Opening Lines
Packaging that Feels Good
Should beauty product packaging be more than just beautiful? Should it appeal to more than just the eye? Some cosmetic, fragrance, and personal care products marketers are beginning to think so. They are trying package designs that stimulate other senses, like touch, smell, and sound.
Dimitri Katsachnias, L'Oréal's general manager for prospective and new projects luxury products division, spoke about the need to stir multiple senses at The Fragrance Foundation's Global Symposium in Paris last October. "We are in the business of human senses. We have to learn more and more in the future to use and cultivate our senses," he said.
Another speaker, Barbara Busch, president and CEO of Analysis, The Scent Company International, agreed. "The whole marketing mix has to play with all senses," she said. "Multisensuality will have an ever-growing importance for brand success and will offer new opportunities."
For Ping Li, packages that stimulate multiple senses promote a different kind of beauty. "Today's consumers have a yearning for a sense of balance and beauty from within. They want to come home and use products that feel good, not just look good," says Li, a designer whose firm Li Design works regularly for companies like Jafra International and Crabtree & Evelyn. Li will be speaking about the emotional benefits of packaging design during the upcoming WestPack conference in Anaheim, CA, on February 20.
Li points to Shiseido as an example of a product family that promotes balance. On its Web site, Shiseido states that, "By bathing all five senses in a shower of pleasant stimuli, you can create a positive cycle in the mind-body linkage." Since Shiseido's packaging is both visually and tactilely pleasing, the packaging stimulates the senses almost as much as the product formulation does. "Shiseido's Relaxation fragrance, provided in a tall bottle, suggests serenity. And its Energize fragrance looks and feels like a drop of water, suggesting purity," says Li. "How can a woman not feel ultraspecial when using these products?"
Li says that interest in feel-good products is thriving, giving candles, aromatherapy products, and spa products as examples.
Regardless of the type of beauty product you market, keep this interest in mind during package design, since a line packaged to appeal to multiple senses stands to benefit.
Daphne Allen
Group Editor