Package Design | packagedesignmag.com

(March 2008) posted on Sun Sep 27, 2009

By Jerry W. Thomas

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The market is changing, and the time has come to redesign the package of that old established brand. This will revitalize the brand, the marketing manager supposes. Or, a new product with great promise emerges from the laboratory, and a new package must be created from scratch. In both of these instances, the process of developing a new package tends to be the same. The package design firm attempts to get the client (the brand manager, the new products manager, the marketing vice president, etc.) to lay out the vision for the new package.

In a perfect world, the client would have a clear vision and accurately communicate this vision (meaning marketing goals and packaging objectives) to the package designers. However, the manufacturer's vision is often clouded with confusion and omission, and the result is no direction or poor direction for the new package design work.

Recognizing the pitfalls

Regardless of the clarity of the manufacturer's vision, the package design firm goes off, ponders the vagaries of the universe, and creates 20 or 30 rough designs for the new package. Typically, these designs are screened by the marketing executives, and a few designs are chosen for further development. These finalists then go through another round of managerial reviews, and a new design is chosen, based on the "expert" judgment of the marketing staff.

The stage is now properly set for a marketing disaster, because poor package design is often a major cause of marketing failure.

If the marketing professionals had flawless judgment, marketing meltdowns could be avoided. Unfortunately, marketing departments are never smart enough to see the market, or the new package, through the eyes of the average consumer. The marketing staff knows too much and is blinded by that knowledge. The marketing staff is biased by the mythologies of their profession, industry, and company.

The marketing staff is rarely similar to, or representative of, the ultimate consumers of the product (the marketing professionals tend to be much better educated and much higher in income than their customers). Also, marketing folks are often shielded by the corporate bureaucracy from the realities of the messy, helter-skelter marketplace. Lastly, two or three marketing executives are too small a sample for their decisions to be statistically reliable.

So, marketing executives and their judgments cannot be trusted. Can we turn to research for assistance, or is the research itself flawed?