Packaging is arguably a brand’s most important marketing vehicle. Packages directly impact purchase decisions at shelf, influence satisfaction and usage in the home — and they serve as the embodiment of the brand across all media, from advertising to social media. Yet while marketers regularly benchmark product performance and track the impact and wear-out of their advertising, very few apply a similar discipline to the timing of their packaging decisions. Instead, pack changes are typically reactionary. They often come in response to declining sales, changes by competitors, or concerns expressed by sales teams or consumers in focus groups and online forums. The most common driver of pack changes is the arrival of a new marketing team eager to make its mark quickly via design changes.
To be fair, marketers’ intuition is not always wrong, and certainly, the right packaging changes can be a vital component of larger brand relaunches. However, we’ve also seen that making packaging decisions based on aesthetic judgment can be misguided, as these often are unnecessary changes that waste resources and risk confusing the brand’s existing users — initiatives rooted in misguided assumptions and redesign objectives that solve the wrong problem.