Color-in-Motion Packaging

The best packaging reinforces a brand's value and demonstrates the brand's unique selling proposition. So, for marketers of video products hitting store shelves, the question is: "How do I express the product sizzle when that sizzle is ultimately delivered on a video monitor?"Savvy packagers are incorporating special effects -- holograms, metallized paper and lenticular lenses -- to convey the product's essence on the package. These decorating methods add depth, color and motion to what is normally a two-dimensional medium. Here are two packages that I put in the "award-winning" category because they achieve visual impact and support the selling proposition. (P.S. If you want my nomination for worst holographic package ever, e-mail me.)1. Grabbing visually attuned pre-teensX3D Technologies Corp., New York, markets 3-D video products for the computer. Among the company's products is a line of 3-D comic books, bringing to life such characters as Spider-Man and The Incredible Hulk. Each package contains a disc and 3-D glasses so kids get the color-in-motion, 3-D experience from their computer screens.Marketing objectives: The challenge is to build the same excitement on-shelf that the product delivers on a monitor. Typically, the product is retailed in c-stores, where it has to fight a high-intensity visual environment in the first place. It also appears on store shelves of retailers who carry video games. "We wanted packaging to reinforce the 3-D aspect of the product and communicate the experience right from the store shelf," says Elliot Klein, chief operating officer of X3D Technologies. Graphic techniques: The disc, along with 3-D glasses, is in a carton that is about the size of a movie DVD. To achieve a color-in-motion effect, the carton's surface is a rainbow hologram. It is a stock pattern that delivers the shimmer of a rainbow. The key to making a hologram work effectively is to be sure that it reinforces other graphic elements rather than dominate the package. This package uses a common technique -- a "double hit" of white ink that "masks" the hologram in some area of the package. Then, high-definition printing of key elements -- in this case the action cartoon characters -- communicates just what's in the package. Printed over the white ink, the high-contrast character images project realism and action. In areas where the hologram shows through, it adds the visual interest.The carton also has a die-cut opening in the front. It reveals a lenticular lens that is a card within the package. It adds motion to the cartoon character featured on the disc.Analysis: It's easy to say this package is over-the-top. It is the only package I've ever seen with both a hologram and a lenticular lens. If the package were for adults, I'd say it was gaudy and diminishes the brand image. But here, the "visual wham" is targeted at pre-teen boys whose eyeballs live in a high-energy visual world. It works well.How well? X3D Technologies says it had a 40% lift in sales when it introduced the new package in late 2003. (This package is an award winner in the National Paperbox Association's 2004 competition. I was part of the judging panel.)2. A new platform for an established brandHasbro, Pawtucket, R. I., turned to a hologram to introduce a new version of its Trivial Pursuit board game. The version added a DVD that carried questions and answers for key points in the game.Marketing objectives: The challenge was to differ-entiate this line extension, with significantly different features, such as a DVD, in a category noted for high-impact graphics.Packaging techniques: Hasbro opted for a custom hologram -- that emulated a DVD. The shimmers of light from the hologram are the same as the shimmers of light coming off a DVD. Proma Technologies, Franklin, Mass., developed the hologram.To emphasize the DVD, Hasbro had the package printed in transparent inks that let the hologram show through. A yellow transparent ink, printed in register with the disc on the hologram, clearly states that a disc is an integral part of this product.The graphic is powerful enough that the operative question is: "Is it a picture, or is it real?"The designers also repeated the disc pattern on the sides of the rigid set up box. That way, packages displayed flat still made the statement that they contained a DVD.Analysis: On seeing the package by itself, my first reaction was that it is too garish for an adult market. Then, I looked at it in-store. There, surrounded by competing brands, the hologram lets the package clearly communicate that the product is something new. The hologram, extended across the front of the package and high-lighted with transparent inks, ratchets up the visual intensity to make the package stand out. Yet, the design is executed with enough finesse that it doesn't offend the sensibilities of an adult shopping for a game.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.

Color-in-Motion Packaging

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