The power of packaging to reel customers in is awesome to behold.
Packaging, after all, helps form a consumer’s first impression of a brand. It is what customers see and read when they pick up a product to bring home to their family.
Packaging acts as a constant reminder and leaves a much longer impression than a 30-second television or radio spot.
Indeed, it is the longest-lasting form of advertising, making it the most cost-effective form of advertising for any brand.
To test the value of good packaging, walk down the aisle of a supermarket. You can immediately tell which aisle sells imported merchandise and which aisle sells local goods.
Most imported items can boast of visually arresting and truly outstanding packaging that project superior quality products and world-class standards. On the other hand, most local packaging looks cheap and inferior, thus underselling the fact that the product quality can match, or even exceed, that of foreign brands.
Proof positive that great packaging sells is that many imported brands on shelves sell despite the absence of advertising support in local markets. The right packaging just makes the products seem irresistible.
Several global brands have even elevated the role of packaging to iconic status, e.g., the classic Coca-Cola hourglass contour bottle and Pepsi’s familiar red-white-blue disc. The green bottle and label have become associated with global beer brand Heineken while the red bowtie has become an integral part of Budweiser’slogo.
Even the long-running Absolut Vodka advertising campaign has been created around a bottle shape that otherwise would have looked plain and ordinary. Brand logos also form such an integral part of a brand’s overall identity and package, e.g., the Marlboro chevron and McDonald’s golden arches; Apple’s partly bitten fruit and Nestle’s familiar bird’s nest.
Yet, despite the vital role that packaging plays in themarketing mix, many local marketers seem skeptical at the thought of paying local designers a fair value for their work.
We should realize that failure to enhance the packaging of products renders them inferior to imported products in a global market, and reinforce the image of Philippine products of being poor quality and cheap. Looking around the Asia-Pacific region, there have been significant strides made in recent years, not only by Japanese brands, but also fast-moving and high-ticket items coming out of South Korea and Taiwan, Hong Kong and China, Singapore and Malaysia, and even Thailand and Vietnam.
Ironically, the Philippines boasts of many world-renowned visual artists such as Juan Luna and Francisco Hidalgo, Dizon and Amorsolo.
The country has also produced architects like Juan Nakpil and Leandro Locsin, and of late, Bobby Mañosa, Jun Palafox and Bong Recio.
In recent years, Filipino fashion and furniture designers, such as Rhett Eala and Kenneth Cobonpue, have also taken center stage for their work.
So is the Philippines lacking in design talent? No.
But we do lack three things: (1) an expectation that the standards of local packaging designs must be world-class in aesthetics and functionality; (2) attractive compensation for outstanding packaging graphics to motivate the best designers to produce world-class work; and (3) a regular platform and forum to recognize and reward outstanding package designers.
Providing some inspiration is the work of young local design agencies such as Team Manila and Bluethumb Graphics, V-Graphics and VitalStrats, to name a few.
These are examples of design studios known to create work that is original, unique and cohesive in the key elements of brand name, typeface and logo, graphics and color.
Marketers must demand that their agencies achieve a “Wow Effect” that will enable their products’ packaging to stand out on the shelf. Design studios must also themselves conduct their own “shelf impact” test.
And for those marketing comptrollers who still get intimidated by the cost of packaging design studios, one way to evaluate design fees is to divide the amount by the total number of physical packs a company expects to produce and sell.
This renders the unit cost infinitely low while the number of exposures to prospective consumers is infinitely high, reinforcing the proposition that packaging is the best and the cheapest form of advertising. After all, as the old adage goes, “First impressions last.”
(The author is president of management consultancy firm Business Mentors Inc. and recipient of the PMA Agora Award for Marketing Excellence in the Asia-Pacific region. Send comments and suggestions towillyarcilla@yahoo.com.)
