What a Packaging Makeover Can Do For Your Company

Branding consists of a range of different but strongly interconnected activities that are all geared towards creating a lasting, positive impression in the minds of consumers that will ultimately be good for business. Branding experts like Richard Bates, Senior Partner and Executive Creative Director of the Brand Integration Group (BIG) at Ogilvy & Mather, stress that the branding process is like telling a story, and absolutely everything contributes to the narrative.

Product packaging, though just one part of the process, is considered the most important by many. "Packaging is the number one medium to communicate the brand," states Laurent Hainaut, founder of design agency, Raison Pure. "You need to pay attention to this area in your branding strategy because it is the first thing someone sees, touches, and essentially buys. Packaging is often more than a medium -- it can be part of the product."

Many companies aim to rebrand themselves: revamping their image and attracting a new or wider audience, primarily by calling in design experts to modify their product packaging and their overall look.

Anaezi Modu, founder of Rebrand, strongly emphasizes the importance of packaging in the process of rebranding, however she cautions: "Rebranding a product isn’t just about repackaging. Branding is a holistic experience and packaging is a key part of the overall branding process -- it has to be consistent with what the brand stands for."

She adds: "Packaging cannot be done in isolation. It's all about who a company is, what it is targeting, what its challenges are… Employees have to be incorporated into the repackaging process because quite often they are the first line of contact and the company has to be aware of the message that is being communicated at every single point of contact."

Case in point: the Brand Integration Group's work for Motorola. "Motorola came to us around the time that they realized that cell phones aren’t just electronics -- they are symbols of fashion and lifestyles," recalls Bates. He explains that BIG's approach to the Motorola project was to treat a cell phone like "a precious object, a piece of jewelry," and package it accordingly.

Bates points out that with up-scale retailers like Tiffany, half of what the consumer pays for is a beautiful blue box with a white bow. "Packaging has the potential to make or break a product." He cites the iPhone and Chanel's packaging as examples, explaining that the high sheen lacquer finish of the latter's cosmetic product packaging "fingerprints like crazy: when I watch a woman hold a Chanel compact, she is constantly burnishing it and making it beautiful. The nature of the packaging engages the consumer with the product -- the interaction just adds to the story." He also surmises that the black polishing cloth included with the iPhone could elicit a similar consumer product relationship.

The branding experts who talked to Fast Company seem to unanimously agree that companies that want people to pay a premium for their products need to package them accordingly. But repackaging does not necessarily imply addition or enhancement: "Sometimes it's about stripping away the layers to discover why a product was successful in the first place, about finding the core element and unleashing it from the burdens of some of its marketing initiatives," explains Bates.

He cites Senior VP at Johnson & Johnson Chris Hacker's handling of a project to differentiate Rembrandt from other toothpastes as a prime example of rebranding through simplification. "The approach to Rembrandt consisted of pulling back -- communicating something simple and clean. The new strategy gave them a bold, fresh look and saved the company all the money it would otherwise have spent on glitter-ink."

A simple end result does not necessarily imply a simple process of creation and implementation, however -- even a basic branding strategy aimed at producing clear, bold messages and design needs to be a multi-faceted team effort in order to be effective. "Good packaging is the result of good collaboration between marketing, advertising, design, the supply chain and other teams. It is a very complex process that involves several teams and levels of people," states Hainaut.