News

As any marketer will tell you, knowing who to target your products at and what they want is crucial. One company that has created an instantly recognisable brand across its range is Gü Chocolate Puds. Gü was created after research showed consumers were demanding high-quality, but convenient, chocolate puddings. In May 2003, James Averdieck unveiled his premium puddings. Packaging was needed that would instantly convey the quality of the deserts within.

Big Fish designed striking black boxes to give the products shelf standout in the brightly coloured chilled desserts sector and as a short-hand for prestige. Perry Haydn Taylor, creative director at Big Fish, says: “The black is a very important part of the premium message and vital to our scheme, although it has been emulated a lot since we did it, which is a great compliment.” Gü marketing manager Becs Sears adds that the firm works hard to ensure it gets the necessary depth of black and super sharp photography, all finished off to a high gloss.

Worth the weight
Gü initially launched three puddings: a hot chocolate soufflé, chocolate truffle with raspberry compote, and a chocolate and amaretto truffle. All three are supplied in a reusable glass ramekin inside the cartonboard branding. The weight of the glass  container serves as a further luxury cue. The ramekins can also go into the oven for home baking and then be taken straight to the table to be eaten out of. “If you’re entertaining you can always try to pass them off as home-made,” says Sears.

The ramekins are made of bottle glass, which means if consumers do not wish to reuse them, they can be recycled with glass bottles and jars. However, Gü customers contacted Averdieck with an unexpected problem. They were buying the puddings and reusing the ramekins, but the ramekins couldn’t be stacked, for storage in the cupboard. Gü had been using standard off-the-shelf ramekins, but it is now about to roll out its specially made stackable ramekins.

The brand has done so well that Gü was able to diversify in 2005 into fruity puddings with Frü. In 2007 alone, Gü launched 24 new products and it is estimated that a Gü pudding is eaten somewhere in the world every two seconds.

When you’re up against a market leader such as Gü, half the battle can be distinguishing yourself from the crowd of Gü imitators. In November 2007, The Filthy Food Company revealed its range of chilled chocolate desserts. The Elmwood agency designed minimalist, white packaging with a matt finish to set it apart from the rows of glossy black packs.

Quality food means different things in different markets, and while shiny black packaging says luxury desert, a less polished finish is needed for other foods.

The chips were down
In 2006, McCain found that sales of its oven chips were heavily in decline. Health fears were leading to a backlash against foods perceived as fatty and processed.

McCain’s shiny, bright orange packs weren’t conveying the right message. Elmwood account director Simon Preece says the challenge was to turn around consumer perceptions “when people like Jamie Oliver are giving chips such a kicking”. A change of substrate was incredibly important. “Psychologically, the glossy, waxy polythene was not suggesting ‘only 5% fat’ – in fact, it was suggesting the opposite,” adds Preece. The packaging was switched to a soft-touch matt bag.

Elmwood then used imagery of a sunflower and potatoes in a Hessian sack, with less artificial colours, to communicate a more wholesome image. Within eight months, there was a hike in penetration with more than a million more households buying McCain chips than in the previous year.

Convincing consumers, and particularly parents, of a product’s health benefits can be as much about preconceptions as imagery. Panda, best known for its vibrantly coloured, fizzy drinks, wanted to launch a healthier range of 70% pure fruit juice drinks. Its fizzy drinks are sold in small, clear plastic bottles. Despite the popularity of this format for healthy drinks such as Innocent smoothies, packaging the new range in the same bottles wouldn’t provide sufficient product differentiation.

The traditional format for children’s single-serving juice drinks is a carton with a straw. Panda turned to Tetra Pak, to align its new range with juices rather than its existing fizzy drinks. “We wanted to ensure visibility and health benefits prevailed,” says Panda brand manager Claire Whitlow.

Sometimes, however, consumers don’t pick up on the messages that marketers are trying to send out. One brand that knows about gaining a negative reputation is Stella Artois. Despite numerous sophisticated advertising campaigns and the branding slogan ‘reassuringly expensive’, it has acquired the unfortunate moniker ‘wife-beater’.

The latest TV advertising by Lowe London features the line “pass on something good” and focuses on the Artois half of the name rather than the Stella. A spokesman for InBev, which owns Stella, says the campaign is intended to promote the brand’s history and heritage and the positive things that are associated with Stella. It also aims to raise awareness of the Artois family, which includes Bock and Peeterman, paving the way for new launches. Each of the current lagers has its own identity, but the bottles looks as if they are part of the same family and the same will be true of new products for 2008.

Of course, not all brands want to promote themselves as reassuringly expensive. In 2007, Australian wine brand Andrew Peace became the first to supply wine to the UK in a one-litre aseptic Tetra Pak. The cost savings enable Andrew Peace to sell a one-litre carton for the same price as a 75cl bottle – a 33% saving – a fact communicated in large type on the pack.

Catching the eye
The format boasts other benefits, targeting convenience and relaxed outdoor occasions rather than fine dining. The pack can be opened without a corkscrew and is easily resealable, meaning it can be refrigerated lying down.

The Tetra Pak is also intended to help Peace communicate that other important marketing message – environmental awareness. Tetra Pak marketing manager Claire Robins explains that the cartons weigh significantly less than glass bottles and can be packed together more closely, reducing carbon emissions in transit. However, Tetra Paks cannot yet be reprocessed in the UK. Robins accepts that the change is retailer-driven rather than by the consumer. “Left to their own devices, consumers would probably stick to glass bottles for wine,” she says.

According to retail research, over 70% of purchase decisions are made at the point of sale and a pack on a supermarket shelf has less than three seconds to grab a shopper’s attention. Designers have to ensure packs are eye-catching and that when they do catch the eye they convey what the product is and does, who it’s aimed at and why you would want to buy it. The challenge is to do all of this successfully in three seconds.

---

DESIGN TO DYE FOR
Think home dyeing and you think Dylon. However, after 60 years manufacturing dyes, sales were in decline and the company decided it was time for a rebrand. According to innovation and marketing director Dave Toms, Dylon needed to make itself more relevant to today’s consumer and launch itself into new market areas.

Dylon tasked design agency Coley Porter Bell with a complete overhaul of its brand and designing the packaging for a new product – named Colour Protect & Wash. It is the first laundry detergent to fix colour while it washes and was launched into stores in May 2007.

The aim was to make the Dylon brand about colour rather than just dyes. Coley Porter Bell created bold images that represent the inspiration behind the dye colours, with names such as Flamingo Pink and Bahama Blue, while the detergent features a multicoloured windmill.

On the dyes these colours are combined with photos suggesting positive and creative uses, to move the perception of dyeing away from repair to transformation.

The bright images are set against black packaging; a particularly bold choice in the detergent market where white is the standard signifier for clean. The design has instant shelf standout and creates synergy across the whole Dylon brand.

The round disk dyes, which had become an icon of the 1970s, were also replaced with bag-lined cartonboard boxes. The new-look dyes were unveiled nationwide in August 2007 and in December sales were up 3% year on year.

However, detergent is a very crowded market and Dylon has struggled to establish itself. “Colour Protect & Wash was really well received by the trade and buyers as an innovation, but it’s an extremely tough sector and without a massive budget to spend on marketing it’s hard to reach consumers,” says Toms. He adds that Dylon is poised to relaunch the detergent with a new name to make it clearer to consumers what it does.

“Even if it’s not a massive commercial success, it still adds to the brand and people’s awareness of it,” he says.