Designing the difference

Personal care packaging has kept evolving over the years, but the importance of consumer-appeal has never gone away. Even the biggest players in the toiletries business have to ensure their brands stay relevant while maintaining the quality customers have come to expect from their favourite brands. In 2013, consumer goods giant Unilever, committed to reducing the waste associated with the disposal of its products, halved the size of its deodorant aerosols targeting the female audience - but any reduction in quality
was strictly off the agenda.

"The product must be flawless and, where possible, we're looking to exceed expectations through great design," says Paul Howells, VP packaging R&D at Unilever. "Personal care companies should always be looking to deliver additional benefits with their packaging."

The company ensures it has a "clear understanding", Howells says, of the functionality that the packaging needs to deliver throughout its life: "Advance simulations and the use of materials that deliver this functionality without excess packaging are the key to ensuring our products are as cost-effective and sustainable as possible."

The launch of the smaller-size deodorants was an opportunity for Unilever to drive a step-change in the amount of packaging used, and it has resulted in a 25% reduction of an average can's carbon footprint. The redesign started with a strategic commitment to improve the sustainability of the company's packaging, but Unilever also wanted to convinceconsumers that the planet would not be
the only beneficiary of the revamp.

"The pack is a great design, but it's important to realise that not everyone is so invested in the sustainability basis, so it had to deliver a further benefit," says Howells. "I think our customers appreciate that it's a much more portable and useable product these days. You get two wins because we've made a reduction in the amount of packaging we've used, but the buyer is happy because we've put out a product that gives benefits above and beyond sustainability."

Bringing the product down to 75ml also ensured that unlike the earlier model, the aerosols are under the 100ml limit for aircraft
hand luggage, which means customers can be confident their deodorant won't get confiscated at airport security.

Complex considerations
The compressed aerosols are a good example of a product that has been designed with multiple solutions in mind. And in Howells' extensive experience at Unilever, in both manufacturing and processing departments, he has come to realise that when selecting packaging for a particular cosmetic or toiletry, it is not sufficient to consider just one factor at a time. The whole process from
conception to finished product should fall under what he calls a "holistic approach".

"This means the brand DNA really informs the design," he says.

Howell believes that in order for a product to sell well, its packaging needs to "seduce" customers in a number of different ways.

"I think there's a trend for packaging design that really incorporates all the senses into its concept, rather than just focusing on sight and functionality," he says. A product's packaging might work reasonably well and be sufficiently attractive, but if it falls short regarding other faculties, the item could well be considered sub-par.

"Of course the packing must deliver the basic functional requirements but it's our job, as packaging designers and engineers, to look for opportunities to add value in our packaging, such that people have a much deeper, emotionally based interaction with the product and its packaging," says Howells.

Lasting impression
But how passionate can a consumer really get about a cosmetic's casing? At first, it's a little difficult to know what Howell reallymeans by this "emotionally based interaction", but then he suggests that packaging companies could learn a lot from car designers. Emotional interaction is a clear game-changer for customers choosing a car that's right for them, and he thinks the concept should be no different for consumers choosing which products to place in their bathroom cabinets. Making sure there's the correct feedback across all senses (not just sight) can translate into brand success.

"Automobile designers think about the way a car door closes, the way the seats feel, the car's smell," he says. "It's all been designed holistically, and that's what we try to emulate with regard to personal care products and their packaging. We must consider how it feels when you hold the product and how it sounds when you open and close it. It's about making sure everything fits together really effectively."

For Howell, the devil's in the detail. Sometimes the smallest innovations make the biggest difference to a consumer. He cites his favourite example of a well-designed product as Bleu de Chanel, a male fragrance contained in an elegant square bottle of midnight blue.

"There is a piece of 'magic' in the cap due to the fact that an inbuilt (but invisible) magnet always ensures the Chanel logo is aligned to the front of the bottle. It's a gorgeous piece of packaging and, needless to say, very well engineered!" he says.

Magic or not, reinforcing a brand's identity is, of course, still fundamental to successful packaging design. One feature that should not be overlooked when updating the container of an established product is the brand's heritage. Its history should be carried forward, and not forgotten. Customers should be able to look at a piece of packaging and understand how it translates to the brand itself.

Additionally, operators ought to take influence from the most iconic containers - brands that have enjoyed decades of success and are instantly recognisable.

"You should be able to pick out a Lynx deodorant ('Axe' outside the UK, Ireland and Australia) from a Dove for example. Just like you can look at a BMW and say 'that's a BMW'," says Howell.

"It's about updating a brand such that, although you're presenting a new innovation, you can still see that the product's history carries through."

Right from the outset
But how do you make the right decisions when designing packaging for a new product on the market? Does this require a different approach? With no history to draw upon, packaging designers are free to create a completely new identity from scratch, but they have to get it right.

"It's perhaps even more important to be clear about what you want to communicate in terms of brand value for a new product, because that will set the standard or the image of that brand for the future," says Howell. "If you get it wrong at the beginning, you're not going to be doing yourself any favours."

These days, if you don't make the best packaging decisions for a product's launch, your potential customers are bound to find out soon. The surge of blogging and social media platforms has provided consumers with an easy route for giving instant feedback about their recent purchases to a whole community of internet users.

The public can immediately register their endorsement or disapproval of a new product and discuss its various benefits or shortcomings. Social media is bound to keep packaging designers on their toes, but also hints at what the modern public requires from a product and which innovations are currently trending.

"In the past you might have been able to get away with a bit of a sub-optimal design," says Howells. "But if that occurs now, there's a significant lobby that would undermine the brand equity if something doesn't work properly."

Equally though, social media can have a really positive impact for a company. If personal care businesses produce a unique product with interesting packaging, the viral nature of these methods of communication can have a massive impact on sales.

"People who ordinarily wouldn't be interested in the product will be encouraged to go out and buy it," says Howell. "That's the two sides of that coin. I think anyone designing new packaging for products has to bear in mind both the threats and the opportunities."

But the opportunities will only arise if personal care companies use packaging to truly engage with their customers. From sustainability to emotional seduction. and even social media, a holistic approach should be taken by brands seeking to differentiate themselves from the competition. Thinking outside the box is essential for providing the innovations that consumers have come to anticipate.

Reducing impact also benefits the consumer Unilever R&D scientists in Leeds, UK re-engineered the spray system of their deodorants for the brands Sure, Vaseline and Dove, to reduce the flow rate. The new cans are 75ml - half the size of the previous cans - but deliver the same amount of product in the same spray time as the full-sized can.

The reduced size means less aluminium is required to manufacture the product's packaging, and more can be transported at the same time, reducing the number of lorries on the road. At 75ml, the cans are now under the restriction limits for flight hand luggage at most airlines.

www.unilever.com