Articles
Making Your Product the Only One Worth Buying
Recently, a friend went shopping to pick up a gift for a neighbor's new baby. She figured bath toys were a good choice, so that's what she looked for. She immediately spotted two choices: one set was packaged in a soft, brightly colored basket with drainage holes and a handle. The other was in an ostensibly reusable plastic bag with a handle and no drainage holes—and it was just the right size for a baby to put over his head, a real suffocation hazard.
Guess which item she chose.
Nowadays, consumers are just as interested in the packaging as they are in the product within. Not so long ago, the product was the only focus. Manufacturers worked hard to design or formulate a product that customers would love. Remember the Pepsi Challenge? It was all about taste. Cans were just cans, and the logo became secondary; the brand’s job was to help the consumer locate the product that supposedly tasted better.
In today's increasingly crowded marketplace, the package is becoming one of the main ways a manufacturer can gain market share by making his or her product stand out. No longer content with just a box or a bag, customers want a package that adds value or offers other real or perceived advantages. Is it reusable? Is it non-hazardous? Is it environmentally-friendly? And it isn't just the retail space that is affected by this shift. Pharmaceutical manufacturers, food packagers, cosmetics manufacturers, and other industries are moving toward brand differentiation even in raw materials packaging.
On the shelf, on the web, or in the warehouse, a carefully considered and expertly designed package is now what gets the attention and makes the sale. If someone is standing in the drugstore staring at 147 different kinds of vitamins, what is going to happen? He might give up. He might just grab and go. Or, more likely, his eye will be drawn to the package that is the most attractive or the most unusual. If it is different in a significant, functional way from the others—if, for instance, it is translucent and incorporates an easy-to-use pushbutton pill dispenser—he'll probably choose that one. Brand Packaging is full of innovative ideas and stories of successful, value-added packaging that goes beyond product containment.
So how do you go about designing a package that is truly different? For that, you need expert help. Sonic works in a wide variety of industries, which means we're up on the very latest news and technologies. But even more important than that is our ability to apply our broad knowledge and insight to develop creative packaging solutions that the typical narrow-focus consultant would never think of. As a packaging partner, we'll help you come up with the next great idea—one that will make your product seem like the only one on the shelf.
