Placing consumers at the heart of label design

Stergios Bititsios at consumer research specialist MMR Research Worldwide takes a view on consumer-centric label design

Packaging and its components play a crucial role in the success or failure of products and brands and labels are an integral packaging component. Nevertheless, packaging – and therefore labels – seems to be the poor cousin in the marketing mix, especially when it comes to consumer research. Whilst products have enjoyed the attention of sophisticated research methods, packaging has been overly forgotten by brand owners. 

When packaging research is conducted, it is often at a superficial level: locating liking and propensity to buy. Research is mostly used to validate the pack at the end of the innovation process. This leads to a situation where the familiar and comfortable thrive and true innovation is driven out. The result is packs that appeal to the masses or at the other extreme, packs that fall outside of category conventions, or where a creative/equity route is taken that can’t be supported by the brand. With so many ‘good’ products on the market, packaging is a fantastic opportunity for brands to differentiate their products and enhance the consumption experience. Consumer research has the power to extract and define the packaging elements that really matter; those that will be successful and that will guarantee a healthy return on investment and those that will not.

A closer look at labels

For years labels acted as platforms for delivering product information and usage instructions. Soon marketers realized that labels offered a fantastic opportunity for brand communications. Today, labels are seen as one of the important, if not the most important, components of packaging – a portal for spelling functional and emotional cues – from product benefits claims to creative imagery that captures shoppers’ imagination.

But on today’s swarming shelves, do label designs get the level of attention that brand owners expect and demand? With the sheer volume of packaged goods readily available, do labels really stand-out on shelf? Do they truly help consumers quickly spot their favorite brands among dozens of others? Not entirely. Take the breakfast cereals category as an example. In the astonishingly long-term lack of structural excellence that strikes this category, cereal brands have labels as the only means of differentiation. When you walk down the cereals isle though, the vast majority of boxes look almost identical and somewhat predictable. This is a situation that maybe Finish (dishwashing brand) and Activia (yoghurt brand) have managed to escape so far but other than those two it proves very hard to instantly think of any other brands that manage to achieve supreme stand-out through label design.

On the contrary, it can get quite worse. Remember the infamous Tropicana (orange juice brand) case where a label design change in the US caused massive financial loss and hurt the brand on many levels. And all because a bunch of creative gurus decided to rule consumers – the ultimate judges of a pack – out of the creation and validation process. Research has shown that consumers spend just one sixth of a second looking at a grocery pack in a supermarket. This means that labels have to work faster in a more crowded environment and getting it right the first time is vital.

Label Design: Art or Science?

Thomas Hine in his 1995 book ‘Total Package’ noted that certain critics have argued that packaging design is a type of folk art, anonymous and universal, a response to aesthetics that are unspoken but widely shared. He also underlined that most packaging designers have an art school background, often in graphic design, rather than a qualification in a scientific discipline.  Whether or not that is representative today, the truth is that in order to successfully capture and materialize all that labels represent and are expected to deliver, design requires at least some scientific input. Packaging designers need a way to leverage and manage consumer needs and desires, product qualities and brand equities and to accurately embed these in the design process.  Such precision in the design execution is feasible but requires a well-disciplined collaboration between psychology, consumer research and technology. So, it is possible to scientifically analyze and evaluate the elements that make a label design effective. But it also requires artfulness in the way that those elements are integrated.  A mixture of art and science is possibly the right way forward, but still the science part is too often overlooked.  The more science is pushed into the background, the more label design risks becoming a beauty contest.

What should be done next to ensure label design is evocative yet sustainable?

Recognize that there’s life beyond the first moment of truth. It’s time to realize that the impact of packaging extends beyond grabbing customers’ attention at the supermarket shelf. In fact, the relationship between consumers and packaging becomes more meaningful and intimate at the point of use. Product information and instructions come handy at the point of use too and the better those are communicated the more satisfied and comfortable consumers will feel using the product. The brand also gets extensive exposure at the point of use. A shampoo bottle stands proud in consumers’ bathrooms for weeks; an energy drink bottle regularly makes an appearance at the gym; a cereal box poses every day at consumers’ kitchens. Repeat purchase should be at the heart of every brand’s strategy. 

Conduct consumer research throughout the design process

Understanding how to create impact throughout the consumer journey and a product’s lifecycle is of paramount importance. Bringing consumers in at every stage of the design process is therefore essential. Consumer research does not aim to replace creativity but to make sure it’s not stifled by misleading opinions which quite often lead to disastrous decisions. Research intends to generate objective consumer data and through filtering and rigorous analysis to produce actionable guidelines that help place a framework around the creative process. Sensory and affective sciences coupled with consumer psychology and behaviour techniques have been successful in helping to deliver profitable products in the areas of food, drink, personal care, electronics, automotive and even architecture. Why not use them in label design too?  

Accept that ‘liking’ isn’t enough

Consumer research must be done properly. Measuring ‘liking’ is just not enough these days. The subconscious, emotional impact that a label can have on consumer reactions is extremely important, as is its delivery against core design and brand aims. It’s often hard to articulate why we like a label and why we choose to buy the brand that features it. Understanding the psychology of choice and the relationship between the drivers of behaviour and liking is vital. Brands must therefore dig much deeper into the brains of category users and deeply analyze their interaction with packaging in general and more specifically with labels. At MMR we believe that the consumer should drive innovation and set the brief, supported by marketing and R&D, and not the other way around. They need to shape ideas at the earliest stage of packaging development and help to uncover the rules of success for a product and to assess how appropriately packaging and indeed labels meet their expectations of the brand.

Use innovative research tools and technologies to support the design process

There are various advanced, proven research techniques that are used to extract consumers’ personal beliefs, their emotional, functional and hedonic values and the vocabulary they use. Most importantly, they can translate these findings into meaningful actions for the packaging innovation process including label design. MMR Research proactively scans for and develops new ways of supporting packaging innovation and sees that label design should and will unravel in three distinct phases:   

1. Identifying early rules of success

An effective way of injecting consumer insight at the beginning of the project is to bring all the concerned parties together under the right conditions. Participants should be consumers – carefully screened, highly articulate and creative category users – the marketing and R&D teams and label designers and illustrators. Via a collaborative and intensive workshop-style environment, facilitated by consumer researchers, the initial creative brief is first explored in detail. Basic executions are rigorously profiled in order to measure appeal, brand fit, emotional and functional delivery. Designers and illustrators can work directly with consumers to create new executions and arrive at a really tight design brief for graphics and label format, ensuring that success is built in from the outset of the process. It all takes only one week from preparation to delivery and it doesn’t cost the earth.  Getting it right the first time is priceless especially in today’s’ economic climate and helps avoid expensive guesswork or nasty surprises at the validation stage.

2. Embedding interactive technologies

Teaming up with experts and providers of relevant new technologies is becoming crucial. Technologies such as QR codes, augmented reality and printed electronics can be embedded/printed on labels and truly elevate a pack’s performance and impact on-shelf and beyond. Labels that emit light, change color, vibrate, make sounds, are all plausible design routes today and will become even more accessible in the years to come. The emotional, functional, social and environmental benefits can be tremendous. A great example of technology exploitation with great emotional, functional and social impact is Bud Light (lager brand) in the US. The brand developed a label that incorporates what they call a ‘metal activation technology’, allowing consumers to type anything they will on the label with the use of a coin or any other metal component. That way, consumers can customize their bottle, creating a social effect and also avoid the problem of drinkers mixing their bottles in bars. It’s a good start.

3. Evaluation, validation and optimization

After designers have refined the emerged label design concepts the final piece of the puzzle is evaluating and validating those to either provide guidelines for optimization or to confirm that brands can push the ‘go’ button. Bringing consumers back into the process and just before the final choice is made is vital. Advanced research techniques can be used here for a holistic evaluation and validation to ensure that all aspects of the label work optimally. Eye tracking, for example, can be used to really understand shelf standout and message delivery.  On-line fixtures or even real time, physical shelf mock-ups can be used to record ‘findability’ and to spot the design areas that consumers like and/or dislike. All that can be then supported with direct questions for benchmarking and for gauging overall appeal as well as emotional profiling for assessing conceptual delivery and brand fit. Finally, facial coding could be optionally employed to access the instant emotional reaction of consumers to a new pack design. This is a lean, low investment process and is designed to deliver results in two to three weeks.

The future of label design looks bright considering all the great consumer research methodologies and technologies available today to support the creative process. Even in tough economic times packaging and labels can shine – it’s just a matter of adapting our thinking process and approaches to design in ways that echo the diverse and ever-increasing demands of the modern society  and embrace the behavioural models of the contemporary consumer.   

This article was published in L&L issue 1, 2012