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Wow! What a Package!
 by David Luttenberger

Well Integrated Design Elements Let WD-40 Anniversary Package Work Like A Well-Oiled Machine

There are some things I just don’t get: the South’s fascination with boiled peanuts sold roadside in brown paper sacks, people who drive box-like Hummers just because they can, and recently, a “commemorative” can to celebrate 50 well-lubricated years of WD-40.

Let's stand and applaud WD-40 for looking to a probably impossible-to-replicate, high-tech packaging design to thwart an otherwise unchecked menace to branded products—counterfeiting.
Last September, the San Diego-based supplier announced it would, for the first time in 35 years, roll out a new rendition of its 8- and 12-oz. aerosol can. From a consumer marketing perspective, the idea was as brilliant as the brand’s venerable royal blue and sunflower yellow graphics—which carry as much brand graphics cache as Tide, Coke, or Marlboro. WD-40 execs bubbled about a “fun, creative way to celebrate the brand and increase sales and profits along the way.” I have to believe loyal household users and grease monkeys alike would have been just as thrilled with a coupon for 50 cents off a WD-40 brand product—say Lava hand cleaner or even 2000 Flushes—but hey, that’s just me.

I’m willing to bet my next paycheck, however, that 99.99 percent of the world’s WD-40 users have no idea that next to Gucci purses, Rolex watches, officially licensed NBA apparel, and—God help us all—SpongeBob paraphernalia, WD-40 has the unenviable position as a world leader among counterfeited products. In China alone, the brand commands an estimated 50 percent market share, with another 25 percent share stemming from knock-off WD-40. In 2002, U.S. custom agents seized $49 million of counterfeit products traced directly to China—just half of the estimated total value.

Slippery Business
Commemorative/marketing hoopla aside, let me be the first to stand and applaud WD-40 for looking to a probably impossible-to-replicate, high-tech packaging design to thwart an otherwise unchecked menace to branded products—counterfeiting. Kudos also to the techies at Crown Cork & Seal’s Aerosol Packaging affiliate for—excuse the pun—greasing the technology skids.

Heretofore, can shaping technology has largely been the bastion of aesthetically clever, albeit marginally functional design (save ergonomics, a few disguised structural integrity efforts, and some heat dissipation applications). The WD-40 shaped can application capitalizes on Crown’s patented high-pressure blow-forming processes to create a mildly contoured, yet pleasingly shapely cylinder. The forming process begins by placing a preform in a precision-engineered mold. The preform is then blow-formed using high-pressure air, which causes it to take on the shape of the mold.

The purely coincidental 50-year anniversary marketing ploy aside, when viewed from a “total packaging solutions” perspective, the curvy steel aerosol can stands shaped shoulder to shaped shoulder among the very best package designs seen in 2003. Coupled with a slick deal with Wal-Mart to exclusively carry the curvaceous can as a “promotional” item, elements of marketing, branding and brand protection, and even production came together like, wow—a well-oiled machine.

David Luttenberger, a certified packaging professional (CPP), is the director of Packaging Strategies, an intelligence briefing service for packaging markets, technologies, and businesses. He can be reached at (610) 436-4220 (ext. 18) or at dluttenberger@packstrat.com.
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