Product containers are more than just protective shells used for transportation and storage. They’re powerful tools for attracting attention from shoppers who face crowded displays.
Compelling box and wrapping concepts can convey your brand’s identity while standing out on crammed racks in checkout counters and vast wholesale warehouse aisles.
To maintain and expand market presence, it’s vital to invest in continuous parcel innovation. Continue reading as we examine successful modifications that crushed performance benchmarks.
The Motivations Behind Package Rebranding
As product life cycles advance, it often becomes apparent through hard numbers data that the “message” is no longer getting through. Customers get exposed to new alternatives that weren’t available when their favorite brands hit the shelf.
So they figure, “Hey, this one is on sale, the package looks cool, I’ll give it a try and see how things go”.
If your competitor’s widget does what the buyer wanted, and the pricing continues to beat yours, then you’ve got a problem. This is a fair assumption, but there’s more going on which we’ll get into in the following sections.
Suffice to say, spending valuable time and resources to keep your containers on the cutting edge of technology is worthwhile in the long term.
Evolving Consumer Expectations
Today’s customers are increasingly savvy and sensitive to things such as convenience, ease of use, and sustainability.
They want a package that doesn’t take a science degree to open, protects the product, provides ample information, safety data, and doesn’t harm our environment.
It should also be attractive, lightweight, and easy to notice in-store.
Because nearly all the goods you’ll find at the local market have stiff competition from online e-commerce giants, it’s vital to satisfy as many shopper requirements as you can since they can just as easily stay home and click the buy button for a growing number of competing inventory.
Using earth-friendly solutions is one way to rethink your strategy. It appeals to increasingly environmentally aware consumers, improving your brand reputation.
Opting to use biodegradables, recyclables, and reusable alternatives lets you reduce your brand's waste and environmental impact.
Name and Logo Distinction
Another motivation for packaging redesign is to help your brand stand out within crowded in-store environments.
Using bold visuals, new raw materials, and interesting shapes, you’ll increase visibility, get customers to physically handle your product, and hopefully place it in their carts for purchase.
Perhaps your brand already has a decent presence, but you feel a message reinforcement is needed to stay fresh in legacy customer’s minds while you also cultivate interest from newer generations.
Using surveys and focus group testing, you can introduce potential redesign concepts and choose the best-performing entries.
What ideas would you test? Perhaps a modern version of your logo, giving your company a new visual identity that catches attention.
Long time followers might say, “Hey, I wonder what’s going on here with XYZ brand. Let me revisit this item and see what they have in store for the future”.
Refreshing your color palettes is another option while being careful not to stray too far from the main designs with which everyone associates your brand.
Experimenting with your legacy fonts and typography can help you keep up with evolving tastes, provided you tailor it to your target audience.
If your product line caters to a male-dominant base, you might go for a "masculine" look and feel, similar to what large construction equipment or aftermarket performance automobile accessory brands use.
Conversely, for female audiences, you might want to trigger certain emotions with traditionally feminine colors and fonts, depending on your niche. For example, baby clothes, beauty and wellness, clothing and appearance accessories, etc.
Functionality Upgrades
User experience is a considerable factor contributing to package redesign. Consumers often become frustrated with a container’s limitations.
Many items have superior attributes but customers disapprove of them because the box is difficult to open, doesn’t reseal properly, or breaks during transport, causing damage to the contents.
Imagine losing market share because your product, which customers love, arrives in a cheap container that wasn’t properly tested.
In marketing courses, they teach you to identify your customer's pain points and then offer proven solutions to rectify those issues. Current technology allows for improved containers that prioritize security, tamper resistance, and freshness.
By spending significant time and money to design a package worthy of the product's value and usefulness, you'll cultivate consumer trust and loyalty.
Today's society is fast-paced, and people have less and less free time to waste by sending damaged purchases back to the manufacturer. Ensure your customer base doesn't sour on your brand's reputation due to poor user experience caused by substandard packaging.
How often should you re-evaluate your brand’s current packaging?
While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer, you should consider your niche’s historical trends and product life cycle. Rapidly changing industries like food and fashion might require more frequent updates to stay relevant and appealing to broad customer bases.
Many corporations adhere to a predetermined interval, ranging between every 1 to 3 years, with wiggle room based on unforeseen events, economic challenges, or changing strategic goals.
Marketing Initiatives
Finally, packaging redesigns often coincide with new or updated advertising campaigns.
These programs might relate to seasonal and holiday promotions, new product intros, or mid-model year refreshes.
Maintaining visual consistency with container appearance and, for example, TV spots or online initiatives enhances consumer brand recall.
An exciting and now mainstream merchandising genre is User Generated Content (UGC), where affiliate marketing partners produce unboxing videos, allowing your containers to take center stage.
These short-form clips allow potential customers to see first hand how the person interacts with the item; in a sense it’s a “make or break” moment for the brand’s packaging.
User generated content (UGC) is now a staple on nearly all social media platforms, where affiliate marketing allows potential customers to watch product unboxing videos.
These short-form clips are the "stage" where your packaging's performance either makes or breaks your brand.
Mapping Out Your Package Redesign Strategy
Gather Market Intel
Specifying Milestones
Use an Effective Brand Narrative
Implementing the Packaging Overhaul
Fabrication and Manufacturing
Prior to discarding your current layouts, develop an outline detailing the goals and parameters for measuring success or failure.
Let’s examine potential milestones on the journey to a revamped product container line.
Gather Market Intel
Your package design specialist can help you analyze the currently available materials in terms of ink, paper, fasteners, plastics, and in-store displays. Review things such as photography, color palettes, logos, and typography.
Depending on how long it’s been since you introduced your current designs, a lot can change. 1 to 5 years is an eternity when it comes to technology–no matter if we’re discussing smartphones, paper and plastic containers, point-of-purchase displays, or automobiles.
Chances are there’s been ground-breaking innovations that can help your brand source the highest quality packaging, custom-tailored to your product lines.
Factor in your customer’s perspectives, particularly from important segments such as ages 18-30, 45+.
Any improvements you can provide which improves their experience goes a long way towards improving relations and your brand’s reputation.
Specifying Milestones
To navigate towards a successful redesign, establish realistic objectives that break down your long-term aspirations into manageable chunks.
For instance, if you’d like to design a new trade show display by July 2025, monthly or quarterly sub-goals might include designing the background lighting, deciding on how many video monitors to install, or writing the content for promotional documents accompanying your new packages.
Use an Effective Brand Narrative
The updated initiative should include a unique yet relevant message. For example, if your company is introducing new packaging for nutritional supplements, you might tailor it towards those folks who value an active, on-the-go lifestyle. They enjoy extensive travel, so they need containers that withstand the rigors of flying and weather changes and also provide adequate tamper-resistant attributes.
Implementing the Packaging Overhaul
Once the new design roadmap is documented, the next phase is to execute the plan followed by a rollout of the update.
Here is where your team will bring the new design to fruition, perhaps with an initial set of prototypes, evaluating functionality, printing, and finalizing a working version based on feedback from user acceptance testers.
UAT participants should be unbiased individuals selected from a broad segment of your consumer base.
They will receive design concepts and evaluate them for a time period long enough to form opinions and initial reactions so that engineers can glean real-world feedback to further refine subsequent revisions.
Objective input is essential for grasping consumers' perception of the new design elements like the imagery, color schemes, package shapes, and overall appeal.
It helps pinpoint which pieces resonated the most with UAT members and where further refinements might be necessary.
This data-focused approach ensures the final version will meet the design objectives of furthering the brand’s identity while maximizing consumer appeal.
Fabrication and Manufacturing
Once a final design is set, assembly can begin as soon as raw materials and other elements of the selection are sourced.
The configuration specs guide the precise production of each component, including labels, inner/outer wraps, cardboard structures, possible accessories, and protective cushioning.
Parallel to these efforts, your marketing team should update the configuration of other channels to reflect any changes to color palettes, content, logos, and typography.
This includes print and online advertisements, in-house websites, vehicle branding, and also updating your staff on how to handle questions from the public.
Introducing the redesign requires strategic outreach efforts and may involve several avenues previously mentioned, including social media, radio, and affiliate marketing partners.
Recent Packaging Redesign Achievements
Consumer product container overhauls play a vital role in refreshing brand identities and adapting to ever-changing consumer preferences.
Across all industries, successful redesigns not only reflect innovations in layouts and functionality but also respond to environmental concerns.
DesignAnalytics hosts an annual competition which recognizes recent redesign success stories using a data-driven judging process as opposed to subjective criteria. In this contest format, marketplace sales performance and demanding consumer acceptance testing decide the winners and losers.
These transformation stories illustrate how strategic package reimagination can propel brands forward as they capture customer attention and cultivate brand loyalty in competitive venues, both in-store and online.
The latest results feature a familiar brand, Hot Pockets. This microwavable snack has been around since 1983 and, throughout its existence, was a parental favorite due to its convenience.
Source: Design Analytics
However, as time passed, the packaging seemed to fall behind market preferences. The food was still favored by kids, but brand owner Nestle acknowledged that it would be better for sales if they could add appeal to a slightly older demographic, 13 to 17-year-olds, in addition to the busy parents who had typically purchased the food for its ease in preparation.
Using subtle changes in color palettes, fonts, and photography, the redesign team achieved their goal–to win over purchasers and eaters with a more “self-assured, committed, and strategic version of what the brand already was, rather than a complete packaging transformation”.
The results speak for themselves. Six months after the rollout, Hot Pockets posted a 39% sales increase year over year!.
Nestle recognized that while support from parents was virtually guaranteed because of the convenience factor, "Teens can smell BS from brands, and they demand authenticity."
So they chose to improve on the previous version, which was already a proven winner, with simple changes reflecting modern design tastes.
Source: Oreos
Other examples include Oreo cookies, which in 2021 improved sustainability and modernized its brand image with new food packaging that featured an eco-friendly approach using recyclable materials without compromising on safety.
Source: Design Analytics
The Coca-Cola Zero Sugar beverage unified its global brand identity using a new design that simplified its message with a bold and modern new look while emphasizing its healthier ingredients list.
Source: Design Analytics
Lay’s used a redesigned package to improve customer engagement by allowing consumers to personalize chip bags with their own stories and photos, improving brand loyalty.
Tide laundry detergent upgraded the functionality and sustainability of their bottles with a new cap design which improved pouring and reduced spills. They also implemented a concentrated formula which reduced packaging waste, appealing to environmentally conscious consumers.
Source: Design Analytics
Finally, Hershey's Candy updated their chocolate bar wrappers to reflect a more contemporary look while maintaining its iconic brand identity.
Embracing Innovation: The Impact of Strategic Package Redesigns
Through case studies like Hot Pockets' demographic focus shift, Oreo's sustainable cookie bags, and Coke's unified global branding for Zero Sugar, we can see firsthand how rethinking labels and packaging shapes can not only refresh a brand's image but also deeply resonate with consumers.
If your packaging is due for an overhaul, our marketing and engineering teams at Catalpha are always here to help you to bring your visions to life with innovative solutions tailored to enhance brand appeal and consumer engagement.
Get in touch with our team at Catalpha today to find out how we can help you to win on the retail shelves with your next packaging redesign.
