Packaging Snafus and Problems
What is your worst packaging experience? A lot of people say it’s getting the toys out of the box at Christmas or getting those blankity-blank plastic clamshells open. It’s a fact that hard to open plastic clamshells have been so maligned that there is even terminology given to that product category: “Wrap-Rage.”
There are lots of reasons why a plastic clamshell is a great solution to your product packaging, but plan to give it some thought before choosing this solution. The consumers hate clamshells so consider that when developing your product packaging. At the very worst, you don’t want to end up as an award winner in Consumer Reports Annual “Oyster Awards.”
Have you done all of your homework and considered potential problems? Does the potential exist for something unexpected to come up and cause your packaging to become a problem?
Take Fabuloso for example. What looked like a great packaging concept with great bottles and terrific colors is in trouble. Why? Because consumers mistakenly think it’s a beverage since it looks so similar to sports drinks. Tragically, some consumers have actually drunk the cleaning product.
Or “Cocaine” the energy drink is under attack by anti drug campaigners because it claims to be the real thing even though it’s just a heavy jolt of caffeine.
The latest into the fray is SPYKES, a fruit flavored alcoholic beverage that is giving mothers of teenage children a fit. It is a great packaging concept, but it has problems because of who it’s marketed to.
Let’s go back to Tylenol in 1982. Seven people were poisoned by unsecured packaging and that incident spawned an entire new category of product packaging….tamper evident. See more on tamper evident in the packaging examples section.
You are not immune to product recalls either. How may product recalls have you read about lately that didn’t specify the right ingredients on the product packaging? That’s grounds for instant recall and packaging problems like this one that hurt Cadbury.
Cadbury hit by product recall ahead of Easter boom
- Cadbury Schweppes has been forced to recall over twenty of its core UK Easter products after failing to display nut allergy warnings on the packaging
Many times you cannot predict what will happen even if you have done all your homework. I mentioned earlier the Wolfgang Puck’s exploding latte cans that had to be pulled off the shelf. Just remember to expect the unexpected with any new and untested package or a new package innovation.
Try to extrapolate any possible outcomes that could occur before committing your product to the marketplace. It’s a lot easier to correct a problem before it goes out the door. You save yourself the bad publicity that comes from a package that doesn’t work or doesn’t perform up to expectations.
Order this article complete with pictorial examples and much more on packaging as a branding and marketing tool from Do It Yourself Packaging http://doityourselfpackaging.com
