Shed Simove: Sexy packaging – the holy grail?

Hi there, Shed here. Delighted to be with you.

Is packaging sexy? Only if you do it right…

No doubt you’re very familiar with the complete thrill you get when you see packaging that’s really good. It’s hugely exciting to see a container that instantly grabs your attention and communicates so much about its contents. Let people call us ‘packaging geeks’ if they must, for we are unashamed of our love affair… 

Some of my experiences with packaging deliver a clear and stark reminder that a product is nothing without a good interface to the customer… 

Just over a year ago, as the ‘economic crisis’ went into full glorious swing, I was gripped with the idea of launching a new brand of breakfast cereal called ‘CREDIT CRUNCH’. I started out by trademarking the name.  (Now, I reckon the Trade Mark Office must really groan when they receive my trademark applications these days – I recently filed one for ‘Miso Horny’ – a new range of Miso soup with added ginseng. It was granted, so I now have: Miso Horny™. Another proud moment.)

It was a real challenge getting the cereal shapes for my Credit Crunch cereal to look like currency symbols, but I managed to find an extrusion machine in China and we eventually cracked the shapes so they were instantly recognisable and tasty too.

Once I had the product right, I now needed a fantastic box for the cereal. It needed to be visually impacting, fun and professional looking, plus it needed to clearly communicate any health benefits too.

First off, I needed a designer to bring my vision to life. I decided to use a controversial route of finding a designer, called ‘crowdsourcing’. This has raised (neatly trimmed) eyebrows in the design industry because it’s the method of placing a brief on a website and then asking designers from around the world to pitch for your job by working up actual designs to a deadline. Then, once all the designs are in, no matter how many people sent in their concepts, you only choose one winner – and you only pay that person. So, it’s an amazing service for a client because it’s like having a huge pool of talent working on your project (with the benefit that you only pay one person), but not so good if you’re a designer who put loads of work in to the brief but didn’t get chosen.

I put my brief for the Credit Crunch cereal box on www.CrowdSpring.com and had over 40 box designs to choose from – it was most exciting indeed. This is the one I chose:

I placed the main four currency symbols on the box in a specific order: Pound –Yen-Euro-Dollar, so that the last three symbols would read ‘YES’ and maybe subconsciously this positive word would have an effect on a customer looking at the box – and they’d think ‘Yes! I want to buy that cereal!’… At least that’s the theory! And strangely enough, a lady who was following me on Twitter recently commented that if you read the letters on the box backwards, they look like the word ‘SEXY’ – if you squint hard maybe! Not hard to know what was on her mind that day.

The thickness of the box was the next crucial decision. We tried a number of different thicknesses of cardboard before we found the one that felt exactly right. Too thin and the product felt cheap and flimsy, too thick and the product seemed like a prop. It’s curious to note that there seems to be a ‘standard cereal box weight’ that just feels right in the hand (maybe because breakfast cereal is something we grow-up with and is a constant part of our lives even as adults) – and that this ideal thickness of cardboard neatly communicates that the product is a ‘professional breakfast cereal’.

I chose the final design for the box with the aim that the packet would be seen on a supermarket shelf. To date, I’ve produced two thousand small boxes of the cereal, which I sell through my website and now I’m looking for a supermarket to actually stock my cereal. I think the packaging is a triumph.

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