Entice Your Customers with Personalized Packaging

In 2014, Coca-Cola kicked the personalized packaging trend into the fast lane with its “Share a Coke” campaign, featuring packages with 250 popular first names on them. Other brands had implemented personalization strategies previously, but Coca-Cola’s campaign transformed the strategy from a passing fad to an important marketing consideration for brands, product marketers, designers, and packaging providers. Consumers are responding positively to brands that focus on them as individuals and cater to their unique personal needs.

Other examples of personalized packaging have seen tremendous impact on consumers.

• Heinz soup in the United Kingdom had great success with its Facebook campaign; consumers could send a customized can of soup to a sick friend with a “get well soon” message.
• Tic Tac’s brief “My Pack Tour” campaign in spring 2014 allowed consumers to create a custom blend from 13 breath mint flavors and personalize the label with their names — and then let them share their combinations on social media with their friends.
• Purina has extended personalization to pet food. On the site JustRightPetFood.com, Purina customers can enter a variety of information about their dogs’ physical condition, age and taste preferences to create a unique pet food formulation for their pooch. The packaging comes customized with a picture of the customer’s pet and name on the package.

Benefits of personalized packaging

Personalized packaging can have very tangible benefits for a product or brand, including:

• Creating an emotional connection with the product and brand. Acknowledging the basic human need to be recognized as an individual shows customers that you are interested in them and who they are, making them more emotionally invested in your brand in return.
• Allowing creative expression. Indulging this need for creative expression makes the customers’ experience of the product more fun and interactive. Some brands, such as Nutella and Vedett beer, invite customers to submit their photos to personalize labels.
• Conveying value and quality. In consumers’ minds, personalized packaging suggests a sense of exclusiveness, higher quality, and trendiness.
• Making your product stand out. Personalized packaging makes a product unique among similar products on store shelves — even other products sold by your brand.

Is personalized packaging right for your product?

Although personalization in package design resonates with consumers, it can expensive to implement and may not make sense for every product. How do you know if personalized packaging is the right choice for you?

Like any marketing strategy, personalized packaging is effective only when executed with care and consideration. The first step in determining whether personalized packaging is right for your product is to clearly define your goals and the benefits you hope to gain. If your goals include increasing brand recognition and loyalty — particularly within particular market segments (millennials, for example) — personalization might be a good strategy to consider.

You’ll want to be cautious, however, not to personalize the packaging so much that it compromises your brand recognition and identity. Also, you want to ensure you understand your target audience very well to make sure they’ll respond positively to personalized packaging.

Personalized packaging is a marketing tool that can boost product interest and sales for consumers in person, online, and in advertising. With guidance, support from your packaging vendor, and careful implementation, this innovative packaging approach can bring a breath of fresh air to your brand.

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