COMMENTARY: Packaging Bites!
Friday, March 21st, 2008Issue: Why bad packaging hurts your brand
Commentary by: David Vinjamuri
Today I suffered what might almost qualify as a repetitive-motion injury: I cut myself while trying to liberate a consumer product from its packaging. The offender is often the clamshell style of package.
This package can only be opened with sturdy scissors or – if you’re reckless – a knife
The offender today was actually a Zyliss Ice Cream Scoop which had a plastic band wound so tightly around the slender part of its handle that I briefly considered removing it with a soldering iron (which would have been safer). Instead, I used a pair of scissors which rebounded to nick my finger.
Other examples of this type of consumer-unfriendly packaging abound from CD and DVD jewel cases covered with that same clam-shell and clad in hard-to-tear plastic and sticky, sticky tape to pill bottles with shrink-wrapped plastic neck covers that defy tearing.
All of this is actually expense management at the cost of the brand. The problem is that the wrong people are in charge of elements that really affect the brand – either finance managers worried that packaging which is easy to open will invite pilferage or salespeople responding to pressure from retailers to make packaging which will be difficult to open and hard to shoplift.
But it’s a brand disaster. Why would any consumer product knowingly cause someone to bleed? It is unimaginable.
If you’re a brand manager, it is time to start examining your packaging closely. It might just be undercutting your brand message.
