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The Latest Trends in Food Packaging
Story-driven food packaging - the secret to driving sales
It’s on the shelf. It’s next to your competitors. It’s in a stuffy supermarket with those awful fluorescent lights beaming down on it. It’s patient, polite, and it’s poised for action.
The person who’d love it, just walked right past.
Why is that?
It’s down to your packaging, it’s as simple as that. In a sea of every brand outstretching its arms for your customer’s attention, it’s drowning among its peers.
Your packaging needs to reach out, it needs to grab your customer’s attention, and hold it with a story so engaging, they cannot help but buy it.
The thing is with packaging, you can have the best product in the world, but problematic packaging? That can prevent your potential customers from even joining the sales funnel, let alone converting.
“So Springpack – What Can I do?!” – We heard you (Seriously, you shouted then…)
Well, you’re already on this page, so you’ve probably guessed this already, but you need to tell stories with your packaging. You need to tell the stories that your customers want to hear, before they even know they want to hear them
Key Takeaways
Understand your customer’s decision fatigue, and how to beat it
Learn how to stand out in a crowded market
Discover real life examples of brand story-telling in action
Decisions, Decisions - Consumer Choices
Let’s get our technical hats on for a minute and learn about the customer’s journey to popping your product into their basket.
What is decision fatigue?
Decision making fatigue is a state of mind where you have made so many decisions, you’re tired of making them. Your mind is tired from working out what you want. A great example is the common joke that one of the “worst parts” of being an adult is that you have to choose what to have for dinner every day – forever. Do you agree, that having to decide what to have for dinner every day is awful? That’s a kind of decision fatigue.
So, now we know that decision Fatigue is a real thing… Did you guess that it applies to Food Packaging, too?
Your customers are trying to move around the shop with as little distraction as possible, an in-and-out mission.
List in hand, your customer likely already knows what they are there to buy, and they don’t want to be standing infront of the shelf trying to decide which product to choose. Your packaging design needs to stand out and compel them to try your food.
How many times have you looked at beans, bypassed looking at all the options, and just grabbed the usuals in attractive packaging you’d already decided on?
The average time to decide to buy a product is just 5 seconds. You have 5 seconds to tell the consumer that they need to break their existing brand loyalty, and try your brand.
How to stand out in a crowded marketplace
Standing out on a shelf is a must. An exciting brand image will tap into consumer preferences and influence purchasing decisions. Take Oatly for example:
Milk alternative packaging design is traditionally branded in beige, with images of oats on the front and messages of the health benefits.
Oatly’s unique packaging design flipped traditional aesthetics on it’s head, they made their packaging a different colour and removed any claims of health benefits from the front of the carton. Their brand narrative got straight to the point. “No Milk, No Soy”. It seems that Oatly realised that the reason that most of their customers were buying their oat drink wasn’t for these health messages, and that their target audience who hadn’t tried their oat drink didn’t care about them either. Oatly knew that their customers didn’t want milk, so that’s what they advertised.
Oatly created their story – they build a brand identity as a straight-to-the-point, rebellious product, and in 4 words caught their audience’s attention.
All around the carton, Oatly’s packaging design tells a story. It shows a rebellious, play on traditional things you’d find on a competitor’s offering. The packaging differentiates Oatly as a different product from the competitors, whilst still being an Oat Drink . It tells the story of a stand out brand, standing up.
Teaching consumers about your brand
Your packaging design needs to reflect your brand story, your values, and still explain what food is inside.
Convenience food? Show how convenient your food is. “Cooks in 15 minutes”
Fresh products? Show how fresh the product is: “Fresh and crispy”
Milk alternative? Tell them there’s no dairy. “100% Almonds. 0% Cow”
Use quality packaging to teach about your brand, include your brand voice and include common marketing tools from other foods in your industry. Customers who will have already heard of your brand will immediately recognise it.
Attract your target audience
It’s no surprise that consumers want to buy a product that matches their personal beliefs. Using what you know about your target market and creating a brand identity around that becomes a unique selling point for your product.
Remember, the goal is to advertise your products, and your target customers remember and recognise your packaging.
Sustainability strategies
Do your customers have the environment at the forefront of their minds?
Switching to sustainable packaging is a great way to visually show consumers that you care about sustainability, which works to impove customer experience. If you want your potential customers to learn about your sustainabity strategies – why not tell them!
Many brands (looking at Oatly again here) often print the climate footprint of their product directly onto the pack. This is a brilliant brand strategy to inform consumers about the environmental impact of the product they are buying, which will directly attract customers who are trying to reduce their carbon footprint.
Many companies also print their packaging with their FSC® logo to show that the production materials for the product align with FSC® ‘s policies for sustainable sourcing.
Springpack holds an FSC® C168911 Chain Of Custody Certificate.
Uniform Brand Messaging to build a brand identity
Say it with me: “Consistency is key.” “Consistency is key.” “Consistency is key.”
Your packaging messaging needs to align with your brand values, tone of voice and your actions, otherwise it will confuse or even annoy the customer.
Let’s use Joe Lycett’s Yop Stunt for example:
He made a public campaign against White PET Drinks bottles, and (as part of his strategy) was called out for drinking from one. Joe was called out on national television and hit the headlines because his messages and actions didn’t align, and whilst this example is extreme, it is a great case in point.
This was a clever stunt by Joe, who knew what could happen if his messaging and actions didn’t align.
Your customers not understanding what you are trying to sell will not lead to customer satisfaction.
Tone Of Voice
Getting your tone of voice onto your packaging can be tricky, but once you’ve nailed it, it works incredibly well.
Let’s go back to our example of Oatly. Oatly adds cheeky and sustainable messaging to different sides of their containers, in keeping with their target market’s culture. They add details of their sustainability, whitty little messages on the pack, and key information to make them feel fun.Â
The back of the bottle of Oatly above the nutritional label says “The boring (but very important) side” in large text, reminiscent of a horror film.
This sassy and rrebellious tone of voice is continued on their website in small, but effective ways, such as “Look I am a moving piece of text to shamelessly advertise our amazon brand store”
It tells the story of a brand that out there, and builds a mental picture for the customer about the brand. It makes the fun on the packet seem more natural.Â
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Your brand’s tone of voice needs to be the narrator of your brands story.Â
Integrating Smart Packaging
Innovative packaging is a great way to get your customers involved in your brands story.Â
Take this tin of tuna from John West. We’ll be covering their new ECOTWIST® Smart Strip technology in a future blog post.
John West used the side of their tin to add information abour their food quality, and integrated a QR Code. This QR code can be scanned to track the journey of the fish within the can. This innovative use of smart technogy taps into the consumer value of caring where the fish has come from.
This QR code works to tell the story of the product inside the packaging, and links to a page containing information about the can.
By scanning the code, the customer is immersing themself in the story of John West, they are actively learning about the brand and making themselves incredibly familiar with it.Â
Which can of fish do you think that you would buy? An unknown brand sitting on a shelf – or the brand who you know buts so much effort into their supply chain, you can learn about their fish right there from the packet.Â
If you are interested in Packaging, Springpack are experts in the field. Our team of Packaging Experts have all of the answers to your packaging questions. Why not get in touch with us today?
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Author: Alice Jeavons
Springpack is a UK packaging company delivering sustainable solutions that empower customers. We prioritise exceptional service, building strong relationships and developing innovative packaging solutions tailored to unique needs. Sustainability drives us, from eco-friendly materials to reusable practices minimising waste and emissions. As a family-run business, we’ve grown from humble beginnings to industry forerunners. Our passion lies in making a positive impact in our community and the lives of customers, employees, and stakeholders through outstanding service that exceeds expectations.