A Design Process Success Story

The process involved with designing a package does not have to be a complex venture. Three players that positively or negatively impact this process are the brand manager, the design firm contracted to design the package, and the package printer.

There is a lot on the line when designing a package—not the least of which is the ultimate success of the brand. Consumer research is a critical component when designing a package as well. When Tropicana recently graphically redesigned its orange juice packaging, it quickly took action when it wasn't received well. After introducing the new design, consumer backlash compelled Tropicana to revert to its more familiar graphic design.

Managing all these facets from beginning to end is a serious task, but does not have to verge on impossible.

I Can't Believe It's Not Butter

Unilever (www.unilever.com) recently launched its "I Can't Believe It's Not Butter!" (ICBINB!) Cooking & Baking Sticks product. Although the new product's pack wasn't challenging in terms of physical appearance (Unilever did not deviate from the standard margarine/butter 4-stick pack), there was a lot of thought put into how to develop an innovative look and feel that would cause the package to jump off shelf.

"The design and printing took center stage for us," says Matthew McCarthy, director of brand development, Unilever. "We decided very early on in the process that we liked the pack structure, but really needed to rely on breakthrough graphic design and printing to make the innovation successful."

For the ICBINB! design, that meant using taste cues. "Taking a look at how the butter and margarine market presents itself to consumers, there actually is a fairly limited use of colors," says McCarthy. "So, what we wanted to do to make the product special was to make it really stand out on shelf by doing something different that the other products don't do. We did that specifically through very strong taste cues—very strong graphics that drove a lot of appetite appeal."

One of the first things consumers will see as they browse the dairy section at the supermarket will be "delicious sugar cookies that really help stand out," asserts McCarthy. "Food photography is very seldom used in our category. So we felt that food photography done very well would communicate how delicious the product was."

Getting the process going

When it comes to designing a package, Unilever relies on relationships it has established over time with both design companies and printers. Anthem Worldwide (www.anthemww.com), a Schawk Strategic Design company, was its design partner for this project, and Malnove its printer. In both cases, Unilever knew going in how each vendor operates and its capabilities.

Janice Jaworski, managing director, Anthem Worldwide's NYC office, says, "The process that we engaged in with Unilever is one that they employ on all of their package design programs with all of their different vendors." Specifically, Anthem is very focused on understanding where the brand has been in terms of its visual expression in the marketplace and what its current objectives are and how it can understand both areas. Unilever made that easy. "They definitely have a 'creative brief' established," says Jaworski. "They have their marketing objective and business objective identified. They have who the competitive set is in terms of players in the particular space, they know who their target consumer is, and they really help immerse us as a design agency into the process very well at the start."

This creative brief is born from efforts very early in the process. "The design process for us begins very early on in the innovation development," says McCarthy. "As we're starting to evolve the concept and sharpen it with consumer feedback, we have an idea of what the package needs to do to really excite consumers, and we see that the package is very much part of the total product we're creating for consumers, or the total proposition we're creating for consumers."

Jaworski adds that the package designs Anthem created for the ICBINB! campaign are validated by consumers during various rounds of consumer research either qualitatively, quantitatively, or both. "At the end of the day, it's the consumer who lets us know if we have permission to move into an area visually or not," she says.

The next step for Unilever is to formalize the packaging, which it does via its Visual Branding Team, a department within Unilever. The team comprises creative experts that interface externally with all the company's packaging vendors, whether they be the designers, separators, or the printers themselves. Visual Branding Team members are rooted in the design process, claims McCarthy. They are designers themselves, but they also understand production. "With their assistance, we basically write a packaging brief that outlines specifically what we want the pack to accomplish in the marketplace," he says.

After this preliminary work, Unilever selects an external design partner. By then, the packaging brief is created and basically ready to go. "We work very closely with [the design partner]," McCarthy asserts. "A big part of the process is sharing in great depth our consumer learning and brand strategy, and they become very much a strategic partner, not just a design firm. And, that's a critical step for us."

For clients/brands that don't have a design brief ready, Jaworski says Anthem has its own template from which to build a brief. "In an information gathering session, we ask questions and do a knowledge share. We complete the creative brief for our clients if they don't have one, and that tool becomes a road map for the whole assignment," she says. During the design implementation, Anthem will continually refer back to the brief to make sure the design concepts being produced are aligned with what all parties agreed on in the beginning.

Also critical to Jaworski was getting the package printer involved in the process early. Doing so allowed Unilever to discuss printing options and to talk about what things it could employ to enhance the "premium" aspect of the product. Specific to the ICBINB project, Malnove was brought in during preproduction meetings so everyone would understand the executional considerations of the assignment. "We wanted to really understand the strengths and the weaknesses of the intended printing process," says Jaworski. "Specifically on this package, the beautiful photograph of the cookies and the subtlety of the typography was further brought to life by the UV coating application." It was Unilever's understanding of Malnove and its capabilities that led to the use of the UV coating.

The package printer's role

Both McCarthy and Jaworski agree that the package printer's role in the design process goes well beyond just printing the final package. But, it is critical that printers are brought into the process early and that they be proactive. "I think, in many instances, the printer is brought in too late in the game," says Jaworski. "They can't weigh in and give thoughtful advice about some opportunities or unfortunate challenges." Ultimately what happens, she continues, is that time and money get spent in developing a design that actually won't, in the end, be produced in that way. "So the earlier you involve the printer, the better. At the end of the day you can make the design because you will have understood the opportunities and limitations of a particular vendor and work in harmony with the machinery and the technology it has," she concludes.

McCarthy adds, "I find that some of the best examples of value creation in the design process are where our package printers are proactive and they come to us with new technologies, new ideas, and things they want to test." He says that printers do this even with Unilever's most basic packages. "I think it's a very powerful part of the entire branding process when our package printers approach us with new ideas that can really create even greater experiences for our consumers using our products and product packaging," he says.

Integrated process

According to Jaworski, communication is crucial to the entire process. "The key is communication and teamwork—looking at all parts of the process and all the players in a process as partners," she says. "No one component of the entire work stream is more important than another. It has to work in harmony; it has to work collaboratively. It can't be once we get our part done, we throw it over the wall and hope it works out on the other side."

Jaworski feels that in general, the design process is still very separated and segmented. "I think the design activity happens in a bubble at the front end and then the printing activity happens in its own bubble at the back end." What she thinks needs to happen (and what did in fact happen on the ICBINB! campaign) is collaboration from the start. "Instead of a printer saying this is how we can do it and that's it, have more of a dialog around the opportunities or techniques or what [the printer] has done or what we have done. Really get in the game together, roll up the sleeves, and really sort out how to make something unique and remarkable as opposed to approaching it the standard way." pP