tends to put customers focus on price only. “This dilutes the perceived quality gap between competitors, makes consumers more price sensitive, lowers baseline sales and decreases the willingness to purchase brands over private labels” (Steenberg et al 2009).

3 Customer-centricity: Companies facing intense price pressure and a diminishing middle market need to focus on customer needs. Better segmentation approaches can result in renewed interest from consumers, as their needs are met. It’s essential to listen carefully to customers, and to make your value positioning a part of your overall segmentation strategy.

4 Consumers judge value according to tier: It is not necessary to be the lowest price, but to be the best combination of price and benefit in each psychological tier.

5 Ensure your value positioning contributes financially to your company. Brands will need to re-address their business model, finding ways to reduce costs, by improving productivity and looking for economies of scale in order to sell value brands at a profit.

6 Differentiation: Make sure your value positioning creates enough differentiation from your core range, to avoid cannibalisation.

7 Resources: Make sure you allocate enough resources to your value positioning.

Rowland Heming / Martyn Keus – Design Board - 2010©

Innovation

“It’s not the things we look at, but the way we look at things”

The question is, how can we promote innovation on a regular basis and harness it throughout our professional lives for ourselves, or the collective benefit of our companies and our customers?

When we look at great innovations; The invention of the electric light by Edison, the development of the television by John Logie Baird or more recently the Macintosh by Steve Jobs. We could easily deduce that innovation is the result of hard work and the intuitive mind of one man (or woman). There are many examples of great innovations that originate from one individual, to quote Thomas Edison himself; “Genius is one percent inspiration, and ninety percent perspiration”:

Betty Nesmith for example, who in 1951 had the idea to put some white tempera into her nail varnish and use the brush to correct typing errors. Of course, we now know this invention to be Tippex.

Earl Tupper made food storage containers. But when he met Brownie Wise the synergy of the two minds came together. Brownie proposed, that Earl should sell the containers at ‘parties’ and as we all know, party selling made Tupperware into a household name.

Innovation itself is of course by no means new, the word ‘innovate’, can be traced back to 1440, where it comes from the Middle French word “innovacyon” meaning “renewal” or a new way of doing things. However, one of the classic problems with innovation is that, like the booster stage of a rocket, innovation often burns brightly for a short time, before tailing off and dying away. We can observe this phenomenon when we look at great innovators, often we see that there is a peak of their creative genius. Had Mozart or Buddy Holly or Jimi Hendrix lived longer would they have continued to be so innovative? In later life, some say the late Elvis was never quite the mover & shaker he was in his youth. The brilliant football career of George Best, also eventually was to burn out like a shooting star!

With these examples in mind, we may wonder, if creativity declines with experience? In fact it’s said that an individuals peak can come at any time in their life, and may even be reached twice, for example; Darwin wrote the origins of the species at the age of 50. Maurice Ravel composed his ‘Bolero’ at the age of 53, and Ronald Reagan was elected President of the United States in 1981 at the age of 69 after previously being a successful actor, more reciently, Arnold Schwarzenegger has managed to master three careers in one lifetime, body builder, film star and now politician.

W. Somerset Maugham had this to say on the subject....“Imagination grows by exercise, and contrary to common belief, is more powerful in the mature than the young”.

Clearly, when we can manage innovation, and innovate collectively, extra benefits occur, and the law of synergy kicks in (1+1 = 3). So it makes sense that we all need to exploit the power of the collective mind and to learn how to make better use of innovation and synergy, if we are going to continually innovate throughout our careers.

One way of creating more opportunities for innovation in the design process, is to be less formal in the way design companies and marketeers work together. In the past clients created strategy & designers designed – I believe that in today’s world things really have to be more flexible, after all, as Betty Nesmith showed, a good idea can come from anyone. Therefore, it becomes important for all participants in the process to understand the mechanics of creativity and innovation. To do this, it may be useful to examine how the process was defined in one of the earliest, and I believe still most valid, models, attributed to Graham Wallas in 1926, when he proposed a four-stage process:

Preparation (definition of issue, observation & study)

Incubation (laying the issue aside for a time)

Illumination (the moment when a new idea finally emerges)

Verification (checking it out)

Wallas’s model suggests that creative thinking starts with purposeful preparation and ends with analytical verification, suggesting that creative and analytical thinking are complementary. The implied theory behind this model also suggests that creative thinking is a subconscious process and cannot be wholly directed by the conscious mind. Freud also reasoned, in his original “The levels of consciousness theory*”, that our brains function on different levels. The conscious level, which is the receptor of information, the unconscious level, on the face of it dormant, but packed with information, and in between the preconscious level, which draws on both of the other levels. It’s this level that provides a major source for our insights and inspirations.

Understanding this, we might apply Sigmund Freud’s theory to the 4 generally accepted steps in Wallas’s creative process; 1 Preparation 2 Incubation 3 Illumination and 4 Verification, and propose how the creative process could pass through different levels of the conscious mind.

1 Preparation = Conscious level (Intellectual area), Where we take in the details of the problem to be solved and define the objectives for success.

2 Incubation = Low down in the preconscious level (Emotional / logic/ reasoning area), Where we give our brain time access it’s storage area, data bank and expose the problem to other influences around us.

3 Illumination or Inspiration = Higher up in the preconscious level (Emotional area), Where we give our right brain full access to our stored information and allow it to experiment and innovate without inhibitions.

4 Verification = Once again in the conscious level, where we check and analyse our innovations and measure them against the information and objectives we established in phase one.

Many of us have to innovate on a daily basis as part of our profession, therefore, knowing that the ability to innovate is enhanced when the full power of the brain is accessed (rather than just the conscious level), means we can create methodologies to maximise our ability to innovate.

Whether you are striving for individual or collective creativity, it is necessary to be aware that creativity is made more difficult in a hectic and stressful environment and that deliberately building a period of reflection and introspection into your thought processes (gained here in the incubation period), can be essential. For it’s only by employing all the different stages of the process that we give our brain the space to exercise the whole of our consciousness allowing us to promote pure innovative thought.

Rowland Heming©

* Search : “Freud's The levels of consciousness theory” for various papers

2010, for me it marks 40 years of being at the sharp end of branding and package design, working with many marketing teams in large and small companies and at all levels both nationally and internationally, so now seems a good moment to look back and to take stock of what has become of our industry. Well, guess what, I’m not as impressed as I thought I would be! In-fact, I’m amazed at just how much mediocrity I now see around me when I visit stores and supermarkets.

You see, I remember a time when marketeers and studios were bold and creative, when there were people in companies making decisions, without being terrorised at the thought of consumer reaction. These were people who brought new ideas to the market, by taking risks and creating new and dynamic branding and packaging, brands and package designs like Tide, Nivea, Coca-Cola, Martini, OXO, Budweiser… are just a few of the many we still talk about today that were created by these great pioneering folks.

So how come everything looks so much the same today? What ever happened to all that enthusiasm and talent that we all started out with? Where are all the marketing big ideas and the design creativity that we all talk about in all the marketing and creative blogs, books, articles and social networks? It seems to me that today, the great branding cases that we do all talk about represent only a small fraction of what’s out there, we can probably even find most of these great examples grouped on one or two packaging websites: But what has happened to all the rest?

I think it’s time for us all to stop listening to what we say, and start looking at “what we actually do!”

Come-on be honest now, you know I’m right, I’m sure most of you young marketers and packaging designers reading this can agree that your best ideas usually end up on the cutting room floor, deleted in the studio process for being too far-out or rejected on the client side, by worried marketing managers who want to “play it safe”, and “please the consumer at all cost”. This indecision can be seen in the way many marketeers today engage a design studio by “hedging their bets” and asking two, three or even four or more of them to compete for the simplest of jobs, and in consequence, indecision can also be seen in the way studios have a tendency to “play it safe”, so as to be sure to be in with a chance of winning! – It’s a loose-loose situation for the brand!

For instance, I bought some dog food the other day, here was a real example of ‘playing it safe’ it was absolutely crammed packed with tables and text, I’m sure it covered every angle and whim of the dog owner’s thirst for knowledge, but clearly, there was no way that I (or I suspect many other dog owner’s), were ever going to read all that stuff. I’m sure if I really cared, I could find all that on the website in any case, so why is it all on the pack! A pack is supposed to do the job of attracting and convincing its target audience in a few seconds, its not supposed to be a book!

Look around you, it seems to be a common occurrence once a profession becomes ‘mature’, we take our eye off the ball and mediocrity creeps up on us everywhere. Take the cinema for instance, we have to wait for independents to come up with a “Notting Hill” or a “Train Spotters” not the big studios, likewise in music, it has always been the wild youth who create our new music at grass roots level, not the mainstream record producers of the big labels. Why? Because it seems the smaller independents are prepared to believe in what they are doing and are prepared to take risks and as a result they change the paradigm.

As we move into the second decennial I think it’s time all of us in the branding community take note of all that is happening around us and learn from this original ‘independent’ style of thinking. If we do, I’m sure we can use this opportunity to take the lead, bring back the spark of creativity and breath new life into our brands and into our profession.

There are those that will tell you, that there is nothing new, that it’s all been done before, but don’t listen to them – this is only to choose the path to mediocrity. Because the good news is that this is definitely not true, there is always a new way to look at things, new un-discovered territories to explore. But, and here’s a real note of caution, once we are enlightened, once we have that ‘eureka’ idea, if we want it to see the light of day, we all need to be brave enough to stand behind it, ‘go with it’ and take a risk.

There’s an old saying that says ‘a good Idea is like a frog, you can dissect the thing, but it dies in the process’, so the last thing we need to do is to over analyse and test every idea until we reach the common denominator and the group thinking of “current consumer behaviour”, ‘category norms’ etc… that then convinces us that we are doing the right thing, when in fact, we are often just reducing the big Idea to a small idea (or even no idea).

2010 has arrived and now we are all looking for signs of hope as we leave the disastrous 09’s behind. But our hopes will only be realised if we become capable of looking at our brands and packaging with a new perspective, of course common sense says we need to be cautious and careful with our brands and respect the relationship they have with consumers, but if we can become bolder in our actions and believe in what we are doing, we will succeed in bringing ‘real’ innovation to the market that will inspire our people and our customers and most of all, ourselves. So, lets not let 2010 be just another ‘graveyard of good ideas’, we have a real chance to make 2010 different, I’m convinced we can make this happen by all working together to bring our brands to life!

© Rowland Heming

Now is the time to believe in your brand

Recession always increases the market share of the retailers, and as supermarkets and hypermarkets become more established, the battleground for brands has become more intense. Supermarkets have had years of practice and understand how to exploit their shopping environment to the full, by using strategic price positioning coupled with brand portfolio management and refined design techniques like bold graphics, design structure, ‘colour blocking’ and effective versioning etc. to achieve the maximum stand out and effect on shelf.

If brands are to survive in this environment they will need to play in the same league (after all they sit right next to supermarket packs on the shelf), brands will have to learn to embrace a more holistic approach to package design by understanding the role that effective packaging has in creating a bond with consumers.

Packaging is the face of a product, it says who you are, what you offer, it positions a brand and informs consumers of the benefits a product offers. In the long life of a brand, the relationship between the brand’s packaging and its consumers creates a bond of trust that can transcend generations. But at the same time we need to be aware that consumer’s lives evolve and a brand packaging must reflect this evolution in it’s own evolution too. To stand still is to go backwards, as everyone else is moving forwards.

This is why as we move into 2010, I believe that packaging design must demand a much higher priority within brand companies and why in order to survive in the competitive world of the supermarket, brand companies need to be aware of the value of packaging to both the company, the brand itself and it’s consumers. This in-turn means allocating a higher level of management resources that can understand the importance of package design and drive and support the process internally at a very high level.

Just as senior management need to be involved in the process, key to success is also about accepting to work with professional design experts who understand how brands can navigate within the modern sales environment and who can bring expertise from both sides of the fence, international experience coupled with local knowledge. Experts who can help elevate a local brand’s packaging to the same level as their competition and reassure consumers that their brand is keeping up with their own evolving lifestyle

The future of brands, lies in the hands of the brand owners, now more than ever, is the time to reassure consumers with highly professional packaging. Clearly, the winners will be those who invest in their brands and their brand packaging in 2010 and the losers will be those who don’t.

Rowland Heming©

Brands - What went wrong?

Have you ever wondered how retailers are able to produce such great packaging and why is it that some major brands seem unable to ?

After all, major brand companies employ the top design companies, the same design companies who are also designing for the retailers. So why is it that for some, their packaging is less innovative than retail packaging? Are the design companies working in a different way for the major brand companies, or could it be that there’s something wrong with the way major brand companies are working with design companies ?

The truth is that over the past decade, brands have seen themselves as being under threat from retailers. Retailers have been able to get their products to market, cheaper, quicker and, let’s face it, with much a more adventurous creative approach. Whilst brand manufacturers have been stuck in the mire of efficiency, cost cutting and rationalisation programs. Some have shown a reluctance to invest in full scale design projects and have shown a lack of investment in 3D development. In an attempt to reduce the cost of the design process, there has even been a move to shift artwork out of the design studios into the repro-house, with the result that many times the final design is interpreted without reference to the marketing objectives or the values so carefully built by the design studio.

It seems that some manufactures have been concentrating so hard on looking for their efficiencies, that they have missed the point, that, “the consumer has moved on”, and now is looking for innovation, humour, sensitivity and product values rather than just, the still important, but sometimes bland brand values.

A good example of innovation and humour from Marmite

Whilst all this has been going on, retailers have taken a far more enlightened approach, stepping back and letting the creatives do what they are good at. They have also been listening to their consumers and letting them have their say and as a result, retailers have benefited from the development of new approaches to creating package design.

Far from the early ‘white products’, packaging which lacked emotion, were price orientated, superficial and usually with a poor visual communication, or the copycatting which went on shamelessly in the subsequent period. Today, retail packaging has come of age and is enhancing the richness and quality of product values. These values have also, in turn, been transposed by consumers to their perception of the whole store.

To achieve this, retailers have given their designers more creative freedom and the designers have responded by developing packaging that gives far more importance to emotion, and clear visual and verbal descriptions of the product, rather than as in the past, just focussing all the communication on the brand name. By using emotion in this way designers have been able to demand the consumers participation and, as a result, provided them with a reward. This has made retail packaging distinctive and memorable, communicating a mood and a feeling which the consumer has interpreted as a benefit.

The results are now history, retail brands are now recognised by the consumer as a creative, viable and acceptable alternatives to the major brands, retailers have grown rich on the benefits of this new participative, rather than dictatorial, approach. The design work created for them has also been recognised for it’s creativity and innovation, picking up just about all the major design awards going over the past 20 years.

So why is it that some brands are not benefiting from this same kind of creative service from their studios?

We all know that a camel is a horse designed by a committee. Likewise creativity in packaging can be stifled by too many layers of management and decision making. Many brand manufacturers, who are serious about wanting to remain the consumers preference and viable in this new Century, have changed their working methodology, others need to re-think their packaging strategy:

- These Manufacturers need to exhibit more innovative and creative leadership when handling design projects, getting closer to their designers and their consumers.
- They need to recognise Package Design as a viable investment, not just viewing it as an necessary expense.
- They need to give creative freedom back to the designers, good ideas need to be recognised and immediately tested with consumers, not analysed in the board room and dissected until they die. Or fiddled with until it becomes yet another a camel.
- Their Marketing Managers need to dare to be different, they must be willing to challenge and become committed to real brand transformations that will be recognised and appreciated by consumers.

Consumers associate package design as part of the product they buy. Package Design therefore must be seen by manufactures as a viable investment in the brands future. This means that decision making for packaging should be elevated to the highest levels of the manufacturers company, creating direct lines of communication between company leaders and the creatives. Design projects should be properly funded, under resourcing a design project may save on today’s project costs but may end up costing the brand dearly in future lost sales.

It’s only by elevating the importance of packaging and allowing direct communication between the manufacturer, the designers and the consumer that brand packaging can hope to compete with the already well established, and fast growing, retail brand environment. It’s time to re-assess the values we put on the image we project to consumers through our packaging, to learn some lessons from the success of retail packaging and to re-evaluate the importance of the overall role of packaging as the brand and product communicator.

Rowland Heming ©

Title image courtesy of Freaks & Geeks: http://www.myspace.com/freaksandgeekstheparty