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Packaging gets real

As consumers demand greater transparency from CPG brands, brand owners are blazing new trails with refreshingly honest and real on-pack messaging—even for ‘delicate’ products.

REAL INGREDIENTS. Coca-Cola Life’s packaging uses a green color that conveys that the product is something new and different for the brand—something natural.
REAL INGREDIENTS. Coca-Cola Life’s packaging uses a green color that conveys that the product is something new and different for the brand—something natural.

Have you noticed that brands have been “getting real” lately? I’m talking about refreshingly honest, no-BS messaging in ad campaigns and on packaging that tells it exactly like it is. This trend is not surprising. In today’s challenging market, honesty is a surefire way to establish reliability and connect with consumers. In fact, according to an October 2014 study on authentic brandsby global public relations firm Cohn & Wolfe, the number-one quality or behavior that people demand of big brands is that they communicate honestly about their products and services. With information about a brand in real time readily available, consumers are now investigative reporters, and companies can’t risk having the public discover that something about their brand is dishonest.

We’re seeing this trend transcend categories. Under Armour’s “I Will What I Want” campaign, in which Misty Copeland proves that not all prima ballerinas are stick figures, and Sir Richard’s condoms’ ads, with copy lines like, “Let’s Change Positions, Not Diapers,” are blazing new trails with their honesty and humor. Forget about “beating around the bush,” to quote Hello Flo, a brand that mails out care packages for women’s and girls’ feminine protection needs. This is straight talk, pure and simple.

The movement toward transparency means that consumers are attaching themselves to companies that operate with honesty and integrity, rather than aligning with brands that try to pull the wool over their eyes. And while this kind of transparency first gained traction in advertising, it is now carrying over to packaging design. Companies are using this frank style of language and graphics to stand out on shelf.

Three recent examples of brands that are “getting real” through frankness and intelligence on their packaging are Coca-Cola Life, which touts its use of “real ingredients,” Dollar Shave Club, which uses “real talk,” and The First Years, which showcases “real people.”

Real ingredients
When the biggest beverage company in the world starts getting honest, you’re damn straight people are going to sit up and take notice. And that’s what happened when Coca-Coca Life launched in South America in 2013 and made its U.S. debut in the fall of 2014. Coca-Cola Life, which is Coke’s “natural” answer to the outcry against processed ingredients like high-fructose corn syrup and Aspartame, was created to combat the era of the soda backlash. Coke had to do something to save falling sales and maintain category relevancy.

Coca-Cola Life’s packaging is the epitome of transparency, with a green color that is a dramatic departure from its iconic red and immediately conveys that it is something new and different for the brand—something natural (or should we say, more natural). An approachable script font is used for the word “Life,” and an icon that closely resembles a leaf draws your eye to the fact that this soda is “Sweetened with Cane Sugar and Stevia.”

Coca-Cola Life also claims to be a “reduced calorie soda” that has “35% less calories than Coca-Cola*” (albeit with an asterisk next to that line). Whether or not the product actually is better for you than other sodas has yet to be seen, but in this case, the departure from the brand equities communicates a desire to move away from consumer expectations of the brand and offer them something more real.

Real talk
While Coca-Cola Life is an example of an established brand trying to regain market share through honesty, a newer (circa 2011) brand, Dollar Shave Club, is using a no-BS messaging strategy to build its online subscription business and procure customers. The tag line sums up the brand’s mission best: “Shave Time. Shave Money.”

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