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Substrate Demonstrates Versatility In Two Brand-Specific Applications The innovative use of paperboard products from MeadWestvaco helped two very different customers—a famous New York City bakery and a popular OTC pain reliever—meet their respective marketing challenges and packaging requirements in distinct but equally effective ways, according to MeadWestvaco’s Packaging Resources Group. The image-conscious baker had been seeking a solution to protect the quality of freshly-baked goods during shipping. The maker of the headache medication needed a way to differentiate a new product from competitors in the remedy’s exceptionally crowded category. MeadWestvaco says that everyone connected with both projects—printers, designers, and clients alike found that paperboard gave them exactly what they wanted in strength, versatility, and graphical appeal.
With 11 stores throughout Manhattan and 1.5 million customers per day, Zaro’s Bakery Basket is a New York City institution. Still, many people outside the Big Apple have yet to discover its freshly prepared breads, bagels, cakes, cookies, and other bakery items. Hoping to spread its hot, flaky goodness to customers on the other side of the Hudson River and beyond, the 78-year-old Bronx-based chain partnered with a major online retailer last year for a special summer sales promotion. Delivering delicate delectables cross country, however, presented unique packaging challenges. Zaro’s began offering its “N.Y. Style Bakery Sampler” last summer. The product assortment, which combines some of Zaro’s most mouth-watering goodies in one cheerful, brightly-colored package, gives consumers from Portland, Ore. to Portland, Maine a chance to taste what New Yorkers always told them they were missing. Because the sampler was being positioned as a gift item, Zaro’s needed to present its chocolate babka, ruggelach, and black-and-white cookies in a way that would be as tempting to consumers as the products inside. The package would also require a level of strength beyond the carry-out boxes the chain uses in its bakery outlets, because they would be mailed all over the country without corrugated shippers. Zaro’s turned to Rand-Whitney, its converter of the past two years. Nearly as old as Zaro’s itself, Rand-Whitney has four manufacturing plants, including corrugating, sheeting, and imaging facilities, in New England. Making NYC look appetizing “When Zaro’s approached us, their main concern was the carton graphics,” explains Norman Feit, the Rand-Whitney sales representative who handles Zaro’s. “The box they had in mind would perpetuate their New York brand image, with bright yellow and black colors and light-hearted, cartoon-like sketches of New York City landmarks, such as the Statue of Liberty, Empire State Building, and Brooklyn Bridge. The substrate would need to reproduce these graphics without distorting them or washboarding, and be strong enough maintain the carton’s integrity throughout the entire distribution channel.” Rand-Whitney had run many jobs similar to the Zaro’s box on a competitor linerboard, but it elected to try MeadWestvaco’s Coated Post Print Liner for the sampler project. Coated Post Print Liner, according to MeadWestvaco, is a premium-quality, coated, bleached linerboard that features excellent brightness (GE 86) and a smooth printing surface. It was engineered specifically to be roll-fed into corrugators prior to flexographic post-printing, resulting in the combination of graphic excellence plus strength that was key for the Zaro’s job. MeadWestvaco shipped rolls of 40-lb. Coated Post Print Liner to Rand-Whitney’s Newtown, Conn.-based facility, where it was converted. Meanwhile, artwork for the box was sent to the converter’s design center in Worcester, Mass., where company operators retouched it before manufacturing plates using a CTP process. Rand-Whitney ran the unprinted board through an 87ý corrugator, where it was combined with matching corrugated medium and liner to produce a corrugated sheet. Next, the corrugated sheet was run through a four-color printer/die-cutter with two inter-station dryers. Here the box was printed, varnished, and die-cut inline. The self-locking boxes, which measure 10ý x 103/4ý x 10ý, were bailed together in groups, wrapped, and sent via Rand-Whitney trucks to Zaro’s headquarters in the Bronx for hand-filling. In total, roughly 5,000 boxes were produced for the promotion. According to Niles Vogel, Rand-Whitney’s production manager, Coated Post Print Liner performed well on press, with no dusting or cracking issues. He said that color matching was more exact, and that the board’s excellent ink holdout produced a high-quality product that clearly reproduced the minute details of the New York illustrations. Vogel also praised the board for its tear strength, resistance to score cracking, and consistent runability. Relief from redundancy
Facing an increasingly crowded category for pain relievers, Bristol-Myers Squibb wanted a unique and exciting promotional kit to introduce Excedrin Brand QuickTabs to the 5,600 over-the-counter and pharmacy managers at Wal-Mart, one of the company’s largest and most important distribution channels. To help capture their attention, the company envisioned a “fun,” oversized version of the 16- and 32-count Excedrin QuickTabs cartons. Part educational tool and part gift, the larger carton would be used to hold product literature, as well as pens, highlighters, and other items that could be used every day. It would also incorporate in-store promotional items, such as balloons, lapel buttons for Wal-Mart associates, shelf talkers, and stand-out aisle advertisements, that would help attract shoppers to the product on the shelf. Creating such a package required that the carton would be durable enough to hold its contents securely and survive shipping while displaying the aesthetic appeal necessary to attract the attention of Wal-Mart managers, and get them excited about the new product. It also needed to reinforce the Bristol-Myers Squibb quality brand image. The company decided to tap the expertise of New Creature, a marketing and design firm based in Rogers, Ark., near Wal-Mart’s headquarters. New Creature specializes in point-of-purchase displays and promotional marketing, and most of its customers, such as Kraft, Cardinal Brands, Coca-Cola, and Ocean Spray, are suppliers to Wal-Mart. New Creature turned to long-time supplier Panel Prints for insight. Based in Old Forge, Pa., the commercial printer is an experienced provider of high-impact color reproduction for packaging, displays, posters, greeting cards, and publications. Substrate saves a step Panel Prints suggested Forte, a solid-fiber board from MeadWestvaco’s Packaging Resources Group. Forte, says MeadWestvaco, combines a bright-white coated facing stock with a kraft board to deliver sturdy packaging with brilliant graphic reproduction. According to MeadWestvaco, Panel Prints also recommended Forte because it permitted printing directly on the facing sheet, saving time and money by eliminating the need to laminate an offset-printed lightweight bleached board to single-faced corrugated. Panel Prints ran the job is run in four colors on a 44ýx64ý five-color KBA Planeta press, which is capable of handling the 36-pt. board. The box was die-cut using a 45ýx65ý Bobst die-cutter before being folded and glued using a 52ýx54ý International Folder Gluer. Panel Prints packaged the flat cartons in corrugated cases and sent them to New Creature, where they were filled with promotional items and packed in corrugated shippers. The cases then were sent to Dallas for distribution by Crossmark, a company that provides integrated sales, marketing, and merchandising solutions for manufacturers selling in the supermarket, convenience, mass/club, chain drug, specialty, and discount trade channels. | |||||||
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© 2004-2008 ST Media Group International. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part is prohibited without consent from publisher.
DECEMBER 4, 2008
1:00 PM EASTERN
This special 90-minute webinar will feature up-to-date insights into the market forces affecting package design and sustainability. Registration for this program is $89.99. Attendees will receive a copy of Packaging Sustainability: Tools, Systems and Strategies for Innovative Package Design (a $49.95 value) by Wendy Jedlicka.
Keynote Address by:
MINAL MISTRY
Project Manager, Sustainable
Packaging Coalition/GreenBlue
COMPASS is an online software tool for packaging designers and engineers to compare the environmental impacts of their package designs.
