Discover your next big idea at PACK EXPO Las Vegas this September
Experience a breakthrough in packaging & processing and transform your business with solutions from 2,300 suppliers spanning all industries.
REGISTER NOW & SAVE

Predesign research drives packaging innovation

Scott Jost of Studio One Eleven explains why packaging designers need to embrace new predesign research methods to deliver packaging that wows consumers.

Scott Jost, Vice President of Innovation and Design, Studio One Eleven
Scott Jost, Vice President of Innovation and Design, Studio One Eleven

As Einstein wisely said, “If you always do what you always did, you always get what you always got.” This is especially true with package design, where traditional methods of post-design consumer testing are stifling innovation and slowing product speed to market. In today’s world, where consumers are demanding newer and richer experiences from retail brands, understanding their needs and delivering better packaging more quickly is essential.

In this Q&A article, Scott Jost, Vice President of Innovation and Design for Studio One Eleven, Berlin Packaging’s design arm, talks about new methods of predesign consumer research that get to the heart of consumer needs, for packaging that meets and exceeds their expectations.

Packaging World:

How have CPGs and design firms traditionally vetted new packaging designs with consumers?

Scott Jost:

When I started in this business over 20 years ago, most of the agencies selling packaging design services were built by people who had left ad agencies, or were themselves offshoots. It was a cottage industry full of folks who would create a sketch of a package, hand-illustrate a front view of that package, and deliver that illustration as the engagement’s primary deliverable. That’s how we would present our work, which is not a coincidence, given that it is the same way an ad agency would have presented an ad proposal—a crude conceptual rallying point that brand owners and their consumers could view and react to. It offered no way to gauge the proposed package’s functionality, how it would feel in the hand, or even how it looks in anything other than a flattened view of the primary display panel. Prototypes were handcrafted and so expensive that they were only employed late in the validation process—if at all.

Assembled on one side of a one-way mirror and filled with donuts and coffee, consumers were asked to assume the role of beauty contest judge or art critic to pick their “favorite” illustration board from among those that had been chosen by brand stewards based upon their reactions.

Today, most of us have moved on to better visualization techniques and to implementing 3D prototypes earlier in the process as a way to check hand feel and functionality during the design process, as opposed to a disaster check after the process is completed. But the methods we’ve evolved from speak to why there are still some pervasive mentalities about how and when consumer validation is done, and why there is misplaced emphasis on post-design validation versus predesign opportunity analysis.

Why is this strategy flawed? What is the end result of such a process?

It presumes from the beginning that you’re just synthesizing the notion of what a package ought to look like or ought to do in the abstract. You as the creative are coming into the engagement with a point of view, perhaps from experience, that packaging within a given category has a knowable visual vernacular that explains why it looks the way that it does. Focusing on presentation board-ready deliverables fails to take into account how people use those products, how people shop for those products, the features they assign value to, who the competitors are, and the category dynamics. Of course, if you’re waiting until after you’ve created something to engage the people you’re creating for, you’re not a designer, you’re an artist.

To extend the artist metaphor, consumers who in day-to-day life might not spend much time thinking about mustard packaging, for example, are all of a sudden being asked to provide a sort of high-level critique of the stimuli being offered—or at least that’s the way it’s approached by most consumers. Part of what we strive to do in designing compelling packaging is to bring attention to products that consumers aren’t paying attention to, in order to generate attention and consideration for items that would otherwise not get it. In a focus group, we’re forcing a captive audience to devote all of their attention to something that might be ignored in situ.

Everything about the exercise is false in premise, so you end up with a result that is sort of the least bad option from among a discrete series of options that people are told they have to pick from. It’s just a bad way to go to market. First of all, it’s focused on trial and trial alone. In other words, the only information you’re getting from folks as they look at this shelf view of the package is whether or not they would buy it relative to the other shelf views of other packaging-like objects they’re looking at. In a perfect world, even if this method could determine which package the consumer would buy, it would only tell you which one from among those they were asked to consider. It wouldn’t begin to address the more important questions of which product consumers would recall or would choose to buy again.

What market drivers have necessitated new ways of researching package design?

Firstly, people are simply more demanding. We can’t rely on adding a label violator or updating color schemes to excite consumers. We have to give them new, richer experiences, and better experiences come from observing and understanding how people interact with products. In general, consumers are bored with what we’ve been giving them. Accenture did a study a few years ago called “Consumer Attitudes Toward Innovation.” Across all but one of the consumer product categories tested, the study showed that one-third of all consumers polled felt that products today have “nothing new” about them. Three quarters of those people said they didn’t expect any new and meaningful innovation over the next five-year period. The one category exception was consumer electronics.

Annual Outlook Report: Sustainability
The road ahead for CPGs in 2025 and beyond—<i>Packaging World</i> editors review key findings from a survey of 88 brand owners, CPG, and FMCG readers.
Download Now
Annual Outlook Report: Sustainability
Researched List: Engineering Services Firms
Looking for engineering services? Our curated list features 100+ companies specializing in civil, process, structural, and electrical engineering. Many also offer construction, design, and architecture services. Download to access company names, markets served, key services, contact information, and more!
Download Now
Researched List: Engineering Services Firms