Package Design | packagedesignmag.com

(January 2009) posted on Mon Oct 05, 2009

By Patrick Henry

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End caps. PDQ trays. Pallets. Side kicks. Power wings. Even those who don't know them by their trade names know them by their familiar looks, because everyone who has ever shopped has encountered these ubiquitous sales aids in store aisles.

Merchandising professionals know and respect them as POP (point of purchase) displays—product-bearing installations that rescue packaged goods from the relative anonymity of store shelves and make them highly visible in the thick of the retailing action. For packaging professionals, POP may be something of an afterthought, but that perception doesn't do justice to the fact that a well-designed POP display can be the best friend a well-designed package ever had.

POP displays belong to the category that Veronis Suhler Stevenson (VSS), the media investment firm, calls consumer promotion—a segment that also includes signage, banners, floor graphics, and other kinds of in-store media that advertise but do not contain product as POP structures do. POP, says VSS, is the largest slice of the category, accounting for about $20 billion worth of promotional spending in 2007.

POP appeals to merchandisers because it reaches and influences a captive audience of shoppers at the point of sale—inside the store, where POPAI, the trade group for at-retail marketing, says that 70% of customer purchase decisions are made. POP thus comes into play at the moment of truth where the package either makes or fails to make the connection that triggers the purchase.

Objectives are identical

This means that POP and packaging have identical objectives even though they typically follow different paths into the store. Like good packaging, good POP strives to be cost-efficient, visually attractive, versatile, and "green"—attributes that probably will deepen brand owners' reliance on POP in an economically challenging time for retailing.

Although they eventually come together in aisles, on counter tops, and elsewhere in the store, packages and POP displays seldom proceed from the same creative brief. George Moretti, vice president and general manager, Smurfit-Stone Image Pac, notes that the greater speed-to-market requirements of packaging usually rule out simultaneous design. But in cases where packaging and POP can be created in tandem, he says, brand owners will get better-than-expected brand- image presentation and, as a result, stronger product sales.