3 Sizzling Design Trends In Food & Beverage Packaging

Let the packaging design tell your story simply, immediately and with impact. This energy-drink design was done for Quiktrip, a prominent player in the convenience store market.

Your product’s story will have to be told simply and immediately through the packaging design to connect with today’s mobile-savvy consumer.

One of Packaging Digest’s “evergreen” features that continues to collect solid interest again in May as it has done monthly since it was posted last April was our interview with Justin Johnson, principal of More Branding, a design agency. That article centered on the firm’s design work for Delici, a high-end dessert in premium packaging sold exclusively at Costco.

Having learned recently that Johnson’s company spun-off a standalone design website devoted to design for food and beverage packaging, Shelf, we felt it was timely to tap his design expertise once again, but this time through a wide-angle view of emerging design drivers in this market.

What trends are you seeing in design specific to food and beverages?

Johnson: Trends are often thought of as changing design aesthetics, however, we feel trends are always a reflection of the consumer and culture. If we look at our culture, we have people that are always on the move, life’s busy and fast and our attention spans are compressing. In order to connect with today’s consumer you have to be able to tell your story simply and immediately.

In the old days, we used to talk about having an elevator pitch to tell someone why they should buy your product. An elevator pitch was considered short 15 years ago. Today, it’s more like the time from when you push the elevator button until the doors close. You have about 3-5 seconds max to convince a consumer to buy your product in the supermarket. Simple always wins.

The second macro trend also relates to the consumer’s busy lifestyle: Mobility. Mobility isn’t just about technology. Consumers desire products that can travel with them. Packaging that is purchased in smaller containers. Flexible packaging that can be thrown in a bag or purse and easily consumed without kitchen utensils. Think about the lifestyle of 25-55 year olds. They are commuting, traveling, attending their kids’ activities, or hitting their Soul Cycle class. Our culture is no longer built around the mom at home with continuous access to the pantry and fridge. Brands need to live beyond the pantry.

One well publicized example of this mobility is Chobani’s new drinkable smooth yogurt beverage. You can grab it at a convenience store and have your yogurt on the go without a spoon.

The third macro trend we are seeing at Shelf is designing not only for the supermarket shopper, but asking how does the brand experience translate to the consumer that purchases online? Packaging’s role in this ecommerce scenario is still to connect, but could provide a deeper experience.

An analogy might be something like this: Shopping in a supermarket is like speed dating, it’s quick and shallow with lots of choices, but once you find someone to ask out for dinner you can have deeper more meaningful conversations and really strengthen that bond/relationship. Getting the product at home is more like going straight to the one-on-one relationship.

To boil down these macro trends: Simplicity. Mobility. Online Consumer.

Next: What’s the biggest challenge in the food & beverage market?

The company created vibrant branding for a contemporary chocolate startup that pairs chocolate with music.

What’s the biggest challenge in the food & beverage market?

Johnson: We think the biggest challenge for brands doesn’t just relate to the food and beverage market. At Shelf, we use a phrase daily, “It’s not about competing, it’s about connecting.” This is tough because we love competing and competition is a big driver, but to win, you can’t focus on what everyone else is doing. When your eyes are on the competition you aren’t engaging with your customer. Today’s consumer is smart, fast and less loyal than ever before. If you lose that connection, even briefly, it can set you back significantly. Do more listening. Make it a priority to listen, observe and spend time doing life with your customer base. If you have a strong connection with your demographic you don’t have to worry about the competition nearly as much.

The biggest challenge for packaging design in today’s business climate is speed. You have to be fast, nimble and flexible. The market changes so rapidly, brands are extending their core product line into new and innovative form factors and clients expect more with less time to deliver. We have spent a significant amount of time on our internal processes to meet the requirements necessary to deliver for our clients. Just like consumer brands need to listen and understand today’s buyer we have the same responsibility to listen and understand the needs of today’s brand managers and marketing directors. We are always looking for the edge to provide better service and better design. This was really the catalyst that led to spinning out Shelf from our parent company More Branding.

Why the spinoff now?

Johnson: We weren’t telling our story in a clear way. If you went to our main site morebranding.com you might see a chocolate mousse dessert next to a drilling rig or a sweaty construction worker. It just didn’t feel right—it confuses the customer and doesn’t properly showcase the success and gains we have been generating for our food and beverage clientele.

Some of our biggest successes have been our design and consulting work for our consumer good clients. We have had multiple clients obtain 1,000% sales increases in the first 12 months after engaging with us. We did it once and thought it was an exceptional example like those workout videos you see with the fine type at the bottom—“results not typical”-but then we did it again and again with different clients. We started to see that we had something unique and special happening. It only made sense to evolve and focus on our strength and abilities in this category.

What can you say about the role of packaging in Delici’s success?

Johnson: Delici has been one of our biggest successes. If you remember they went from a single Costco test market to being in all U.S. Costco markets. Delici is now in 23 countries and just landed in Australia. We have an exciting new flavor coming out this spring/summer and new form factors that still allow our customers to reuse the packaging after consuming the product. The Delici leadership team are innovators and you will continue to hear more about this company. They are truly a dream client and we hope to find other companies that share their ability to innovate and value the design process.

Credit to Packaging Digest