The pack evolution quest: a necessary gamble

When you evolve the packaging of a major brand there is an acute tension between the need to enhance competitive performance and the risk of diluting existing equities, according to William Landell Mills founder of qual & semiotics agency, Amaranth Insight. The disastrous case of Tropicana’s redesign is still a warning to us all, but change is often essential. In the first instalment of a three-part practical series on using semiotics and qual to boost the chances of success, William outlines how to implement a research programme designed to maximise those chances.

Changing pack design is risky and expensive. In the current climate many clients prefer to activate what they have rather than invest in new design. But cultural change is accelerating, and the landscape is being altered by the likes of Olipop, Prime and Liquid Death. A changing visual culture will ultimately maroon those who don’t adapt.

The sharpened appetite for low cost and faster speed has spawned an explosion in AI based research. But packaging evolution takes time and involves the use of projective techniques (imaginative games to access implicit processing) that make a mockery of AI summarisers. What this article describes is a proven approach to enhanced brand equity through skilful evolution. Not a magic AI wand.

Ads versus packs: flirtation versus marriage

Packaging poses a unique challenge for researchers. To understand that challenge, a comparison with TV ads is instructive. TV ads are mini films that enter people’s field of vision and tell their stories. They have movement and music and maybe tell jokes. Then they are gone, hopefully having connected the brand to the targeted memory structures. The best ads are captivating entertainments with relatively explicit narratives.

Packs are more like mini domestic sculptures. They sit for weeks, months or years, silently transmitting their meaning through implicit connotation. Their shapes, textures, colours and text create intimacy over time through direct physical interaction. While advertising draws people towards the brand, the packaging really is the brand – the point at which it materialises into something of enduring substance.

The quiet power of packs can only be effectively evolved with a proper understanding of what the implicit properties are that we are dealing with and clear vision of what is to be achieved.

The consumer: a naïve and complex witness

Research is the part of the design process where clients listen to the consumer’s voice. But that voice is both naïve and complex. Consumers think of packs as something functional and aesthetic, but they do not normally think of its implicit, symbolic meanings, for example the way a tequila bottle might evoke aztec architectural forms. Yet at the same time, consumers are strongly inclined to rationalise and express opinions – that may or may not reflect a wider reality. Consumer reaction provides vital insight, but only when appropriate methods are used to capture the reality of their processing. We talk more about qual methods in the third article in this series. The point here is that we must be nuanced in how we generate and evaluate consumer reactions.

Building a programme to successfully manage the uncertainty of the quest

Pack development is, in some respects, a ‘mysterious quest’.  The team is searching for something enormously precious, delicate, and which does not yet exist –the ideal new pack. The designer will have a vision but it will be hard to articulate it in words. Consumers don’t necessarily know where their feelings about a design are coming from. Early stimulus materials are only rough approximations. There are a lot of things happening that are opaque. But at the same time, it is a rationalistic process with clear business objectives.

The question is then how to orchestrate research that ensures that the mysterious quest delivers against the hard objectives. To do this, brands need to turn uncertainty into an asset, by constructing a research programme of systematic curiosity. Consider the following:

• Engage in this as an iterative, flexible, multi-stage process. Do not be ruled by a pre-determined schedule but by the discovery of what works.
• Before any design brief is written there needs to be significant preparation, leveraging the insight from relevant quant, qual and semiotics so that you know both what you want to achieve strategically with the new designs and the value of the existing design assets (shapes, logos etc) within the pack.
• There needs to be qual and quant strands to the consumer research, as each method has specific but partial insight, offering evidence that need to be pieced together.
• The first wave of qual exploration should encompass a range of at least four distinct territories/routes, as otherwise you may miss the optimal line of evolution.
• Use methods which access the qualities that consumers can usefully reveal, not the fake news of over-thought rationalisations.
• When you have confidence on the way forward then you must create physical prototypes, not just rely on digital imagery.
• There needs to be a close relationship between client, researchers (semioticians, qual and quant) and designers so that the learning from each phase is fully developed in each subsequent iteration.

In two further articles, William explains in more detail what semiotics and qual can contribute to advanced quant analysis and how these methods can be combined to deliver deeper insight.