Public Relations & Social Marketing Insight

Josh Tetrick was standing in a Dollar Tree in Oakland, California, when he asked a customer which brand of mayo was best. The woman pointed to a gleaming white jar of Kraft.But Tetrick asked, “What about the Just Mayo?”–the flagship product of his company Hampton Creek–which sat nearby.

“She said, ‘No, that’s the private-label brand at the Dollar Tree,’” Tetrick recounts. In other words, Just Mayo’s craft paper label–a label that had first been X-Acto-knifed, one at a time, for its initial appearance on shelves at Whole Foods–it didn’t register as some Brooklyn-inspired, vegan artisanal good to this bargain shopper in Oakland. It looked like the generic stuff sold by a budget retailer.

“That was an important learning for me,” says Tetrick. “It shows how important context is in design.” And it cemented a hunch, that Hampton Creek, with the lofty, sometimes controversial goal of bringing sustainable, transparent, healthier processed foods to the mainstream consumer, simply didn’t make sense where many low-income and middle-class consumers were shopping: Walmart and Dollar Tree....

In a sea of similar items, how do you make your product packaging stand out? One of our favorite ways is by complicating it a little with 2016’s coolest packaging trend. Designers are imbuing their designs with texture, giving packaging a tactile quality that drives shoppers to grab them off the shelf.

A great way to accomplish this tactility is by adding a pattern to your package. A play off of color and shape that gives a little hint as to what’s inside, or tells a story without using words. Designers have been doing this for ages, but if you pay close attention, you’ll notice that the kinds of aesthetic stories they tell change from year to year.

Here are five different ways for you to work with the hottest 2016 packaging trend – using patterns to create textural design and to stand out from the crowd:...

Trends are mysterious things. Some stay for years and others are just a swift shimmer that leave as fast as they enter the scene. Still others shift and evolve with the times. Design is both the driving force and the result of this cycle of trends—with packaging design creating personal experiences (like the unboxing experience) that connect consumers to brands on a deeper level.

With that in mind, here are the 9 packaging trends that we are predicting for 2017....

Besides quality, there are some other important factors that immensely help a product to outshine its competitors in the market. One such vital factor is packaging. Statistics also prove the fact that a product with good and effective packaging is very likely to be a hit among consumers.

Besides generating a good consumer base, effective packaging technique also helps in the process of branding and marketing. Brands, both big and small clearly understand the importance of packaging and therefore constantly try to upgrade the quality of their product packaging with new and innovative ideas....