Barilla Packaging Delivers Premium Look

The niche for premium and super-premium products is hot. Many marketers are adding top-tier lines to their portfolios. One recent example is Barilla America Inc.'s Barilla Restaurant Creations line of sauces, which hit store shelves last fall. The company's marketers clearly understand that structural innovation -- and not simply classy graphics -- is necessary for a premium look. The Barilla Restaurant Creations line includes three sauces that the company hopes possess flavor levels normally found only in authentic Italian restaurants. Each variety has two components that consumers mix at home: a base sauce, which is a mixture of tomatoes and olive oil, and a separate chef sauce with various ingredients. (Sugo alla Romana, for example, blends Romano and Ricotta cheeses, olive oil, and herbs, while Sugo alla Napoletana contains tomatoes, onions, red wine, garlic and herbs.) A 17-ounce package retails for $3.79. Competitive sauces, in 26-ounce jars, sell for about $1.99.These two components come in a unique two-jar package: The smaller jar, which holds the chef sauce, sits on top of a larger jar, which holds the base sauce. Because the ingredients are kept separate through the distribution chain, they retain their flavor characteristics. The system, therefore, delivers a different -- and premium -- flavor profile than any other single-bottle product.It also differentiates the sauce on store shelves. Consumers see glass as a strong indicator of quality, but glass jars dominate the Italian sauce category. Therefore, Barilla knew that simply using glass would not garner much attention for its new line.The company also knew that unique shape is common in the category. A good example is Prego, whose shape, coupled with high-impact graphics on a shrink sleeve, achieves a certain degree of shelf impact.So Barilla introduced a glass, two-jar combination whose shape is drastically different. A plastic shrink sleeve wraps over both jars, and when heated, it shrinks to conform to their shape. The result is an hourglass-like package that stands out boldly from the crowd. Note, too, that Barilla didn't use any shrink label. It opted for a clear, glossy version, which enables consumers to see the ingredients through the jars. This custom-designed package works because the developers paid attention to details. An indent on the bottom of the upper jar, for instance, is located exactly over a ridge on the lower jar's cap. Therefore, when the shrink sleeve is applied, the package forms a single, solid unit.Furthermore, the characteristic Barilla blue on the shrink sleeve perfectly matches the blue on the cap. When two components are produced by different processes, good color matches are not a given. Precise matches like these result from using state-of-the-art digital asset-management programs and working closely with both package converters.Jim Peters is a writer and consultant with 25 years in the packaging field. He is president of J. Peters Associates Inc. Click here for his contact information.

Barilla Packaging Delivers Premium Look

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