Consumer Goods Companies Reap Benefits From Mintel's Global Packaging Resource

By Ron Romanik

With packaging continually fighting for space on store shelves, companies are looking for new ways to spur creativity and drive innovation. Globally the industry continues to shift its positioning from more traditional packaging to concepts that provide an edgier presence. Mintel, a company with offices in Chicago, London, Belfast, and Sydney, provides resources of additional avenues for developing innovative packaging.

Mintel's Global New Products Database (GNPD) is a Web-based auditing resource that tracks new product and package introductions around the world very closely. Globally recognized companies utilize GNPD to drive packaging strategies and trends forward. Many companies are using non-traditional materials and methods to create packaging for new products or revamping packaging for more established brands, and GNPD allows consumer goods companies to keep tabs on those innovations.

One key benefit an international beverage provider has discovered through the use of GNPD is the ability to understand and predict trends. As a result of analyzing new product launches, the company has been able to learn how to stay ahead of what is happening in the beverage industry globally. In addition, the company is in the unique position to actually pull ahead as a key trendsetter with their upcoming product launches.

Innovative and effective packaging is crucial to developing new sales leads within any product arena. Through trend tracking methods, GNPD has assisted a leading design and branding firm with significantly increasing their number of business prospects, particularly because they can provide innovative packaging demos and concepts based upon their general industry trend analysis. The firm has shown substantial improvement in many of its development categories, and they continue to use GNPD's various category reviews as guides to their design planning.

Another major player in the paperboard category uses GNPD to understand the overall market, across categories, with labeling, embossing types, and other processes. They are specifically charged with making new and creative packaging for their clients. By creating their own innovation center, they are able to speak more concretely about fresh approaches to packaging strategies. In some instances, they even have the physical product or package ordered through GNPD for further analysis.

A recent addition to GNPD is the Ideas Hopper, a tool that allows for more collaborative online brainstorming by multiple creative parties. It allows companies to send interesting examples of innovative products to other creative partners in order to maximize the development process. Utilizing GNPD product introductions as a guide, many companies have been able to make efficient use of time in more traditional planning sessions.

Mintel's Global New Products Database service allows companies to stay up-to-date with what manufacturers are producing in the far reaches of the globe.

The Ideas Hopper has become a meeting staple for one of the industry's key plastic PET clients. The company's design team holds a monthly brainstorming session with sales and marketing, with the GNPD Ideas Hopper serving as the key driving point. In these sessions, the team pulls products from the Ideas Hopper that they deem innovative. Team members then figure out how they can work the new technology into their product line. With this new window to invention, the company is actually able to research newer product areas for expansion opportunities. (For more information, go to www.gnpd.com).