Editors’ Choice Award Winner: Personal Care
Olay Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod Anti-Aging Triple Response System
by P&G Beauty
For many consumers, applying skin care products around the eye area can be challenging. Products must be applied gently, without stretching the fragile skin around the eye. P&G Beauty’s new Olay Regenerist Eye Derma-Pod Anti-Aging Triple Response System allows customers to do just that. Each unit-dose Derma-Pod pouch has a built-in foam applicator that makes application easy.
The Derma-Pod is supplier Cardinal Health’s patented DelPouch package. The pouch is made from two pieces of foil laminate, whose edges are heat-sealed together to form a pouch. The 1-in.-diameter circular foam sponge is bonded on.
To use the Derma-Pod, customers must follow a few simple, intuitive steps. First, they must pinch the center of the pouch in order to break a frangible seal. (The frangible seal is an area where the heat seal is weaker than the pouch’s other sealed edges.) With another squeeze, a premeasured dose flows onto the sponge. The sponge can then be used for controlled, direct application, and customers can avoid getting the treatment product on their hands.
The sponge applicator was perfect for Olay’s product. It performs three actions at once. First, it delivers the antiaging product, which reduces the appearance of fine lines and wrinkles. Second, the foam surface exfoliates the skin. Finally, the sponge gently massages to remove excess fluid in the skin around the eye, reducing the appearance of bags.
“This package is a first-class example of how Olay leverages its outside technology sources to win in the marketplace,” says Bill LaSala, section head for Olay global skin care package development. “Cardinal Health had approached us with this package well before we even started the Derma-Pod project.”
LaSala says two factors led to Olay selecting the package for Derma-Pod. “One, the right product idea came along,” he says. The second was that Cardinal Health had finally established production in the United States. This was done because skin care brand Dermalogica had become the first cosmetics brand to use DelPouch, for its Daily Resurfacer product. LaSala says that Olay’s production had to start three months earlier in order to accommodate the large-scale global launch.
Cardinal Health’s capabilities specialist, Bruce Hepke, says that DelPouch’s properties are customized for each new product launch. For instance, Cardinal Health evaluates each product’s viscosity to ensure the foam applicator will express the product. Another challenge is ensuring that the right amount of product is dispensed in each dose. “Some residual product is always left behind in the pouch and in the foam,” he says. “We have to make sure that customers get the full 0.5-g dose stated on the Olay packaging.”
Cardinal Health also produced the secondary carton and its inner tray. The carton has a clear window, and a flip-up panel provides more room for instructions and illustrations. “Because this is such a new package format for the Olay user, consumers told us that they wanted a lot of information on how to use it,” says LaSala.
Awards panelist Dennis Furniss, vice president of strategic branding and design for design firm Kaleidoscope, applauds the Derma-Pod. “I like how Olay looked at this common problem of applying product around the eye and innovated a product around that,” he says.
“Being familiar with this system and how it works, I really like that you’re able to dispense the product directly onto the applicator,” says awards panelist George Kress, vice president of corporate package innovations for The Estée Lauder Companies. “It’s a nice, single-use package.”