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Answering innovation's challenges

Pick a leader to champion your cause, prove out your ideas with senior management, and observe ‘category cues' while pushing beyond them, say the experts.

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Few would argue that package design innovation plays a crucial role in helping today's packaged goods companies prosper in the years to come. But what really is this thing we call innovation, how is it nourished, and how can it be successfully woven into a company's approach to package design? To learn the answers to these and other innovation-related questions, PW brought them to the attention of three thought leaders in the packaging design arena: Elizabeth Head-Fischer, packaging design manager at Texas Instruments; Michael Livolsi, package design consultant formerly with Unilever; and Arno Melchior, global packaging director at Reckitt Benckiser.

PW: How would you define innovation?

Livolsi: It has to be defined in terms of brand plus package. In other words, it must take into account the complete 360-degree branding graphics as well as the structure of the container. Paying attention to category cues is important, too. You know how each product category—whether it's food, personal care, pharmaceutical—has certain guidelines, certain expectations on how consumers shop and what they expect? These category cues must be held onto if innovation is properly executed. But innovation should also forge ahead of category cues if it's going to give the consumer something exciting, some new news.

Melchior: I would define innovation as the thing without which we lose market share. Because if your competition moves ahead and you're still in an outdated-looking package, you'll definitely be left behind.

PW: What internal challenges do you face in conceiving a really innovative package and getting it to market?

Melchior: Getting a fix on the financials is always challenging. Even if your product or package innovation is totally new, there are still products in the marketplace you can compare against. Once you establish that comparable products already in the marketplace cost $2.99, you can't very well price yours at $5.99, regardless of how innovative its packaging is.

Head-Fischer: Innovation, of course, requires coming up with something new. So naturally your innovation team begins thinking outside the box. They begin looking at novel substrates, for example. The internal challenge you then face revolves around keeping team members from each going off in wildly different directions. Take, for example, the designers on the team. They might be proposing something really radical where even the package's footprint might be very different from what's been used in the past. But a team member whose responsibilities lie more in the manufacturing and operations areas will be thinking along far more practical lines. Someone else, maybe in purchasing, may focus more on the cost of the packaging innovation your team is aiming at, or he may ask how much energy is consumed to make it. Roping these and other views together while still staying true to the spirit of innovation is like herding cats.

Livolsi: Packaging has to breathe. It can't be too crowded with communication. So marketers and designers who are on the innovation team have to agree together that they will honor the negative space on a package just as much as the positive space that carries brand, color, shape, copy, and package architecture.

Another internal challenge is one where a brand manager is so intent on projecting their brand they become a little too protective about design elements or images that project that brand's heritage. They may require some persuading from others on the innovation team that in some cases a brand needs to evolve from where it is in '06 to where it needs to be in '09. There can be a certain conservativeness within the corporation that has to be dealt with, so that's another one of those internal challenges you mentioned.

PW: Mike, can you elaborate on what you mean by letting a package breathe?

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INTRODUCING! The Latest Trends for All Industries at PACK EXPO Southeast