Package Design | packagedesignmag.com

(September 2007) posted on Thu Sep 17, 2009

By Simon Gainey

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I frequently encounter brands, businesses, and clients who have heard the story that packaging could be The Answer, and they are on a mission for innovation. Left unguided, they apply a "scatter gun" approach to this quest in the hope that they will stumble across something that meets the "must be innovative" checklist of their bosses, that has never been seen before, or that feels like a "Wow." The calling cry for help becomes: "We need packaging innovation!"

So what happens next? An ideation team is formed, and on a rainy afternoon in some airless conference the team huddles to ideate. The die is now cast and the process seems to take on a familiar air. Somebody brings in a few bags of packaging from their local grocery store, suppliers are squeezed for their best ideas, ideas are sketched and scribbled, and manufacturing squirms as team members let their minds free spin.

Ideas are then ranked against harsh criteria: "Is it new, innovative, and a Wow?" After the top five ideas are selected, pretty pictures are drawn. If any of these ideas makes it through the wider "Can we make it?" net, test-market consumers deflate, pick apart, and reject the ideas in the last 10 minutes of focus groups. Sound familiar?

What happens next is another round of "innovation." A new team is chartered, the agency contacted, suppliers pushed, new ideas created, prototypes developed but someone always says: "We can't make these" or "These are not innovative enough." It's a never-ending cycle. The need to quickly satisfy internal perceptions of innovation, inexperience, ego, and a lack of understanding produces a lackluster set of results.

The problem with this all too familiar approach is fundamental. It's like building a car without a means of propulsion or house without foundations. The first fault is that this process is not consumer-focused. Package innovation needs to be driven by a deep, intimate understanding of your consumer and their relationship and experience through the "cycle of use" (from store to disposal). Second guessing, focus group thoughts, generic needs, and personal experience really count for very little when it comes to mining for change.