Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Personal Care
Herbal Essences Hair Care Line
by P&G Beauty
The Herbal Essences brand relaunched globally last year in newly designed packages. Modern hues and curvy bottle shapes look so appealing on store shelves that shoppers have literally stopped in their tracks to take a second look. This was exactly the reaction that P&G Beauty’s experts hoped for when working on this project.
Herbal Essences shampoo is packaged in a bottle, and the conditioner is in a tottle. The bottles and tottles have complementing curves to imply that both products are part of a system and should be used together. “The structural shapes have a nice yin-and-yang connection,” observes awards panelist Dennis Furniss, vice president of strategic branding and design for Kaleidoscope.
Supplier Apla Inc. experienced a steep learning curve during manufacturing due to the curvature of the PET bottles and tottles, according to Paul Crabtree, global packaging development section manager at P&G Beauty.
Awards panelist Hana Zalzal, president of Cargo Cosmetics, finds the packages’ colors appealing. “They remind me of jelly beans,” she says. The translucent shampoo bottles look pink, blue, green, red, and orange—but the bottles were only molded in pink and blue. The range of colors is caused by the color of the different products combined with the packaging.
Clariant Masterbatches helped achieve the packages’ colors. “Realizing that the product inside is an unexpected color adds an element of surprise,” says Krista Schwartz, global design manager at P&G Beauty. “It was challenging to make sure the tinting levels were consistent.”
Research played an integral role in the development of these packages. P&G Beauty’s multifunctional Initiative team, which included members of its design and packaging departments, spent an enormous amount of time studying consumers’ habits. “We lived with the consumer for months. We shopped with her at the mall. We found out what she loved and hated,” says Schwartz.
Certain aspects of the line are based on cosmetic packages because research revealed that consumers would rather shop for makeup than hair care products. The bottles and tottles have custom-colored flip-top caps supplied by Seaquist Closures. “This premium closure helps give the consumer an experience that more closely resembles that of using a cosmetic product,” says Crabtree. Shimmery Nights Gel, a portable hair styling product, is packaged in a lip gloss tube supplied by Universal Packaging Systems Inc.
Testing also revealed that consumers love to have a reason to stay in the shower. “We added a daily quiz on the packages. There are questions on the shampoo bottle and answers on the conditioner tottle,” Schwartz says. The packages are decorated with a holographic icon and a pressure-sensitive label supplied by CCL Label.
Awards panelist George Kress, vice president of corporate package innovations for The Estée Lauder Companies, was impressed with P&G’s amount of investigative research. “Taking those steps to really understand what the customer does with the package during the life cycle of the product is tremendous,” he says.
While working on this project, the P&G team faced tough deadlines. “This was the fastest new bottle design I’ve ever witnessed,” says Crabtree. “It took about three months to finalize the design—and normally it can take up to two years. This was a true testament to how well our collaborative process works.”
Awards panelist Peter Hargraves, section head for Procter & Gamble global packaging and device development, cosmetics, says he was personally very excited about the launch and the look of the new packages. “Our designers did a wonderful job,” he says.