The evolution of age-old models will enable a packaging revolution

What struck me was the difference in activity across different, but related, categories. Take toothpastes – what an array of presentations. Innovation is rife in this sector and one of the latest offerings – Colgate’s Maxfresh – is a superb use of packaging. Pack and product merge to create an exciting offering which stands out. But compare this to the activity in shampoos. OK, the shelves look good, but innovation seems to have ground to a halt. Why? I’m intrigued.

I found a number of striking products, shapes and graphics, but the overall innovation was somewhat depressing. Nothing was really exciting – everything was based on the same conservative models of consumer behaviour.

Surely evolving these models has to be the platform for true innovation. We can change the shape and graphics and use clever words, but that only refreshes. What we need is new underlying thinking. 

Only this week I met a guy from Sheffield Hallam university who had just spent three years researching what he called Critical Artefact Analysis. He’s perfected a technique for giving focus groups the vision to explore radical new behaviours.

It’s a way of overcoming the issue Henry Ford talked about when he said that if he’d asked people what they wanted, they would have said faster horses.

But how do we get these new methods used in earnest? On the one hand we have an industry desperate for innovation. On the other we have people with new processes, but the commercial world passes the new processes by to go down the same old routes.

The thought occurs to me that we could do something via this column? If you’re interested in these new methods, please e-mail me. I’d be very happy to arrange an informal get-together of interested parties.

Walter Lewis is managing director of packaging thinktank Faraday Packaging Partnership. Email him at walter.lewis@faradaypackaging.com

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