[:en]Have you ever tried to design smash-hit retail packaging in-house? Maybe you have…and it 
didn’t go as expected.
Many companies take retail packaging lightly. But, the smart ones know to take it seriously. For example, Apple’s the master of branding, even without Steve Jobs. And their packaging is just another way they reinforce their brand experience and stay in customer’s minds. It’s worked so well that Apple now has around $216 billion in cash, which compares quite favorably to the $50 billion or so the US government keeps on hand.
What should you do with your packaging? Find out:
At the end of the day, no matter what you do, you must have memorable packaging. It doesn’t matter if you have shopping bags, corrugated cardboard boxes, giftwrap, ribbon, or tissue.
It all needs to be customized to meet what your customer wants to perceive from your brand. Do they appreciate value purchases, like they might with Costco? Or do they want to feel special and exclusive like they do with Apple?
You have to figure that out. And it’s easy to make mistakes in-house.
Every department in your company has valuable customer insights. Marketing and merchandising, however, have the strongest understanding of your customers, and what they like and don’t like.
If you choose to outsource your package design, the vendor should say they’ll work closely with these teams.
Say your company sells delicious chocolate chip cookies. Designers often want to depict your product in the most perfect way possible. So, their packaging idea might involve showing a cookie dripping in chocolate. This, even though your customers really get a cookie with chips in it.
However, that catches up with you. Consumers will feel misled when eating your chocolate chip cookies. So, it’s best to have your design accurately reflect what your customers really get.
Called “extensibility,” your current design should allow you to introduce new product lines with relative ease. For example, if you launch a new flavor under the same name, you might change the color or your design, along with changes in the font, but that’s about it.
Not only does this make introducing new products easier, but it also creates a family of similar-looking products. Customers will naturally associate your new products with your existing strong lines.
You should remember those essentials about your product’s packaging. They’ll only boost your sales.[:]
