Industry News: Ease Luxury Customers Into Sustainable Packaging, Advises Panel
Luxe Pack panel members, from left to right: moderator Marc Rosen, The Young Group’s Karen Young, Estée Lauder’s Henry Renella, Utley’s Inc.’s George Utley, and Risdon International’s Steve Pearlman.A marketing message centered on green packaging may only befit some luxury beauty brands, said a panel at a Luxe Pack New York trade show conference on May 21.
“Are luxury consumers ready for a radical swing in the look of their packaging? The answer is no,” said panel speaker Henry Renella, senior vice president of packaging for The Estée Lauder Companies.
To ease the transition, luxury marketers can discreetly move toward eco-friendly packaging, without making sustainability the main marketing message, he said. “Advertising your green package is a personal choice. Luxury consumers may desire luxury before sustainability, but we can still do something to the packaging to make it more sustainable—for instance, producing it using renewable energy.”
Not all Estée Lauder brands advertise the fact that their packaging has become greener, said Renella. For instance, when Donna Karan launched its Gold fragrance bottle, Estée Lauder did not make the package’s sustainability the main focus of its marketing campaign. (The bottle features metal and glass parts that can be separated for recycling.) Instead, marketing focused on the luxury of the Donna Karan Brand. (Directions on how to separate the package’s components, however, were included with the package.)
Renella added that some Estée Lauder brands’ highly eco-friendly packaging, such as Aveda’s Uruku lipstick container made with 90% postconsumer recycled materials, would not fit in with upscale Lauder lines such as the luxurious Estée Lauder flagship line.
“You have to know your customer,” said panel speaker Karen Young, CEO of beauty marketing firm The Young Group and former executive for Lâncome and Estée Lauder. “If a luxury brand like Estée Lauder started making its marketing about the environment first instead of luxury, its consumers might not identify the message with the DNA of the brand. Aveda can; Lauder can’t. We do need to educate consumers, but it has to be on a brand-by-brand basis so that we don’t all feel like we’re being greenwashed. Our antennas are now up on greenwashing.”