Opening Lines
Walking a Fine Line
By Jennifer Kwok, EditorThe year has just begun, and already, a few beauty brands are having a bad start. On January 7, Procter & Gamble filed a trademark-infringement lawsuit against California private-label firm Blue Cross Laboratories. The lawsuit claims that Blue Cross Laboratories’ Herbal Passion shampoo and conditioner packages, sold in dollar-store outlets, violate P&G’s trademarked Herbal Essences hair care packages—in particular, their unique bottle shapes.
At CPC Packaging, we encourage brands to look for inspiration in the innovative packages that we cover, such as those in this issue’s cover story on hair care packaging. But at what point does following design trends become copying?
I asked package designer Joni Rae Russell for her opinion. Russell’s firm, Joni Rae and Associates, fashioned the successful—and highly original—hair care packaging for Pureology and Thermafuse. “It’s an ethical issue,” she says. “A lot of strategy and thinking goes into developing an award-winning brand. Before we start every project, we try to figure out what brands we will be marketing against. And rather than copying any of them, we try to get as far away from [their look] as possible. If you start looking like another brand, you confuse the consumer, and the brands blend. We don’t want a blended brand. We want a unique brand.”
I have seen enough knockoff packages in 99-cents stores to know that there must be a market for these products. And obviously, there are good reasons for name brands to protect their packaging trademarks. Regarding the P&G lawsuit, P&G’s chief legal officer, Jim Johnson, explained in a press release, “We believe this is a clear case of infringement designed to take advantage of [the] consumer loyalty and business growth that P&G developed through the reinvention of its Herbal Essences brand.” (Blue Cross Laboratories did not respond to us with comment at the time this column was published.)
As for CPC Packaging, we look forward to bringing you a number of brand new products this year. Starting with this issue, we introduce our Perspectives column, written firsthand by beauty industry marketers to bring you their thoughts on the hottest topics facing the industry. We also bring you Green Packaging, a new CPC Packaging publication that focuses on the subject on everyone’s mind today—sustainability.
This year, we also welcome three new Editorial Advisory Board members who will work with our editors to ensure that CPC Packaging continues to bring you the most relevant news and coverage.
Finally, mark your calendars for the first Webcast in CPC Packaging’s latest Webcast series, Packaging from the Ground Up. The first Webcast is set to take place this spring.
It’s a fresh new year, full of promise for packaging innovation. We look forward to covering it.