Guy Douglass, managing director of BOS Design, speaks about the impact of brand design and the various considerations that designers must give to new products ahead of Packaging Innovations and Luxury Packaging London 2015, which will take place at Olympia London next month.
What are the main considerations in packaging design for FMCG products?
The rate of change in the retail environment (and the catalysts for that change) has created a couple of real challenges for FMCG brands. Packaging now has to work in a variety of different selling environments (online and offline); a small thumbnail on a computer screen is a difficult place to utilise packaging design to entice the consumer through beautiful, tactile and engaging packaging – so omni-channel is one of those challenges.
The other one is the rise of the discounters. The own-brand products in the discounters are shamelessly creating “me too” designs (sometimes referred to as copycats) so brands have to work harder to create strong brand equities that can’t be copied easily.
How can brands best use packaging design to engage with shoppers?
Brands have to work hard to build a strong relationship with their consumers through engaging them in a conversation. Having a front face that catches the eye in store is no longer enough; who knows which face of the packaging will be the one the consumer sees first if his shopping is delivered to his kitchen? Brands need to think big and consider how the packaging will work throughout the product’s life-cycle from point of purchase to point of disposal.
What are the implications for a branded packaging design agency?
I remember saying that I would never buy clothes on the internet because I would want to try them on, feel the quality. I remember going to Blockbusters to rent a video, Comet to buy a kettle and Jessops to get my films developed.
It’s taken some time, but internet shopping has finally taken off. The appearance of fibre optic cable, smartphones and tablets has put everything so much more at our fingertips that the acceleration of remote shopping is only going to increase.
What will packaging of the future look like and will there be a future for packaging design?
In the next few years we are going to face massive changes. But packaging will remain. The massive changes that we will see will present big opportunities for brands to use their packaging in new and interesting ways.
Packaging will still need to protect the product but the on-shelf promotion job that it does currently will be more subtle. The shelf will no longer be the retailer’s shelf, but the consumer’s shelf in the cupboard, in the larder or in the bathroom cabinet. Packaging will not have to have a “front face”, it won’t necessarily have to have “shelf impact” and there will be more opportunity to build a conversation with individual consumers.
Indeed, if the product is ordered on line by a named consumer, what’s to stop the packaging using that name? Why not “Guy’s Marmite” or “Colin’s Dr Pepper”?
“Beyond the till” is an expression we use a lot to describe the importance of the role of packaging after the product has been bought. “Beyond the click” might be a more relevant expression in the next couple of years and it’s this area that is really very exciting.
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