Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Fragrance
Energise from HUGO by Hugo Boss
by P&G Prestige Products
The bottle for Hugo Boss’s Energise from HUGO fragrance is designed to convey the notion of energy. The bottle achieves this by resembling a battery. One of the package’s most eye-catching elements is a striking red cylinder that covers the dispenser’s dip tube.
“The dip tube visually conveys the idea of ‘infusing’ energy into the juice, which is tinted with a hint of red,” says Thomas Burkhardt, associate marketing director for HUGO at P&G Prestige Products.
The package was designed by Innovia Technology. P&G’s product development team in London worked closely with suppliers based all over Europe in order to solve many technical challenges.
The glass bottle has a short, squat profile and is supplied by SaintGobain Desjonquères. The bottle is not completely round. It has some unique features that can’t be seen unless the bottle is turned to its side. The bottle’s back wall is flat and approximately 2 in. wide. This wall tapers at the bottle’s bottom. The shape of the glass gives the bottle a very ergonomic feel, allowing customers to grasp it tightly and effortlessly while their fingers automatically slide into a comfortable position on the actuator.
An innovatively engineered spray-through cap helps make the design concept work. “The nozzle on the integrated actuator cap doesn’t move, differentiating it from other actuators, which are usually only semiintegrated,” says Burkhardt.
The brushed-aluminum cap and actuator are anodized matte silver. Both are produced by Seidel. “It was key to use real metal, rather than metallized plastic, because the cap is an essential link to the image of a battery,” explains Burkhardt.
The cap—including the pump—comprises 13 different parts. Despite its complexity, the cap’s design was necessary in order to minimize the height of the bottle, which was a design requirement.
Accommodating the bottle’s extremely low neck by fitting the pump inside it, instead of on top, was no easy task. “In order to accomplish this, a custom spring mechanism had to be developed,” says Boris Schaefer, director of customer relations for Seidel. Rexam Dispensing Systems produced the complex spray-through actuator assembly.
CPC Packaging’s awards panelists were impressed with the package. “Spray-through caps are always very difficult to achieve,” comments Henry Renella, vice president of package development for The Estée Lauder Companies.
Maiken Erstad, design director for Dragon Rouge, tells us she immediately felt drawn to this package when it first launched in stores. “I found myself trying to pry the cap apart with a kitchen knife to see how it was put together,” she says.
Seidel assembled all of the package’s parts except the glass. “We were able to assemble this package by mechanically fitting all of the metal and plastic parts together. They click together without the use of glue,” explains Schaefer.
Everyone involved with the project had to work together in order to engineer this difficult design. “Technical expertise, superior engineering, and very efficient coordination among all of the suppliers selected for this project made it possible for this challenging creative concept to become a reality,” says Eric Desmaris, marketing manager for Rexam Dispensing Systems.