In Greek mythology, Scylla is a six-headed sea monster that eats sailors who sail too close. Charybdis is a whirlpool capable of swallowing your ship whole. The only problem is, you have to sail right between Scylla and Charybdis to discover what’s beyond.

Getting to a new place with your packaging can be a lot like that. On one side, if your new package doesn’t retain the identity and appeal of the old one – plus meaningful advantages – unhappy consumers can bite you. On the other side, if manufacturers can’t or won’t retool to produce it, your new package could be sunk before it even reaches the shelf.

Some brands try to chart a safe course, avoiding any risk. They’re unlikely 
to get any further than they’ve already come. Other brands brave the journey of structural innovation, only to be done in by entrenched consumers or manufacturers.

Heroic brands find a way through to the future.

Making Flexibility an Advantage 


The most notable innovation in packaging over the last 10 years has
 been the rise of flexible solutions across a wide variety of product categories.

Flexible pouches can lower material requirements and reduce energy, printing, transportation, warehousing and other costs. They can shrink 
the brand’s environmental footprint. And they can help brands go to
market faster.

But what happens to the brand equity you’ve built into a rigid bottle – that iconic shape, its familiar usability, the feeling that it belongs there, on the store shelf and in the shopper’s home?

The label alone should never be your brand’s sole differentiator. When a packaging innovation takes away a familiar shape for your brand, it has to give something back that engages your consumers even more than before – an instantly recognizable advantage that’s desirable and proprietary.

A classic example of this is baby food. When moms saw the familiar glass jar replaced by flexible pouches in the store, they immediately realized the advantages of a package that’s safer, easier to carry, less messy, and even more enjoyable for baby. For the purpose of feeding babies, the new flexible package was inherently more attractive to shoppers than the old glass jar.

But what about another product category, where the advantages of flexible packaging may not be so obvious? How do you bring a radical change to the shelf without getting bitten by shoppers who identify strongly with your old package?

Bringing Consumers Into the Design Process


Ideally, shoppers should recognize your brand in-store, immediately understand the functional benefits of your new package, try it, and never miss the old bottle when they realize how much better your new pouch fits their lives. To make sure this happens, you need to get actual consumers involved as early as possible in the product development process.

For example, we recently undertook a design exercise for bringing flexible packaging to hand soaps, shower gels and other personal care products. The goal was to design a stand-up pouch that would benefit a well-known brand by lowering material and production costs while enabling easier recyclability. However, it could only succeed by appealing to consumers.

We had to make the package easier to use while giving it a form that
is instantly recognizable both for its beauty and functional advantages – enabling it to become the next iconic expression of the brand’s values and equities.

We sketched many pouch concepts – a handle for hanging, a shower-stall suction cup, a headstand pouch that dispenses from the base, a “bag in
 a bottle” concept with a rigid shell that accepts refill pouches, and many more. We also sketched many closures – snap-off, twist-off, pull-out, flip-up, and others. To evaluate these ideas, we turned to actual users as early as possible in the design process.

That meant assembling pouches, 3D-printing closures and other parts, and getting fully functional prototypes into the hands of consumer/testers. Within two or three weeks of the project kickoff, we already had real-world consumers evaluating our first five working prototypes. 

Failing Faster and Better

When you observe consumers using prototypes the same way they’d use the product at home, you can quickly see where you’re missing the mark, develop new prototypes, and test again. You can identify risks and chart a better course. Rinse and repeat until you have a flexible package people are excited about using, with no reservations.

For example, we developed a prototype that seemed very elegant, with a simple and beautiful twist-off closure. Expectations ran high, until a tester pointed out something that should have been obvious: “The cap is going to get dropped in the shower and go down the drain.”

Far from disappointed, the team went eagerly back to their sketches, CAD renderings and 3D printers to create an elegant, integrated closure that is easier to use. The whole point of this iterative design/prototype/test process is to fail quickly and fail as often as necessary – so you can keep moving on toward the one design everyone loves to use and wants to take home.

Consumers can also help you understand how to reveal brand meaning through packaging structure. For example, while testing the “bag-in-a-bottle” prototype with its 
rigid holder, one woman remarked that she wouldn’t be particularly interested – but her husband would love something like that. He could just throw it in his bag and take it to the gym without worrying about it. Plus it had a masculine look and feel.

Through that tester’s observations, a design that had been created as a functional exercise revealed its true meaning in its inherent appeal for men.

Getting Manufacturers Onboard 


Engaging consumers flawlessly is only half the challenge. You also need to bring manufacturers a package design they can actually produce – without inordinate capital expense or disruption to their current production lines.

Just as important as iterative prototyping and consumer testing, you should be auditing manufacturers. By speaking with OEMs and analyzing production facilities, your goal
is to learn all the details of the existing production setup, then determine what new investments and changes will be required to manufacture your proposed package.

Some projects may require the new package to be produced on existing manufacturing lines, with minimal modification. Such a limitation can be challenging, but it doesn’t mean you can’t innovate. Instead, it’s something you need to know up-front in order to avoid taking your design down impractical paths.

Whatever the project’s constraints, you need to continually validate each design iteration against what’s practical to manufacture.
Setting Sail 
Don’t be afraid of your customers. They are not six-headed monsters. Let them help you. Don’t be afraid of your manufacturer. They’re not an unalterable whirlpool. Get in there and see if you can change the manufacturing flow just enough to make a difference for your brand.

Brand change always involves risk, but the bigger risk is not changing. To discover your structural packaging innovation, with confidence, get everyone on board and set sail.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Tim James is senior director of Structural Packaging and Innovation, at Anthem. He has been working in the product and industrial design industry for the last 12 years in London, Oslo, and New York.