If you’re in the business of making or selling packaged food or beverage products, you’re keeping an eye on the emergence of online grocery shopping sites. I’d like to share some thoughts on the effect this channel is likely to have on the role of package design in the branding process.
Branding Packaged Goods Online. For now, packaging remains the strongest point of contact between consumers and CPGs, so manufacturers have naturally defaulted to using images of packaging to represent the products they sell electronically. But maybe we should take a closer look at that.
Every successful package is a symbol, indistinguishable from the product it represents. A hundred years ago, consumers became comfortable picking these convenient three-dimensional metaphors from the grocer’s shelf. Familiar colors, shapes, letterforms, illustrations and more assured them that the merchandise inside would be as expected.
Image © Goldforest2010. The Power of Symbols: You may not be able to read the names of any of these products, but chances are you know all the brands. That’s the power of packaging.
Today online, another abstraction occurs. A low-resolution, two-dimensional image of the 3D package is tasked with representing the product. “Real packages” are designed to achieve so much that these new “flat packages” can never do. Real packages in a competitive shelf set attract your eye at 15 to 20 feet. At body length, they help you differentiate key features. At arm’s length the good ones romance you and teach you about varieties.
What is shopping anyway?Much of the world defines the physical act of grocery shopping as the following collection of actions:
- Walking the aisle
- Navigating the category
- Evaluating competitive alternatives by price and perceived quality, and, with due respect for promotional offers
- Running the checkout gauntlet
Let’s not forget the cart, the bags, the transportation, the homecoming and storage.
Online grocery shopping changes pretty much everything except the storage. It’s growing at a rate exceeding 9% annually, according to a Supermarket News report on recently released market research from IBISWorld. Neilsen projects online CPG shopping growth at a clip of 25% year over year. Why should this surprise us? Click to shop eliminates many of the inconveniences of grocery shopping while still allowing us to browse by familiar categories and popular brands, compare nutritional and price information, apply coupons, and conduct a reasonable facsimile of what we traditionally consider our shopping experience. We can even schedule delivery at a convenient time (if we prefer that to local pickup). The groceries just, well, arrive.
Online retailers have created a number of mostly regional banners, each with its own uniquely branded shopping experience. Go visit a couple (and click your browser’s back arrow to return here):
www.shoprite.com (you’ll need to select a store and create an account to browse)
Did you notice how the product was displayed? Here’s a traditional aisle shown above an image of its online equivalent in the same category. As a consumer, which one looks more shopable to you? As a brand marketer, which one gives you the best chance to make your pitch? Your job online under these circumstances is pretty much limited to negotiating premium placement. But look at your package! It’s so small that your logo is illegible until the customer enlarges the image. What are you really paying for?
Below are images of packages taken down from the online shelf. If you’re Annie Chun’s, are you proud of this presentation? If you’re shopping for instant rice, how readily can you judge which brand will best satisfy you?
Now put your brand marketer’s hat back on. Did you just spend a hundred thousand on a restage of your packaging? Because it’s clear that in the online environment, that’s pretty much wasted money.
Manufacturers who succeed in the online environment will evolve a new set of tools to prosper there. Traditional packaging will lose power as a communications tool. But that does not excuse us from our responsibilities as brand-marketers. Remember, the brand is not the package. The package is often part of the core or extended brand identities, but rarely is it the brand essence.
Online stores may not be a brand-building paradise, yet shoppers are using the channel and retailers are profiting. Alec Newcomb, Chief Strategy Officer for MyWebGrocer, a successful provider of white-labeled online storefronts for grocery chains nationwide, believes the natural market share for this growing channel is 15-20%. He bases this on actual performance in certain markets, including Europe. He thinks a lot about the brand implications for packaged goods. Which is why I called to get his impressions.
The Future. Alec says that “the opportunity for online brand-management is overlooked by all but a few manufacturers. P&G,” he says, “is one exception. They have a team that is dedicated to promulgating accurate, up to date packages that automatically update online through API’s [automatic software feeds].”
I suggested that this is a terrific solution to a digital asset management problem, but it doesn’t necessarily address the branding deficiencies of the online experience. Alec was ready for that. He sees opportunities for marketers to customize their package presentations online to specific retailers based on customer demographics and shopping imperatives. The Amazon customer seeks different benefits than the Walmart customer, for example, and bespoke 2-D package representations for each channel could emphasize different aspects of a brand’s value proposition.
You can extrapolate this line of thinking. Why shouldn’t brand and product messaging be based on individual purchase patterns derived through loyalty card programs or other data mining methods? As long as such tracking methods are legal and ethical, they will be used this way eventually.
The Death Knell? No, online grocery channels are not the death knell for package design. As long as there are physical storefronts, there will be a need for thoughtful and strategic packaging. But online, the long-term solution will inevitably move beyond the façade of pseudo packaging and incorporate channel-dependent strategies to invite, educate and reassure a growing breed of shopper. What an assignment that would be: designing a new online unit that recognizes the limitations of the LCD screen and connects products to consumers as meaningfully as packages on a shelf did 100 years ago.
Online shopping seems here to stay. As its market share increases, so will investment in relevant brand asset management strategies. Brands that fail to keep pace will be fine in the short term, but as long as consumers seek, or accept, meaningful relationships with real brands, our brands must evolve and learn to communicate at every shelf, including the ones made of 0’s and 1’s.
I’d love to hear other ideas on where we’re at and where we’re headed. Please share your thoughts!
Source: GoldForest (http://goo.gl/PEZkQ)
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