Browsing through the shelves at Kinokuniya reinforced one important point that marketers tend to forget: the power of packaging.
Yes, the brand name matters. In the same way that most people will gravitate towards the best-selling authors such as Dan Brown, Danielle Steele or Jodi Picoult, consumers in a supermarket will readily look for big-name brands such as Heinz ketchup, Pantene shampoo or Colgate toothpaste. Yet, if you’re in a very cluttered or crowded area such as Kinokuniya (or any hypermarket like Carrefour or Cold Storage), the problem is standing out among the thousands of seemingly identical items.
If the average customer is like me, he/she will quickly scan the shelves and look at items that grab the eye. For example, while browsing aimlessly through the non-fiction sections of Kinokuniya, I tended to look at books whose covers caught and held my attention through colourful or interesting graphics, or succinct titles that hinted of something fascinating (e.g., "The Fall of Advertising & The Rise of PR" by Al Ries and Laura Ries; "Guns, Germs and Steel" by Jared Diamond). All other books fell to the wayside, with nary a thought given to them. With the countless selection offered by Kinokuniya as well as the limited time I had in the store, I could not be bothered to look at each book one by one and read each of their précis on the back cover. Similar to being at the supermarket as well, when you’ve got a harried mother of two looking for mayonnaise while being plagued by the constant cries of her child who WANTS ICE CREAM… NOW!
Sadly, though, packaging (as well as shelving and visual merchandising) has been largely out of the product mix whenever marketers do their brainstorming. Most of the time, we get bland and generic labels that do nothing to excite a customer’s attention and imagination. Even worse, we get packaging labels that aren’t even seen by the customers! To quote one recent article by Scott Young and Jonathan Asher, “Consider rounded containers. They look great in the conference room (or when viewed in a focus group) when they face directly forward, but, in-store these containers are often turned off-center, which can greatly compromise their impact and communication. Bagged products can also be a challenge because they are likely to sag or get ‘scrunched’ on shelf, which can impact quality perceptions and/or make key copy points (claims, variety, etc.) unreadable.”
If you still don’t believe in the power of good packaging, consider the Japanese who have elevated packaging and gift wrapping into an art form. The food contained inside the beautiful packaging may not always be good (and for non-Japanese speakers such as myself, we may even be clueless as to what is actually inside the package), but we must have that item because it’s simply exquisite! Moira Cullen, the Senior Director for Global Design at The Hershey Company, said it best when she spoke about the packaging employed for food, confections and teas sold in Japan’s leading department stores: “On a purely visceral, visual level, I was seduced by these objects. The boxes and pouches and bags were exquisite. Each one was uniquely exceptional. I didn’t always know what was inside, but I didn’t care. I was so amazed I bought an extra suitcase just for samples. I had to bring them home with me.”
Photo source: theDieline.com. Those interested in learning more about brand packaging may go to the Brand Packaging website at www.brandpackaging.com
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