Package Design | packagedesignmag.com

(May 2010) posted on Fri Jun 11, 2010

By Patrick Henry

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“Web 2.0” is the general term for the tools that let people build social and business connections, share information, and collaborate on projects online. It also encompasses an evolving set of rules that everyone connected with branded packaging is learning to play by.

Surveys and studies tracking the adoption of Web 2.0 by consumer product companies are rife, but they all say essentially the same thing: today, product promotion that doesn’t leverage the mass-marketing potential of Facebook, Twitter, and other popular social networking channels is product promotion with a crucial piece missing. A cross-section of experts in brand management and marketing told Package Design Magazine about their strategies for making the most of Web 2.0 on behalf of the products they make or represent.

Amy Graver, president and creative director of Elements, has added Twitter and Facebook to her agency’s resources for branding, design, and marketing communications services. MySpace, in her opinion, “isn’t deemed as professional” as the others and caters to a younger, less business-focused audience. For Pangea Organics, which makes soaps, creams, lotions, and other organic body care products, the channels are Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. (Although, says founder and CEO Joshua Onysko, it tends to “sorely underuse” the latter two.)

“Almost every brand we deal with has some sort of representation on Twitter and Facebook at this point,” says Bill Goodwin, founder and CEO, Goodwin Design Group, a brand strategy and design firm specializing in kids’ and youth markets. He also sees potential usefulness in Plaxo, an online contact manager, and Foursquare, a friend locator for mobile phone users.

Don’t scintillate? Don’t bother
Maurice Flynn is the social media and marketing expert at www.MarketingInnovationToday.com, a not-for-profit organization supporting learning opportunities for marketing and commercial professionals. A contrarian, he advises against doing anything at all with social media when there is no fresh content to communicate.

“If you just want to repeat the same tired sales and marketing messages you play out endlessly in other channels then you should avoid all social media channels,” he says. The challenge of social media for “big, boring, lazy brands,” according to Flynn, is to develop messages that actually will be relevant to the consumers they encounter in Facebook and elsewhere.