Leverage Customized Packaging To Strengthen Your Brand Equity

Written by Marina Iermolaieva, she is a marketing assistant for All in packaging creative packaging.

Leverage Customized Packaging To Strengthen Your Brand Equity – Here’s How
Customized packaging is all about ensuring that the product package represents all the values that the brand and product stand for, in a manner that is convenient for customers to purchase, carry and use. Customized product packaging is a critical element for marketing because a package draws attention to the product and brand in a fundamental way. There are many ways in which customized packaging can help to strengthen your product’s brand equity. Let us look at a few.

Increases brand visibility and improves brand perception
A customized package increases the visibility of your brand in a way that few other product elements do. Take the case of cardboard packaging used by Amazon for delivering its products. It is still brown cardboard all right, but notice the distinct black logo and information printed on it. Even from a good 20 feet away, you know that your Amazon purchase has arrived. We can also see that the shape of this package has been specifically designed to uniquely represent Amazon.

This kind of packaging provides unparalleled visibility for Amazon. It does not stop with visibility, Amazon as a brand gains in perception purely from the use of such high quality packaging. It does even directly depend on the product inside, the packaging by itself adds value to the brand.

Maintains product quality and increases shelf life
One of the key functions of product packaging is to maintain product quality. This is particularly true of perishables and foodstuff. It is also applicable to other types of products such as paints, medicines and chemicals that can suffer changes in composition from being exposed to the elements.

A box of donuts from Krispy Kreme is light and easy to carry, it is also food grade and manufactured to a specific design and shape to keep the donuts fresh and unspoilt for the recommended time frame. The packing also increases the shelf life of the donuts, meaning that it can stay edible for 2 or 3 days instead of spoiling within 18 hours with regular packaging.

Copenhagen Parts – Bike Porter designed by Goodmorning Technology

Goods become handy to carry and transport
An underappreciated benefit of customized packages is that they are handy to carry and transport around. If you look at the way a new desktop computer is backed in a box, there are some aspects to the design of the box. There are a couple of protrusions made at the sides where you can insert your palms and lift the package, even if it is very heavy. This may seem to be a small thing, but this is one important aspect of good package design. Consider the plight of the delivery man driving his truck around and the importance of design becomes evident.

Provides extra protection and safety for fragile items
Customized packaging plays an important role in ensuring that products are packed and transported in a safe manner. This is particularly true for products that are fragile or have sharp edges. Consider the case of a delicate piece of art in glass. Not only does such a piece need to be packed in a package of a specific size, it also needs to be packed in a manner that you have enough cushioning plastic around it to protect it against impacts during transport.

Enables eco friendliness
Given the contemporary concerns around the environment, packaging made of recycled materials is already big. Most packages today have a certain amount of recycled material blended in. But customized packages allow you to go one step further to come up with packages which are even more eco friendly.

You can for instance come up with a package that is completely made from plant cellulose material meaning that once the product is taken out, the package can be completely disassembled into smaller pieces with just a kitchen knife. These pieces can be combined into and mixed with mulch being used for your lawn or garden.

Bokumjari Fruits Snack designed by cd’s associates

Enables product differentiation
Customized packages can be created in a way that they fully differentiate the product. Packaging is key to product differentiation, probably the next most important thing after the product itself. Package designs can be made unique across many parameters including shape, texture and feel, colour and graphics. These are a few ways in which packaging differentiates the product and brand:
– Materials directly printed with graphics
– The graphic images and fonts used on the package contribute to differentiating the brand
– Unique shapes
– Texture and feel

Reduced delivery costs
This is one element of customized packaging which is often not appreciated. While the cost of developing and producing customized packages may be high, delivery costs tend to come down with the use of customized packages. This is primarily due to the fact that customized packages are specifically designed to a particular shape and form for efficiency.

While off the shelf packages tend to be heavier and larger than needed, customized packages gain on both fronts from being designed with specific materials in particular shapes. The amount of cost savings that can be gained is often surprisingly high, even as high as 30 per cent.

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