J&J Consumer embraces functional integration

Johnson & Johnson Consumer Inc. (JJCI) is a subsidiary of New Brunswick, NJ-based Johnson & Johnson, whose other two businesses are pharmaceuticals and medical devices. The well-known JJCI brands include JOHNSON’S Baby, Tylenol, Aveeno, Neutrogena, Listerine, and Band-Aids. Packaging at JJCI is a team sport that brings all functions together to deliver a rich experience to consumers. Miguel Herrera, Global Package Development Director for North America Consumer and Global Oral and Wound Care for JJCI, explains it this way.

“Here on the consumer side in the past few years we’ve begun to incorporate packaging into the conversation more prominently, making packaging part of a holistic product design effort. That’s why we formed the Global Packaging Innovation Group. And that’s why we are partnering so much more closely with key packaging suppliers.”

Heading up the Global Packaging Innovation Group is Rafal Hrymoc, Global Package Development Director for Beauty Packaging and Innovation. He joined JJCI about 3 years ago, just after the Global Packaging Innovation Group was formed, and a big part of his job has been fueling that group’s efforts.

“It’s a matter of changing course, of paying more attention to how consumers experience our company not only from the product formula and product performance perspective but also from the packaging side,” says Hrymoc.

Because J&J has such a huge footprint in pharma and medical device, he adds, he and his colleagues on the consumer side occasionally have to remind themselves and the organization itself that they are neither pharma nor med device. “We need to get to market faster than what is customary and expected in J&J’s other divisions, where regulatory restrictions tend to slow things down, and we need to do it boldly,” says Hrymoc. “We need to be a strong and nimble competitor relative to the other cosmetics- and consumer-focused firms out there. To do that we must be relevant to consumers. As they change, we need to change as well.”

Both Herrera and Hrymoc, along with a few other packaging-centric colleagues, are part of a J&J global franchise leadership team. “That means packaging is not an isolated function as it once was,” says Herrera. “We’re not over in a corner developing packaging solutions for products and formulas that are being developed somewhere else. We’re embedded into the leadership teams, which means I sit with the global president who oversees J&J’s oral and wound care products on a regular basis to discuss strategy. What do the brands stand for, what are the marketing plans, what is R&D up to, and what are the packaging plans—these are all discussed in a tightly integrated fashion.”