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Fall 2020


FEATURE


WHY Packaging Could Be the Most Important Brand Decision You Make


By Tim Sweeney


In 2020, designing great packaging is about more than just standing out on the retail shelf or leaping off the page on Amazon. Here we take a closer look at trends in the industry and get advice from design and branding expert Vicki Strull on how you can make your packaging further your brand story.


Vicki Strull Design Strategist, Brand Visionary f


rom a functionality perspective, the first responsibility of product packaging is to protect what’s inside.


Whether we buy in store or online, we the consumers expect our new goods to be intact when we open them. But that functional aspect is the bare minimum of what packaging should do for a brand. Vicki Strull, a design strategist with more than two decades of experience in brand positioning, campaigns, and packaging design and innovation, says packaging should attract, inform, engage, and delight. “Great packaging should grab your attention. It should scream off the shelf or out from your computer screen,” Strull says. “It has to make me notice it and pick it up, and it needs to keep me interested enough to buy it. However it achieves that, it must also tell the brand story. That’s a tall order and a lot of responsibility for one piece of packaging, but I contend that packaging is a brand’s most important touch point.“


Statistics from a study by the Paper


and Packaging Board tend to back that up. It found that 67 percent of consumers indicated they are influenced by product packaging, with additional studies revealing that 34 percent of impulse buys are thanks to packaging; 59 percent of consumers under age 45 consider attractive packaging a key selling point; and 30 percent of consumer decision-making is based solely on packaging. “As much as a brand may have a great


website, a great product, and top reviews, if its packaging doesn’t drive sales and isn’t a continuation of the brand story, the packaging doesn’t work, the product won’t sell, and the brand won’t make money,” Strull says. Why is package design such a tall task?


Well, while humans may be simple—we like shiny, different objects that stand out—we are also quite complicated. There’s plenty


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