Category — Packaging

Richard Fine and Nathan Frank “are doing for generic drugs what American Apparel did for plain T-shirts,” reports David Sax in Bloomberg Businessweek (3/26/12). Their pharmaceutical startup Help Remedies, is wrapping generics “in cool with every trick in the downtown branding playbook, from hip packaging to absurdist videos to youth targeting.” Their premise is that most store-bought remedies are too complicated and their packaging too confusing. “Excedrin sometimes has three or four drugs just for a headache,” says Richard. “These companies mix a load of drugs, put on racing stripes, and wrap them in packages that are very confusing.”

Help Remedies instead cuts “through the confusion by offering single-ingredient drugs in low doses, with clear, symptomatic titles, such as ‘Help: I Have a Headache‘ (acetaminophen) or ‘Help: I Have a Stuffy Nose‘ (phenylephrine).” The idea, according to Help’s creative director, is to “sell the medicine as though it was coming from a friend, not a doctor in a lab coat.” The brand’s marketing materials are worded “in the first person” and the packaging is a “simple white, biodegradable carton.” The pills have “no colors or coatings.” Jim Butschli of Healthcare Packaging magazine, says the simplified approach aligns with “the reason the consumer is shopping in the medication aisle in the first place.”

Humor is a big part of the pitch: “On the back of Help’s nausea medicine, the package jokes about how the pills are flavorless: ‘We were going to make them deviled-egg flavor, but then we thought it might defeat the purpose.’” Help is also going for unconventional distribution, such as hip-hotel mini-bars. However, Richard Meyer, a consultant, is skeptical, noting that Help’s youth-oriented target audience “happens to be the least brand-loyal of all drug consumers.” Founded in 2008, Help reported sales of $4 million in 2011 (a 1,000% increase from the previous year) and projects sales of $15 million in 2013. The company is not yet profitable, although it has disribution through Target and Walgreens, is expanding into Canada, and plans to augment its product line this summer.

Mark Addicks hopes to reinvent the cereal box as a publishing platform, reports Jefferson Graham in USA Today (2/1/12). Mark is chief marketing officer of General Mills and notes that the cereal box is widely read, “with the average consumer checking out his or her cereal box 12 times.” Mark won’t say exactly what he has in mind, but hints at a digital update of “offering a surprise inside the cereal box. Instead, kids could point a smartphone at the box and ‘see visual surprises’” via a QR code, for instance.

“What I’m hoping for is pure entertainment,” says Mark. General Mills has already “tested augmented reality on a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, instructing consumers to turn their camera phone onto the box to see a video of a world of honey.” The company has also developed “apps for Betty Crocker and Yoplait Yogurt.” The Yoplait app invites “consumers to find Greek items on the backs of packaging and in posters in cities. General Mills, in turn, made donations to food shelters.”

Betty Crocker, meanwhile "has 1.5 million fans on Facebook and 50,000 followers on Twitter. She’s got a mobile cookbooks app for the iPhone and Android devices," an iPad cookbook and a YouTube channel. Mark says Betty "is building communities … She’s a platform," says Mark, "She provides a kitchen for everyone around the world to start giving their ideas and sharing their recipes." Catherine Roe of Google says it’s time for Mills to think of itself as a publisher, not an advertiser. "We see them as a Food Network of Epicurious," she says. "They have really strong content … They are really progressive in this space."

The iconic Chinese take-out container was designed by an American inventor in 1894, report Hilary Greenbaum and Dana Rubinstein in the New York Times (1/15/12). The inventor was Frederick Weeks Wilcox, who patented what he called a "paper pail," commonly referred to as the "oyster pail." His design consisted of "a single piece of paper, creased into segments and folded into a (more or less) leakproof container secured with a dainty wire on top."

It really was quite ingenious: "The supportive folds on the outside, fastened with that same wire, created a flat interior surface over which food could slide smoothly onto a plate." It became known as the "oyster pail" because it was based, apparently on an existing design for "a wooden receptacle with a locked cover used in transporting raw oysters." The rendering of a red pagoda "and a stylized ‘Thank you’ on top" wasn’t added until the 1970s.

That design touch was added by a graphic designer whose identity is unknown, but who was employed by a "company now known as Fold-Pak." The irony, of course, is this: "The structure has come to represent the idea of Eastern cuisine in Western society even though the packaging is not used for food containment in Chinese cutlure," notes Scott Chapps, a package designer. The design has changed little over the years, although it is now offered in microwave-safe and environmentally friendly models.

The designer of the most iconic coffee cup of all time had "no formal training in art," reports Margalit Fox in a New York Times remembrance of the late Leslie Buck (4/29/10). Born Laszlo Buch, Leslie was a survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald who came to America, changed his name, and designed "the Anthora, the cardboard cup of Grecian design that has held New Yorkers’ coffee securely for nearly half a century."

As every New Yorker knows, the Anthora is blue "with a white meander ringing the top and bottom." On each side is "a drawing of a Greek vase known as an amphora." Leslie’s accent was responsible for altering that to "anthora." The design is also emblazoned "with three steaming golden coffee cups" and, of course, the famous motto: "We Are Happy To Serve You." Leslie never earned royalties for his design, but did well on sales commissions on it.

He came up with the idea while working for the Sherri Cup Company, as part of its plan "to crack New York’s hot-cup market." Leslie figured that since many of the city’s diners were owned by Greeks, they should try "a Classical cup in the colors of the Greek Flag." At its peak in 1994, Sherri "sold 500 million of the cups" but by 2005 the company had been sold to Solo and was down to 200 million." Today, "Solo no longer carries the Anthora as a stock item, making it only on request."

The challenge for online retailers "is to reproduce a theatrical shopping experience in a brown cardboard box," reports Elizabeth Holmes in the Wall Street Journal (11/17/11). "We’ve got to find a way, when we’re not front and center with that customer, when they open that box, to thrill that customer," says Gregory Shields of Neiman Marcus, where "a testing committee" scrutinizes ribbons for fraying and wrapping paper for durability. Anthropolgie takes the boxing challenge so seriously that it even has a "brand director of packaging," Carolyn Keer. "When you get something in the mail, it should feel like a present, whether you bought it or not," she says.

Among Carolyn’s greatest concerns are “the plastic bags in which Anthropologie ships T-shirts and other low-priced items.” She doesn’t like using bags, but she made them more presentable by imprinting them with “patterns from the season’s bedding and quilts.” For boxed items, the “merchandise is wrapped in colorful tissue paper, just as it is when purchased in stores or gift-wrapped.” Each item is sent with a hand-written message from the packer.

Such details are especially important because "affluent households are expected to make or break this holiday season for many retailers" and wealthier consumers have "the greatest propensity for online shopping." Deloitte predicts that almost "half of US consumers will shop online this holiday season, up from about a third last year." Of course, the quality of the presentation depends on the durability of the package: "It takes a lot of cushioning to ship a theatrical experience in one piece." Because of this, HSN tests its packaging by dropping "them from as many as 11 different angles" and consumer electronics are subjected to a "random vibration test." Not that drivers are tossing the boxes around or anything …

For some recording artists, the boxed set carries "the whiff of embalming fluid," writes Eric Felten in the Wall Street Journal (12/2/11). “When it comes to creativity, those elaborate boxes are less cases than caskets,” Eric writes. The trouble is that “the very act of compiling an oeuvre suggests that the body of work is in some way complete, that the artist is done. Boxed sets are overwhelmingly retrospective.”

Elvis Costello, whose recently released box set, "The Return of the Spectacular Spinning Songbook," arrives just in time for the holidays, doesn’t come right out and say as much, but his comments about the project were unusual, to say the least: He told his fans to buy the latest Louis Armstrong box set, Ambassador of Jazz, instead. "Frankly, the music is vastly superior," he said, while adding the pricetag on his own box set ($339.98) appeared to be "either a misprint or satire."

He went on to describe the book that came with the set, which also included just one CD, a vinyl record and a DVD, as "all manner of whimsical scribblings, photographs and cartoons." As Eric observes: "It’s ironic that boxed rock ‘n’ roll has taken on the stifling air of a crypt, given the genre’s celebration of youth. We might credit Mr. Costello then, not for his tender concern for his fans’ pocketbooks, but for having the admirable instinct to hop out of a box being lowered into the ground."

This fall, "the first zero-waste, packaging-free grocery store in the nation" will open in East Austin, Texas, reports Pooneh Momeni in The Daily Texan (7/7/11). Called in.gredients, the original idea was a store that sold wine and beer in bulk. "We’re entrepreneurs by nature and we’re constantly looking for ways to create more sustainable habits," says Christian Lane, co-founder of in.gredients along with his brothers, Patrick and Joseph. "The more we looked into the bulk alcohol concept, we realized that we could do this, but include everything, not just alcohol."

Shoppers will be able "to buy as much or as little grocery and house products as they need" but they must "bring their own containers to carry their goods." If they don’t bring containers, they can get compostable containers at the store. Either way, empty containers are first weighed, then filled, and finally "weighed again at the cashiers before paying." The concept is, in fact, a throwback to forgotten days when shoppers figured out what they needed and bought a supply — packaging not necessarily included — from a supplier.

The plan is to open in "food deserts, where healthy, affordable food is hard to come by," which explains building the first in.gredients in East Austin. "We want to bring back the neighborhood grocer and get into areas where good food is missing," says Christian. He also hopes to create a sense of "community ownership" by crowdsourcing some of the store’s funding. And, perhaps most important, he says the package-free approach will keep prices low. "The per unit price actually ends up being more affordable because you’re not paying for the packaging or the marketing, just the ingredients," he says.

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Big, ugly barcodes are being transformed into works of art in hopes of creating stronger connections with shoppers, reports Sarah Nassauer in the Wall Street Journal (6/22/11). Sixpoint Brewery, for instance, recently created a barcode for its cans of beer "that integrates the Statue of Liberty and skyscrapers." Nestle has been decorating barcodes of some of its smaller brands since 2008. It has bubbles rising from the barcode of its Juicy Juice sparkling beverage and its Skinny Cow packaging has "barcodes shaped like a cow’s spot. (image)"

Bear Naked Granola has a barcode with a blade of wheat grass growing out of it. Yes, there are companies that specialize in such creations, such as Vanity Barcodes LLC. Yael Miller, a co-founder of Vanity, says one of her favorite designs is a hand mixer that looks like it "is mixing up the numbers below it." (image) Another design firm, Design Barcodes Inc., has "created barcodes that look like water flowing over a waterfall or the rails of a train track." Both firms take care that the codes they create scan properly at checkout.

However, Duane Reade, the drug-store chain, says its artsy barcodes aren’t meant to be scanned. Paul Tibiero, Duane Reade’s senior vice-president of merchandising and marketing says its barcode art "iså not functional, and it’s not intended to be. It’s being used as a unique design element." The retailer has "added classic New York scenes like the Manhattan skyline and Brooklyn Bridge in a barcode design to the packages of its store-brand products since 2009 (images) … The simple rectangular barcode, which the cashier swipes at the checkout line, is still on the back of each package."

"A crack group of mathematicians from the University of Limerick … has modelled bubble formation in stout beers in detail," reports the Economist (3/12/11). This is serious business for Guinness, and anyone who drinks it. As it now stands, a can or bottle of Guinness stout needs a widget — a little plastic ball with a hole in it — to give Guinness its famously creamy head. That kind of foam depends on releasing extra nitrogen into the stout when the container is opened, which the widget does. But the widget is costly and not necessarily environmentally friendly.

So, Guinness engaged with Dr. William Lee and his team at the University of Limerick "to construct a mathematical model of the formation and growth of bubbles in stout." After Dr. Lee constructed the model, he "wondered why the normal mechanism of bubbling in beers and sparkling wines does not appear to work in stouts." Folks used to think that bubbles were "seeded by pockets of air trapped in scratches and imperfections on the surface of the glass … Over the past decade, however, scientific scrutiny has revealed that most bubbles actually form on fibers of cellulose that have either fallen into the glass from the air or been left behind when it was dried with a towel."

Dr. Lee and his team "found that molecules of nitrogen and carbon dioxide are able to diffuse from the liquid through the walls of the fibers in the air pockets trapped inside them, causing those pockets of air to expand. If a pocket reaches the end of a fiber, it breaks off as a bubble." The problem for stout "is that the low concentration of dissolved nitrogen in stout means the process works at only a 15th of the rate seen in ales and lagers." The answer is to spike the stout with extra cellulose in the form of extra fibers (finally, a stout that tastes great and keeps you regular!). This might be accomplished simply by "lining the rims of cans and bottles with a material similar to an ordinary coffee filter." Hm. Starbucks Stout.

Navigating the sustainability maze of product packages. By Brad Scott. Acting “sustainably” means maintaining a balance and not depleting your available resources. In business, this often translates into balancing costs against a product’s impact on the community in which you operate. Some companies refer to this as “the triple bottom line,” which takes into account profit, people, and planet.

Another term we often hear is “cradle-to-cradle” or “closed-loop” product management, meaning that products have more than a single life or can be reborn in a new form. Nike Grind is a dazzling illustration of this concept: To date, some 25 million pairs of used athletic shoes have been collected, ground up, and turned into surfaces for playing fields …
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