Some tangible signs are emerging that consumer packaged goods companies will step on the gas in new product development and innovation in 2010. They’ve been hinting at this for weeks, but some of the first solid evidence is coming from Procter & Gamble and Energizer.
P&G tells Advertising Age that it expects to go on the innovation offensive midyear, and Energizer’s Schick brand appears on the brink of introducing a new shaving system early in the new year.
As these and other products come to market, at a time when CPG companies presumably will have larger packaging budgets to spend, where will we see the next truly breakthrough packaging innovation? CPG companies have been living on incremental advances in the down economy, but heading into 2010, is the timing right for a new use for an existing material that says “wow” on the store shelf?
We don’t have to look back very far for one example. Retort pouches have been around since the 1970s, but Starkist hit upon the right timing earlier in this decade to bring them into the tuna aisle as an answer to consumers’ call for more product convenience in tuna.
Breakthrough innovation, as the Starkist example illustrates, requires precise timing, with the right materials. For whom will the timing be right in 2010?
