Winter edition 2001
Issue 1 Table of Contents:

• Selling More Milk
• A Closer Look
• Consumers Dip into their Pockets
• Store-brand Water gets a Makeover
• Metallic Appeal is the Up-and-Coming Trend

• Clearly an Upscale, Premium Look
• Stretch Sleeves Pay for Themselves
• The Pasture Gets Greener for Kemp's Cow
• Even Old Favorites Need a New Look
• A Look Around the World

Consumers Dip into their Pockets when Packaging Provides Festive Feeling

In today's hustle and bustle world, consumers are often very willing to dip into their pockets and splurge around the holidays, especially on products that promise to "put them in the spirit."

Shrink sleeves enabled Smith Dairy Products this Christmas to offer consumers collectible Moovers™ egg- nog containers. Mr. and Mrs. Claus regular eggnog quarts were joined by male and female toy soldiers of a custard-style lowfat eggnog. Eleven-oz containers featured labels adorned in the cherub-faced likeness of Santa's elves.

According to Penny Baker, marketing product mgr., "We had a great eggnog season. It's becoming tradition for consumers to look for a new Moo-vers eggnog package design each year."

Occasion marketing is not limited to holidays. It also works well with supporting seasonal sporting teams and events, on both a national and regional level. This is because consumers seek out products that provide an emotional connection. Because of milk's wholesome image, its package is an ideal vehicle to accomplish this.

Store-brand Water Gets a Makeover. Why Not Milk?

If water--that clear fluid available free from any faucet, but also the fastest growing bottled beverage category--can be made to look contemporary, so should milk.

Many marketers believe success is achieved when a product connects with consumers. And that's just what Wegmans Food Markets Inc., Rochester, N.Y., set out to do when it contacted Icon Graphics Inc. to redesign its Spring Water bottle labels.

The goal of the redesign was to establish a strong graphic presence recognizable from a distance. To accomplish this, one change was to use a slightly smaller label, because consumers like to see as much of the product as possible. Another was to add a blue tint to the PET bottle, which, to the consumer, conveys pure, clean water.

"It's great when a package redesign looks better on shelf, but it's even better when there are numbers that prove success," says Michael Lohr, brand packaging design mgr. for Wegmans' brand. "Now with a 15% increase in unit sales of Spring Water following a relabel, it only proves what a difference a good design can make."

Metallic Appeal is the Up-and-Coming Trend

Even though metallic ink adds some cost to the printing process, it's money well spent if you want an upscale image.

Metallic labels are predicted to be the next trend in milk labels. Why? For one, they appeal to teenage boys and adult men, a difficult group to interest in drinking milk. Plus, metallic ink is more eye-catching on the shelf, which helps milk better compete with other beverages.

The full-body shrink labels used on Shamrock Dairy's 8- and 16-oz bottles are reverse printed in eight colors on a 10-color roto-gravure press. The labels cover the entire bottle, which is reminiscent of silver milk pails from years ago. A large splash of milk in a complementary color to the flavor makes a mouth-watering attraction on the metallic silver background. The 360° label provides room for Nutrition Facts, the bar code, the ingredient statement and Shamrock's tag lines: Farm Fresh and "mmm milk."

Clearly Canadian sparkling flavored water bottles now feature an ultra-modern label design with large splashes of color that depict the beverage's refreshing natural flavors, the company says. The new look for the brand is supported by a "See Clearly Now" creative campaign.

Readily removable stretch sleeves, which are not attached to the bottle with any adhesive, are ideal vehicles for coupons and rebates.

Some dairies may choose to offer a coupon good on the next milk purchase or to cross-promote another of its products. However, some dairies sell the label as billboard space to promote completely unrelated products or services.

This revenue can pay for the cost of the label, and maybe even contribute to its bottom line. The labels to the right are all real examples. Cross-promoting cereal with milk is a natural, but who would have thought of promoting the local news channel or a cellular phone company? Purity Dairies Inc., Nashville, Tenn., did.

The Pasture Gets Greener for Kemps' Cow

When Marigold Foods committed to a redesign of its entire milk line, the company selected Minneapolis-based Compass Design to create a premium look and feel that would grab consumers' attention. Initial designs no longer had the cow as the focal point; however, consumer focus groups revealed that Kemps has a lot of equity in its cow image and it would not be a good idea to downplay its value.

So the cow stayed and became more prominent and colorful, as did the pasture it's grazing on. The design maintains traditional variety color-coding, i.e. pink for nonfat, red for whole, etc.

"These packages really pop off the shelf in a category that has not had much color in the past," says the designer. "We found it catches people off guard, and that's the response we were looking for."

Like many dairies, Marigold Foods sells its milk in a variety of containers including plastic gallons and paperboard half-gallons. The company's newly designed graphics show that package type does not need to limit creativity. Designs can be successfully carried from one container type to the next. Pressure-sensitive labels on plastic gallons do not need to be boring, nor do paperboard cartons.

Seventy five-year old Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink, which is marketed by Austin, Nichols and Co., New York, recently unveiled its new look, which the company believes will increase consumer appeal and boost sales.

Designed by New York City-based Landor Associates, the package now sports an oversized logo on a vibrant colored background, a look that screams freshness and vitality.

Yoo-hoo comes in three varieties: Banana, Chocolate (original) and Strawberry. Original is widely available; and, since the redesign, the company says, many accounts have started stocking the other two flavors.

According to the agency, the new look for original maintains the iconic Yoo-hoo yellow, but with a bolder, more superior graphic representation to allow for quicker shelf identification.

The new look includes a full-body shrink sleeve on 15.5-oz impulse-purchase bottles. Six-packs of 9-oz bottles sport the new design on its standard paper wrap-around label.

Compared to the United States, beverage packaging traditionally has had a greater role in Europe and Asia. This is because of smaller living quarters and limited refrigerator space encountered by consumers, especially those in larger metropolitan areas.

Daily, sometimes multiple trips to the grocery store or convenience mart are regular occurrences. This makes packaging's attention-grabbing graphics, and unique shapes like the prism, more important than ever.

The use of bold colors and licensed characters on packaging by U.S. beverage companies is a marketing ploy learned from Europeans and Asians.

Shrink sleeve labels, in particular, have been around in Europe and Japan for a long time. Most recently they have shown up on non-alcoholic champagne bottles. Such sparkling grape juice products, though targeted to kids, remained rather boring. Shrink labels make the bottle more exciting, and more competitive with other beverages.