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Consumer-Centric Packaging Innovation

Is packaging the product? Consumers drive package and product innovation with their decision making and trends. Recently the Contract Packaging Association discussed this intersection between innovation and consumer.

Contract Packaging Association Webinar
Contract Packaging Association Webinar

This is the edited transcript of the Contract Packaging Association's webinar, Driving Consumer-Centric Packaging and Product Innovation, with presenters Brian Wagner, co-founder and vice president of PTIS,  and Phil Roos, CEO of Great Lakes GrowthWorks.


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Sensation Transference

Brian Wagner:

Back in 1997, I joined the Kellogg Company, and I was really fortunate to have an opportunity to lead an innovation initiative, starting with linking with the best-of-the-best globally, in terms of consumer insight specifically for packaging. And I worked with a son-in-law of this gentleman, Louis Cheskin, and unfortunately never got to know him. He passed away in the early '80s. But I subsequently read all of his books - and he wrote a number of books. He was just an incredible leader and coined the term “sensation transference,” which is really about looking at a product or a package and forming judgments around the qualities of what's inside it, of how it's going to perform, how it's going to work. And even in the case of packaging, how it's going to taste.

Cheskin helped create the Marlboro Man, and the Gerber Baby. He was responsible for the Tide box, the black swirl on the orange background, and even launches of the Ford Mustang and Lincoln Continentals. All of which were great successes and all of which leveraged sensation transference. So, when you saw features and attributes of a design, you connected that with how you expected the product was going to perform.

One quick example in the packaging world, goes way back when probably people drank more brandy, frankly. But the leader in the area was E&J Gallo. They had the number one brandy. Christian Brothers worked really hard to develop an equivalent or better brandy in terms of blind taste testing. And then they put it in the bottle, and they put it on the shelf, and they couldn't get out of the bottom slot in the marketplace. And they couldn't understand why. And so, Louis Cheskin got involved and he put the Christian Brothers brandy in the E&J bottle and vice versa. And sure enough, the Christian Brothers brandy got better taste test results when you could see the package and when you could see the brand.

And then they started to strip away the features. They took off the labels. They did a number of different things and finally found out that the thing that made the big difference was the Christian Brothers brandy had a bottle that was more like a wine bottle, which was perceived to be inferior to brandy in terms of the product. And so, all they did was change the silhouette of the bottle. Went back to the same branding, the same color, and they took over the number one slot ahead of E&J Gallo.

Testing and Learning

When Phil and I met, he had just started the Arbor Strategy Group and acquired a collection of what we called ‘new and once new’ products. He acquired it from a mutual friend, the late Bob McMath, who was just an amazing guy and had started this collection something like 40 years earlier. When you think about hundreds and thousands of products that are launched every year, in fact it's in the tens of thousands, launched every year in the United States, some of the research suggests that 90% fail within the first three years. There's some other research that says that most product lifecycles are only three to five years long. And we know that the contract packaging and manufacturing industry is playing such a huge role because the big brands can't afford to build brick and mortar factories anymore. And so being able to test and learn is such an important part of our industry and in the food and beverage and consumer product industries.

Bob McMath was on almost every major network. He was on the Tonight Show. He told these stories, which were so entertaining for people: Frito Lay Lemonade was actually a product at the time. It didn't last long in the marketplace. Clairol launched a ‘Touch of Yogurt’ shampoo. People actually thought it was yogurt, not shampoo, and they thought they were supposed to eat it. The ‘Wine & Dine’ dinner was kind of an elegant poultry-based Hamburger Helper and you took these ingredients, and you mixed them with the chicken, and you cooked them. But people were perceiving that that wine was for drinking while you cooked. But in fact, it was an ingredient intended to be part of the mix. It also failed miserably.Cpa Logo 2

It’s kind of entertaining, and kind of interesting, that the big brands who should know what they're doing in terms of consumer insight frankly don't get it right that often. And they seldom really understand packaging very well. And therefore, there's opportunities for some of you as leaders. And whether you're in a packaging department in a brand, or you're with a supplier company, or an OEM, or with a contract manufacturer, if you really want to differentiate yourself, there's an opportunity to take your new solutions and test them with consumers before you take the potential solution to the big brands.

So, what does it all mean? Obviously to me packaging is the product. Purchase decisions are made at shelf in something like 4.6 seconds. I'm not sure what the research is for e-commerce and online, but consumers make up their mind very quickly and in doing research, it's really how you talk to them, get at their needs, understand attitudes and actual behaviors, and observation is critical to packaging. And I always talk about the need for creative people, engineers, marketing, branding, involving suppliers and research because we all see potential solutions very differently. It's a best practice. Not a lot of companies do it. So, you can't just test in a sterile conference room. You need to get into people's homes, into their cars, at their workplace, the places where they're using products, to really get the best insights.

And then you need to recognize packaging is really integral to product development, not an afterthought. It's part of a brand, it's part of a product, and it needs to be prioritized as such.

Market Trends

Phil Roos:

We live now in a world that's changing at warp speed. And if you need to be reminded of that, just reflect back on the last three or four months. It just seemed like a whole new world every week or two. In that kind of a setting, it's not enough to go talk to your consumers and figure out what their needs are. You really have to marry that with an understanding of foresight. How is my world going to change in the next three or four years? Because I think that, for most businesses, everything's up for grabs; our business models, our customers, the way we do business.Screen Shot 2021 04 20 At 10 37 01 AmPTIS LLC, GL GROWTHWORKS LLC

An evolution in how people shop - we all know about e-commerce in general and the impact that's having. But there are many dimensions to it. There's ease of being able to make a purchase. That has big implications for packaging and product and the way it's designed to facilitate that. Experiential aspect of shopping as well. People want to buy more than a product in a package. They want an experience out of it. The whole direct-to-consumer and home delivery world has really revolutionized the businesses we're all in.

Ubiquitous Tech - tech is in everything we do in one way or another, even if it's just how we order. Competition that we never knew existed. People who are selling things that we might sell, but they're selling them on the web or selling them in some other channel. And it's turned out to be a tough thing to track, to answer that question, “who is my real competition?”

Consumers Who Care - that's really about people caring how their brands respond to different situations. And we see that right now with the Black Lives Matter protests. We see it with COVID and the health risks. But the way that a brand or a company, the view they bring to the world, how they respond to the things going on in the world around us is really important. People buy or don't buy based on that.

Sustainability - we're all very familiar with that. That's assumed here to stay and constantly evolving. Brands as Stories - that's one of those profound implications for packaging because packaging in many cases may be the primary way that those stories get conveyed, and we have to convey in a simple way not with a million words. Some of the innovation work that we do, we actually do something called a disruptor analysis, which is to look at some of these dynamics but in a very custom way for your industry because they are a little different; they have different manifestations.

If we start with foresight, then we have to match that with insight. Thinking about what would really resonate with consumers, and it's not just the functional needs. It's not going to break, it's easy to handle, all of those kinds of things. But back to Brian's point about sensation transference - we're trying to help express an emotional benefit that the product has, but that can be conveyed and reinforced in the packaging, whether it's somehow a sense of well-being, or connectiveness, or feeling good about myself, or just convey an experience.

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