Inside Design: Packaging for the Individual
Today's customers seek packages tailored to their tastes.
Avon’s mark.blu fragrance bottle lets customers decorate its front panel using a white pencil.
In the past 30 years, some truly significant changes have taken place in the way consumers and beauty brands communicate. Whereas consumers at one time responded to mass-market products and packages, today they seek items with more personal appeal. As a result, brand owners must focus more closely on their target customers and ensure that their brand’s marketing—in which packaging plays a major role—is well designed to reach them.
The Consumer Revolution
The decades after World War II saw the golden age of the big brands. During that time, a select number of mega brands grew powerful. Continuing through the early 1990s, advertising was the primary means of delivering a brand’s message. All other forms of brand communication, from public relations to package design, were seen as passive media—mere receptacles created solely for the purpose of supporting a brand’s advertising.
Consumers became increasingly inundated with intrusive mass-market advertising through medium such as television and magazines. As a result, they became weary of mass-market advertising, and a quiet consumer revolution began to take place. Consumers began to screen out unwanted information received through the mass media. It’s no surprise that today’s consumers are increasingly unwilling to accept the invasion of advertising. New technologies such as TiVo, PVRS, and antispam software that allow consumers to edit out unnecessary messages are evidence of this.
Another aspect of the revolution against mass marketing is that consumers no longer want to be marketed to homogeneously. Rather, they seek products that reflect their individual tastes and choices. “In the past, people wanted objects to make them feel part of society,” says Oxford professor Theodore Zeldin, PhD. “Brand-thinking was based on the idea that everyone was becoming more and more like everyone else. Marketers could predict what everyone would like. But with each individual being given more and more choice to buy a variety of different things, people have inevitably become more individualistic—a new order has emerged.”
Today’s Brand
American Eagle Outfitters’ Aura fragrance bottle featured decorative rings that customers can interchange depending on their mood. The role of today’s brand has become to empower consumers to express their individuality. Our research indicates that the categories most affected by these shifts in consumer consciousness are those most closely aligned to personal image projection—including cosmetic and personal care products.
Marketers have woken up to this fact and responded by offering products that address the individual. Owen Walker of Dowell Walker, a UK-based public relations consul-tant for the beauty industry, says, “Individuality is a natural part of the way the whole market has gone, as so many new companies have come into it. The market is not dominated to the same extent by the bigger firms anymore. To grab a piece of that pie, everyone’s got to have a smaller piece and each offering has to be more closely targeted, more niche, and more individual.”
Packaging as the Hero
With customers now screening homogeneous mass-market advertisements, greater importance is now placed on package design and its elements—structure, graphics, texture, materials, and, of course, copy. Design represents the single most powerful investment that brand owners can make in their brands. Packaging has the edge to engage the consumer. Thus, brands have more of an incentive to design their packages so they connect with consumers on an individual level.
Some brands have admirably tried to incorporate the notion of customization and personalization into their packaging. Avon’s mark. brand, for instance, designed its mark.blu fragrance bottle for men with a front panel that customers can write or draw on with a white pencil that comes with the bottle. Tina Leeds, vice president of product development for mark., explains the brand’s concept behind the packaging: “Young people are clamoring to be part of the creative process. They are putting their own spin on fashion by cutting up T-shirts and jeans, decorating and creating [pictures] with camera phones, and communicating through instant messaging. mark.blu combines the trends of text messaging with the need to be unique.”
American Eagle Outfitters also tried to offer customers the option to customize its Aura fragrance bottle. The bottle came with three decorative, flexible rings that customers could interchange on the bottle’s neck, to suit their changing moods.
The other—and perhaps the most-effective—way for brands to build an enduring connection with consumers is to truly understand their target customers. Successful brands are those that understand from the beginning the type of customer they are trying to reach and that ensure their brand message, products, and packaging meet the needs of their customer. Instead of trying to reach everyone with a vague brand message, brands that cater to their niche customer will build a loyal following.
The brands that seem to have successfully achieved this deeper intimacy with the consumer are often smaller niche brands. These brands catch our attention because their packaging is the visible embodiment of the brand’s core message.
Big Brands Go Small
In recent years, big players like Estée Lauder have chosen to acquire already successful niche brands such as Jo Malone and Bobbi Brown. For large brands, adding niche lines to their portfolio is a smart way of diversifying their brand, to reach a range of different types of customers.
Whether brands choose customizable packaging to meet the needs of a wider range of customers or a focused brand message aimed at a smaller niche audience, it’s clear that being able to reach customers on a personal level is crucial for a brand’s survival. A good place to start is to get to know their customer and what type of packaging they like.
Mark Rodgers is insight and brand strategy director for Pearlfisher Inc. (New York City), an award-winning brand design consultant firm. Rodgers heads up LifeModes, Pearlfisher’s future-focused program that translates insight and creative vision into design.
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