CapsuleBlog

We witnessed a stunning waste

Aaron walked into the office this morning holding a mysterious Blackberry-sized box.

"BRING THIS PHONE INTO ONE OF OUR STORES AND TRADE FOR A FREE BLACKBERRY CURVE" it screamed. He informed us that it appeared every house in his neighborhood had been slammed with the promotion. The box contained a retail display unit of a Blackberry 8830, courtesy of Verizon. A retail display unit is a mock phone - it looks exactly like the real deal, feels the same, weighs the same, and probably takes almost as much material and energy to construct as a working model. How many people actually still believe in the "this phone is free!!!" concept? I think most of us long ago cracked onto the fact that you simply pay for them over the duration of the contract, disguised in other fees.

So. What is Aaron now supposed to do with this thing? Seeing as it is mixed media and cannot be simply placed in his home recycling bin, is he supposed to try to locate an adequate recycling facility and bring it there? Do you think he appreciates for this imposition on his time?

This got his attention, sure. Long enough to bring it into Capsule, dump it on my desk, and suggest we rant about it. But, unlike a two year old child, we expect Verizon to be aware that there's a difference between positive attention, and the opposite. Inspiring feelings of admiration, trust and energy in your consumers is preferable to anger, inconvenience and eye-rolling, yes?

Who moved my gorgonzola, damn it?

(Or, navigating the navigation - a packaging essential)

Walk into a retail environment and look around. Start counting the brands you can identify and those you can't. If you start to feel like you're counting stars in the sky (minus the romance), you're getting it.

Navigating in the age of pirates and treasure chests involved the challenge of crossing vast oceans. Today, consumers face the overwhelming task of navigating vast megastores instead, stocked with brands and packages from all over the world.

Help the pirate reach your treasure trove by considering the importance of navigation when packaging your product and releasing it to the open market.

What happens when a consumer walks down the aisle? Exactly how is your package happily tossed into her cart? By using design tools, consumer are given navigation clues to reach the destination you set out for them. There are navigation elements that help move them through the category of options. And there are elements that get them to the exact SKU within your display of options.

Navigation involves visual clues like type, color, pattern, words, shapes and anything else visible. Some parts of a package serve to connect it to the larger family of products, while other elements make the package utterly distinctive. The full effect of these elements can only be understood by looking at the category as a whole, i.e. context matters.

And what about the aisle experience? Until you spend time observing and analyzing why consumers do what they do, it may appear that they're behaving quite erratically. Consumer behavior may seem irrational until ideas surface that address the behavior, and then the consumers are rational and valuable to the brand manager who achieves this greater understanding.

To learn more about the other essential factors of good packaging, check out our latest book, Design Matters // Packaging 01.

Capsule's Brian Adducci on the Dieline blog

Hop on over to the world's #1 packaging design blog to check out our creative principal's column on experience design and packaging.

Earth Day - sustainable packaging news

In honor of Earth Day, let's take a look at the Frito-Lay fully compostable Sunchips bag made from plant-based materials.

Frito-Lay introduced a significant rebranding earlier this year after researching women's attitudes and emotions around snacking. While it was found that women snack more than men, they are not choosing Frito-Lay products as their snacks. New packaging, flavors and an ad campaign have been introduced in an effort to sway women away from their celery sticks and/or brownies. (Frito-Lay research found that women snack 14 percent of the time on salty foods. They snack 25 percent of the time on sweet foods; the other 61 percent of snacking includes drinks, fruits and vegetables. Oprah would be proud.)

Sunchips has been one of the company's best-selling products, and it's also the focus for a pretty revolutionary packaging concept. I aplaud Frito-Lay for this innovation, set to launch next year. Good stuff. Hopefully they'll be the leaders of an entirely new movement.

Tropicana lost 20% in sales with redesign

Adage today wrote about the sales figures that equaled doom for the new packaging design. When the new packaging was released, unit sales dropped by 20 per cent in around 6 weeks.

The kicker for me was that 19 per cent of dollar sales for Tropicana - this is orange juice, people, not toilet paper - cost the company "tens of millions". Who's buying all of this orange juice?!

It's fairly unusual for a company to pull the plug on new package design so quickly, and so when the dump was announced (I blogged about it here) there was much speculation as to why. Obviously, it all boils down to numbers.

It makes me really curious about the Pepsi cola redesign (blogged here) and the effect that it must have had on sales. This redesign set the design world on fire with controversy. It got a very lukewarm response from the Capsule designers, to put it politely. And yet for it not to be pulled in the same way as Tropicana was, it must be selling relatively well. Or, there are some stubborn people in charge of the brand.

Does anyone know any more about this?

Fuss, fumble and fluster free.

Amazon has come up with a pretty fantastic idea and one that, now that I think about it, seems really obvious. Why hasn't anyone done this before?

The Frustration-Free Package (on the left) is recyclable and comes without excess packaging materials such as hard plastic clamshell casings, plastic bindings, and wire ties. It's designed to be opened without the use of a box cutter or knife and will protect your product just as well as traditional packaging (on the right).

And with Christmas coming up, it's especially brilliant. There are the environmental benefits, obviously, with less junk sitting in our landfills for eons. But it's also perfect for parents that don't want to spend hours trying to break into that plastic stuff (and then step on the shards of it that get stuck in the carpet). Why do they make toy packaging strong enough to resist mauling by a grizzly?

(This is something I can personally claim to be befuddled by - put me in a tent + pitch black night + loud scary bear noises + plastic entombed bear mace - scissors = not a happy camper.)

 

Tweeny, pretty packaging

I have a weakness, and that weakness is cosmetics... out of sheer curiosity last night I counted the number of lip glosses and lipsticks in my purse - and that count came to eleven. That doesn't include the stuff in the car, in my workdesk drawer etc.

Do I really need eleven goopy glosses in various shades of pink with and without shimmer, moisturizing properties and shine? No. But I'm a sucker... each gloss is a quick little hit of retail therapy and I'll use them all, I swear, by the time I'm 80.

Part of the appeal of new makeup for me is the packaging. The sleek stuff (ala Bobbi Brown) I like best, but I'll also throw in a dash of vintage cutesy such as Stila. I both dread and drool over the Sephora emails that arrive all too often, because they mean my bank account will suffer.

There is, however, a limit, and the new range of Gwen Stefani's fragrance line, Harajuku Lovers, crosses the line for me.

Priced from $25, the packaging is more tweeny than the latest Hannah Montana Halloween costume:

Thoughts?

Another Bloody Water

Really, that's what they've called themselves.

Personal opinions on the evils of the bottled water industry aside, I like this bottle. Specifically, I like the name and the copy on the back. The shape is lack-luster,conventional, and a yawn. However, all is well and good because these lads knew where to stick their schtick.

The messaging is spot-on. It's irreverent, dry, witty, funny, and slightly combative; everything I like in a good dose of product copy. In this over-crowded market you need to stand behind your product. Get a little Napoleon with your tone. Be too big for your britches. Read on here, and here.

Clean Sweep

Designboom's latest packaging competition asked designers to update the packaging for Mr. Clean (otherwise known as Maestro Limpio) to improve usage, reduce product waste and promote reusability. Check out the winners.

Oops!

Sometimes a mistake makes for a killer story and great fun. Packaging Design Magazine explores the intriguing story behind (oops) brand wine. It's cute, in a Britney Spears pre-meltdown way - a little charm, a little sex-appeal.