Extended-text label serves up Slime in seven languages

Tire sealant producer moves from a crowded label and instructions insert to an extended-text label with seven languages to successfully market its Slime brand to an international audience.

SEVEN LANGUAGES. A new five-panel, extended-text label for Slime Tire Sealant allows Accessories Marketing to provide information on the product in seven languages.
SEVEN LANGUAGES. A new five-panel, extended-text label for Slime Tire Sealant allows Accessories Marketing to provide information on the product in seven languages.

To be fluid in seven languages and come to the rescue when someone is in trouble could be the calling card of a very handy renaissance man. In the case of Slime Tire Sealant, such were the requirements for a new label for a brand positioned as the Worldwide Leader In Tire Care™.

Manufactured in the U.S. by Accessories Marketing Inc., a San Luis Obispo, CA-based division of Illinois Tool Works Inc., Slime is a tire sealant for tube and tubeless tires for motorcycles, wheelbarrows, cars, trailers, trucks, SUVs, golf carts, ATVs, lawnmowers, and other end-use tires of similar size. Looking to grow its brand awareness in international markets, especially the expansive Western European Union, Accessories Marketing faced the challenge of trying to accommodate a region where seven different languages are spoken.

“Slime is not an intuitive product,” explains Megan Gurney-Hemme, Public Relations and Product Manager with Accessories Marketing. “We recommend different amounts of sealant for different applications. We want our customers to understand how to install our sealant properly so as to have the best experience by ensuring their tires are safe and properly cared for.”

The original pressure-sensitive film label was a 350-deg wraparound label holding a straw in place on a custom-molded bottle. It featured basic copy in six languages (English, French, German, Dutch, Spanish, and Italian) and icons serving as installation instructions. Then the bottle was shrink-wrapped, with a booklet placed on the backside of the bottle. The booklet carried all other product and application information.

The combination of text and relatively universal usage/application graphics and icons ensured easy understanding by a broad spectrum of consumers. But if Accessories Marketing was going to effectively compete in the Western EU, it needed to expand the Slime label content further by adding a seventh language, Portuguese. As it stood, the company was faced with an increasingly crowded prime label and a multi-step labeling process.

“We wanted a better way to communicate our message in the seven languages needed for the Western EU,” Gurney-Hemme says. “And a label that could have all seven languages as well as all the product application information would also allow us to consolidate the number of SKUs. That would make it possible for us to serve even more customers.”

Extended-text label is the answer
The task of redesigning the label to meet the messaging and space requirements fell to Shana Lopez, Marketing Communications Manager with Accessories Marketing. Mechanics aside, a key objective was to design a label that would present innovative cues to help bring the product positioning to life.

“The previous packaging wasn’t as informative to the market as it should have been,” Lopez notes. “In order to provide a new market with relevant and informative information, we needed to explore a label with multiple pages. This would allow us the amount of space required by our European market.”

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