Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Sample Packaging
Heal Thyself ScentPaks
by Noah’s Naturals
Aromatherapy products can be a tough sell in mass-market stores. Marketers have difficulty conveying aromatherapy’s benefits to customers without the use of product samples. This was a problem for Noah’s Naturals, whose Heal Thyself aromatherapy line sells at Wal-Mart. “In an environment in which testers were not realistic, we needed to come up with another solution,” says Jeff Buchbinder, chief marketing officer for Noah’s Naturals. The brand’s solution was the ScentPak.
ScentPak is a patented pocket-sized fragrance sampler that emits a puff of scented air when it is squeezed. It allows customers to smell a fragrance without having to spray on the actual perfume—a benefit for customers who are leery of trying on a fragrance that they might not like.
Lee Cuthbert, founder of IntelliScents LLC, invented the ScentPak. At the time he conceived the idea, Cuthbert was vice president of sales for ScentAir, a company that markets machines for dispersing scented air in retail environments. “One day, I was in a taxicab that smelled terrible,” says Cuthbert. “I sniffed one of the test tubes containing scented blotter paper, which we carried for presentations. I thought, wouldn’t it be great if there were a portable package for scented air?”
Cuthbert took his idea to Consumer Product Innovations LLC, which helped him develop the prototype. Each ScentPak comprises a flat, hollow plastic pouch in an outer envelope. The pouch contains fragrance-saturated blotter paper, which scents the air in the pouch. When customers squeeze the pouch, scented air is emitted through a small hole in the pouch. After the pouch has been squeezed, it returns to its original shape, drawing air back into the pouch, ready for the next squeeze. Each ScentPak delivers up to 50,000 scented puffs.
The entire pouch slips into an outer envelope made from laminated cardstock. The pouch’s air hole faces the envelope’s open end.
“I think it’s brilliant,” says awards panelist Peter Hargraves, section head for Procter & Gamble global packaging and device development, cosmetics.
“The presentation is nicely done,” adds panelist George Kress, vice president of corporate package innovations for The Estée Lauder Companies.
Cuthbert’s friend, Bob Goehrke, introduced Noah’s Naturals to ScentPak. His company, International Products Group (IPG), did contract manufacturing and packaging for Noah’s Naturals. For Wal-Mart, IPG designed a point-of-purchase display onto which three ScentPaks, each representing one of Heal Thyself’s scents, are tethered.
Awards panelist Hana Zalzal, founder of Cargo Cosmetics, says, “It’s fun enough that I think people will linger at the display and try all of them.”
“The display allowed us to bring aromatherapy to the masses and educate them in a way that is fun and interactive,” adds Goehrke.