Des King: Whether packaging is message or messenger is a matter of debate

The sub-editor deletes the expletives and tidies up the rough edges. A couple of weeks later it appears in print – invariably met by a deafening silence, except when what’s written causes irritation.

For example: the woman so incensed by what had been intended as a tongue-in-cheek moan about government health warnings on the front of fag packets that she posted a furious note on the PN website stating categorically that smoking does not, repeat NOT cause cancer (her upper case, not mine). Hmmm? Still, for purely personal reasons I hope she’s right.

It did spark an interesting thought, however, as to whether packaging is the messenger or the message? Arguably, I’d say, it’s often both – a debatable point that I’ve found myself revisiting with all the regularity of a clockwork mouse.

And hey, what do you know: there is readership after all, as the same thought has struck someone else. Event organiser easyFairs, in fact, which is taking it as the theme of an open forum loosely modelled on the BBC’s Question Time, staged midway through next month’s Packaging Innovations London 2010 show at the Business Design Centre, Islington.

Before a ready-made on-site audience of packaging manufacturers and their customers, some notable talking heads will deliver their opinions on the full extent of the role played by packaging in the retail supply chain – and why its best endeavours don’t always get the approval they deserve in the national press.

Panellists booked to date are Marcel Knobil, who founded Superbrands; Julia Hailes MBE, author of The Green Consumer Guide; Peter Marsh, chief executive of the London-based niche retailer Planet Organic; and Robert Opie, proprietor of the Museum of Brands, and who must know better than anyone about the tug exerted by an iconic pack on consumer heartstrings. Google them. Chairing the proceedings will be the Packaging Society’s Kevin Vyse; himself not short of an opinion or several.

It should make for a lively and, hopefully, entertaining hour at the close of what will likewise have been a lively and, hopefully, profitable day at the show. What’s needed, of course, is vigorous audience participation. That starts right now, by posing your questions in advance on the event website. If nothing else, it’ll ensure you bag somewhere comfortable to sit down at what may over-spill into a standing-only occasion.

Here’s the sort of question that may help to get your minds in gear; one that I’m asking myself: why is packaging always seen but rarely heard? Think about it. Meanwhile, I’m hoping that’s what the panel will do, and manage to come up with some good answers.

Des King is a freelance journalist specialising in packaging. He can be contacted by email at packagingnews.editorial@haymarket.com

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