Thursday, 16 October 2014

FDIN Packaging Seminar 16th October 2014 !

A Roundup by Tim Nicol; views expressed are mine, not necessarily FDIN’s

- This was a pretty full session again at the Holiday Inn Bloomsbury- the guest list showed a good mix of specialist advisers in packaging and client side innovators and pack technologists. Jeffrey played Ringmaster and Chair for the day, and he kicked off by introducing Diane Teer who had travelled from the US just to be with us. He then plugged the Holiday Inn and the area as a place to stay, and who could disagree? In introducing Diane, Jeffrey referred to their common blue chip background and the P&G approach that they, (and others of a similar vintage) learned years ago. In particular, how packaging science can shape consumer experiences. Diane describes herself as a 'born and bred food marketer', with experience from P&G, Kraft, Campbell's, and Con Agra- she showed several examples of examples of brand success. Now she is Chief Marketing and Innovation Officer for MWV http://www.mwv.com/en-us/ . I'm afraid I hadn't heard of MWV, but when Diane quoted a $5.4bn turnover, and 15,000 employees, she had my attention. Early on she described the perfect packaging partner - were these the qualities of a perfect client? If so, the client is expected to treat MWV as a partner, engage early, be respectful of time, understand TCO (total cost of ownership), and be demanding but honest and fair. It sounded like a bit of a lecture to me. Diane showed a YouTube video of packaging failures and gave us 4 tips; !

• Begin with the end in mind (from 7 habits)- things are created twice, once in the mind, once in reality. Use insights. Understand how packaging performs throughout its life. 64% have tried something new because the packaging caught their eye. 42% report using product more often because of packaging. 36% have switched brands because of packaging. (Note all are reported figures). So the argument goes, don’t let packaging be an afterthought. Example shown was Smartfare packaging for Chilled Ready Meals. Stiffer, colour printed, recyclable trays. Research was positive but no results yet.!

• Share Everything- from 'All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten'. Demonstrating the value of designers who know about manufacturing, the example

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Thursday, 16 October 2014from Coke was to show collaboration in practice. It’s a fridge pack (multipack) that fits easily into the fridge.!

• It's whats on the inside that counts. As with food ingredients, it's the packaging material content that counts. It must be safe, durable and carry print well. The examples here were Starbuck's sustainable cup, and I&J's frozen seafood for durability that improves food safety.!

• Geeky leads to what's possible. You need a packaging partner that can see whats possible. Diane showed what amounted to a commercial for MWV, (it’s on their website) showcasing their packaging technologists (Geeks) and their barrier property fibreboard cups that maintain product crispness.!

!Jeffrey then introduced Tash Walker from ‘The Mix’, http://mixresearch.co.uk and acknowledged that this is another Behavioural Economics presentation, following a full FDIN seminar on the subject a few months ago.!

Her lead-in highlighted the 'Why' of how consumers behave. Mix style themselves as a Behavioural Economic, Real Time, Real Behaviour research agency, born from her experience at JKR that research has often failed the packaging design process, and with the aim of making research exciting. !

Tash had 3 key points- !

Research turns people into liars!

Reported behaviour is not actual. 'Consumers are not rational' - the quote from Daniel Kahneman, the oft quoted Guru of Behavioural Economics. Tash then gave a good summary and demonstration of ‘System 1’ (intuitive, immediate, generally right) and ‘System 2’ (focussed, rational, specific) thinking. Packaging conforms to System 1 thinking, and shopping in supermarkets is driven by system 1 thinking.!

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Thursday, 16 October 2014!If your insight isn't awesome you might as well go home. !

If we need emotional packaging, we need to understand the emotional side of consumers. She then had a good go at focus groups and the way we use them. Consumers professing to behave virtuously but actually eating poorly for example. Tash had a ‘call to arms’; 'This is a racket, we need to sort this out'. She then reviewed a conventional design brief and quite emotionally, shot it down. 'Lame. Rubbish'. Consumers reject products that show that the brand doesn't understand them. (Mike Coupes from Sainsbury’s comment). There is a way of doing this...cue Mix’s techniques, using social media, developing a true understanding of what the consumer is all about. Producing boards that get behind what really defines the consumer. But at the end of the day...!

Research is just stimulus. !

Good research doesn't stand still. It has it's place but it's not everything. !

That got us all thinking!!

!!!!Jeffrey did the next intro- with a backwards look at focus groups, setting up the excellent and highly experienced Andrew Streeter, Director of CPS Packaging, http://www.cps-int.com who would have been our Chair today had he not been in Japan. He’s a packaging development strategist, and a poplar previous speaker. His presentation was done as a pre-recorded video. Jeffrey said that he and Andrew share the view that there’s a lot of uninspiring packaging out there, but the video had the advantage of being able to show us samples up close and in use- I recommend you watch the video, (it should be available via the FDIN website) as my description cannot tell the full story and there were few slides as such.!

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Thursday, 16 October 2014Andrew covered a number of general topics in his first slot, then showed innovations from Japan in his second video.!

PET. Introduced as an alternative to glass. He demonstrated the shape potential of pet and how it is now being used in oils and wine, albeit short shelf life wine. !

!Recyclables are coming and it's a material to watch. He showed the TicTac family pack- bigger, shaped for a cup holder, as an example of packaging that has shaped or stretched a market. Then packaging that has created a market- squeezable water enhancers; concentrates in small packs like Enhance http://www.enhancedrinks.co.uk !

From CPS’s Innovatus platform, Andrew presented a couple of other examples where the pack is fundamental to the concept; Schwartz Flavour Shots- a liquid flavour system in a flexible polypropylene pot with card sleeve, and Dr Oetker's Vanilla Grinder- adding freshness, magic, and value add to vanilla. !

Then 2 examples of single stick chocolate, a simple execution of a flow wrapped long stick bar that encourages sharing.!

Flexibles. This is one of the biggest change areas. He showed pouches for drinks- using the medium to support the concept. I think it’s debatable where they are 'sexy'. Foil sachets for sports gel with function that matter for the application; no need to tip up to drink, and tear-off strips that don't litter. There are wet and dry combination sachets with burstable divisions, super premium cat food pouches, and premium foil instant coffee refills.!

Cost reduction is of course another platform for packaging development. There was an example of a PET bottled water moving from square section to cylinder, saving 13g of material, and San Peligrino making a slight modification to the cap size and reducing

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Thursday, 16 October 2014number of threads. There’s some sacrifice in ease of opening, but these small changes are happening everywhere to save costs.!

!After the table talk and coffee, James Acton from ‘The Brand Nursery’ http://www.thebrandnursery.com took to the stage, introduced in typical style by Jeffrey, as someone on the topic of the 'Middley bit' of NPD. I warmed to James when he introduced The Brand Nursery as a young company staffed by old people; a good mix.!

James was here to talk about 'beginning with the end in mind' - to talk strategy and process without being scary, but amalgamating some of the previous presentations. He started with the provocation of the past, the JIF lemon, invented by an RAF pilot apparently, and made by a telephone moulding company. Legend has it that it was born when the pilot saw that juice was being discarded in Sicily by lemon oil producers. !

The most iconic confectionery countlines were invented way back in the 1930s. The contraceptive pill had to be sold in a blister pack with days of the week printed, to cope with the placebos that have to be taken on particular days. !

So in the context of the past, how to develop strategies that are different and better? He uses a suit as a metaphor. First you need to be measured up. Then you have a lot to work with- rolls of cloth. Then you need a plan, but not too complex. This was illustrated by the example of a 32 stage gate process for a squeezable jam. Culturally the business may need process but often the real problems are cracked in just a few early stages.!

Then it (the suit, do keep up!) has to be knitted together correctly, not with the arm on the back. But he's seen a Heinz Ketchup doy pouch with side nozzle that is 'awesome'.!

It's the cunning little details that can often make the difference., e.g. finger grips on olive oil bottles, cartoon characters on Yoplait Frubes.!

So what about the future? He’s looking at what's out there now rather than too far out. They spotted Kale Treats for Dogs; a niche product as an example of flexible print runs for specialist brands. James was into his

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Thursday, 16 October 2014stride as he asked rhetorical questions such as, ‘maybe soon the packaging will be made in store as you shop?’, or ‘Happy Meals will have 3d printed toys in them’. He showed a video of an Oreos publicity stunt, ‘Eat the tweet’, showing how a machine makes personalised cookies. http://vimeo.com/88702704 !

He rushed to the finish line by summarising thus: !

• Nothing is real new!

• Tailor your thinking; don't ever accept off the peg.!

• We need to think smarter about joining together the stuff we already have.!

• I think the future is personal!

!There was then the presentation of a FDIN packaging award to Richard Geller, Technical Director, Amberley Labels, http://www.amberley.net for the personalised ‘Share a Coke’ campaign. He took us through the case study as an admittedly technical man presenting some largely marketing based charts.!

I found it surprising that they are a Dorset based label printers with just 60 staff. They were the first with a certain type of digital printing kit, which is innovative in that it added green to the process colours.!

For the Coke promotion there was a consortium of 5 companies that printed 1.8bn labels over the last 2 years. Coke’s marketing problem was looking for standout within Supermarket clutter. The solution was born from similar activity from Coke in other markets, and gave rise to the idea of supplying Coke with a range of 200 Christian named labels. !

Printing was thus a good support for differentiation, and digital short run printing was the answer, or the enabler. The wider marketing challenge for Coke was (is?) reconnecting with teenagers, by ‘calling the teenagers from the shelf’.!

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SHARE A COKE CAMPAIGN 2014 Richard Geller| Technical Director| Amberley labels

Thursday, 16 October 2014It was clearly a massive logistics challenge to plan and produce around 200 named labels. It was very impressive to see what was achieved and the detail approach to the print and supply chain task, but I suggest you take a look at Richard’s slides for the full story. If you are turned on by such things, see the 'how it was done' slides- an interesting technical challenge involving flexo printing labels with a gap that's filled by digital. Fascinating fact; their average label order is 30,000 but the Coke order was 180,000,000!

Amberley also see the the future in personalisation- and there were examples of London Marathon race labels, customised to each runner, class etc. printed and supplied by them.!

Richard then showed and complemented other examples of personalisation, including local customised Monopoly (the board game), named Whisky labels, etc. Clearly printing technology enables personalisation and that’s a powerful marketing tool.!

Richard was followed by Mark Eggleton, Head of Innovation for Sun Branding solutions, http://www.sunbrandingsolutions.com which is now the name for some old familiar companies in print and design like Gilchrist. !

This was a different style of presentation. Not relying on his slides alone, Mark energetically left the podium and walked the floor. He’d brought along his ‘thought fridge’, and he called on his colleague Julie Hall to join him on stage and start blowing up an inflatable ‘punishment club’.!

Mark, who was increasingly looking like a cabaret act, asked for brand owners and retailer volunteers from the audience. Self consciously, no-one put their hands up. After some relaxation of his target audience however, soon we had 5 random volunteers on stage with ‘paddles’ for answering questions, a sign saying the ‘Great British Brand Off’, and Jeffrey installed as question master on what became a role play of a TV Quiz show.!

First question; What is meaning of Kaizen? No-one new. Answer; ‘Good change’.!

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Thursday, 16 October 2014Message? We’re looking for drivers of positive change, like PC’s, wireless routers, Google etc. All of these illustrate the explosion in internet access, connectivity, and access that drives empowerment,. !

What's the effect of positive consumer change on retailers and brands? We're all struggling with strategy. !

How many channels? Too many- it's a lottery.!

Given the discounting from comparison websites, how do we add value ? Use digital to point to the pack. ‘Do 4-D’ !

To Mark, packaging is at the core of everything, and we need to work on form and function. We should use digital to add a 4th dimension to appeal - modern senses. Digital printing can deliver against a whole range of personalised and specific appeals. !

He flashed through a range of examples to illustrate his point; Zappar, Crocs, Garry Linekar and ‘Tweet to eat for Walkers Crisps', Blippar, and Heinz Kethcup's recipes on mobile devices.!

At last the panel stood down with some relief, some with prizes. The core message got lost in the theatre for me, apart from adding the ‘4th dimension’ to engage consumers, and create more emotional touch points from pack.!

!After Jeffrey had told the age old story of the Champagne Award for persistence, we were more than ready for lunch.!

Andrew Streeter was then on again by video, talking on packaging innovation from Japan. Again, see the video, my description can’t do the packs justice.!

He first showed a pair of novelty detergent bottles- 'Mr and Mrs' designs. Andrew clearly has a special understanding of the Japanese market and culture, illustrated by intriguing examples such as self heating tins of Sake and Whisky, with embossed cans, nicely curved cellulose board that makes a pack ‘cute’, and bottles made from board.!

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Thursday, 16 October 2014He showed a lot of stills of flexible packaging, including a tactile tea pouch, and more wet/dry heat sealed pouches with a burstable divide. The pouch with a drinking nozzle that fits in a shirt pocket made another appearance. !

There was one unintentionally comedic device on top of a drink bottle with fiddly tamper evidence and a ball bearing device. You had to be there. There was a clever Soy sauce pet bottle, with a shrink sleeve and a valve in the cap, which seemed over engineered to me, and a cardboard cup that expands its ‘cool hold’ device when hot water is added. !

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Next up was Geeta Sidhu Rob, the Founder of Nosh Detox Long Life Fresh Juices, http://www.noshdetox.com , who received another FDIN packaging innovation award before taking us through her case study.!

Geeta’s opening remark was that this was her first PowerPoint presentation. The audience collectively scratched its head, wondering how anyone could get to run a company without PowerPoint. Geeta’s back story is that she is an ex corporate lawyer who had a very sick child with allergies and anaphylaxis, who is happily now in good health thanks to his mother’s own nutritional and alternative health remedies. !

She created Nosh in 2008; the name stands for Natural, Organic, Safe, and Healthy. In 2011 following success they looked for a new process, and came across HPP; High Pressure Processing. It works by preserving foods via very high pressure- the equivalent of 3 elephants standing on a penny. Working with partners in Belfast they overcame the early issues of metallic tastes etc and now it ‘works fine’.!

The products have a clean taste, a good aroma, and no masking flavours. Samples had been generously provided to the audience, and certainly the flavour of the

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Thursday, 16 October 2014carrot juice to me was somehow closer to a carrot than a carrot itself, if that makes any sense. It’s a difficult production process, and packaging has been a challenge, as It has to be flexible but robust. Mass production is difficult and the process is largely manual. Geeta rushed energetically through all the varieties and recipes they produce. She is an evangelist for micro nutrients and raw food, and their curative powers. She is now making desserts, pesto, and soups as well as drinks. !

Darren Foley from Pearlfisher http://www.pearlfisher.com then accepted an award for Lurpak Slow Churned Butter. This was a disarming and frank presentation, more of a storytelling, of the development and sadly ultimately the delisting of this award winning packaging led concept. He titled the story 'lifting the lid on innovation'. (You’ll soon see what he did there).!

Pearlfisher are a brand and design agency and Arla are one if their clients. Lurpak is an icon that champions eating real, great, food. It has great values and heritage, but it's stuck in a price matched, competitive category. The development started with a concept developed by ‘Happen’- a Kilner jar containing ‘Lurpak Heritage’. It was artisanal, with a premium priced positioning. Pearlfisher’s task was to create a new premium expression of Lurpak that celebrates the purest taste of butter that money can buy. Their idea was ‘deliciously original’ and they took a strategic design approach with many alternative boards, (see slide) the favoured route centring on dishes and containers. They then developed a metal container that everyone got very excited about, and it survived lots of testing and validation. It's an aluminium butter dish, that in Darren's words, was, in packaging terms, ‘at the top of its game’. Then he admits, that despite all the awards, inside he's dying. Because it's being delisted. The COGS had increased, the RSP went up to £2.39 vs £1.60 in test, the

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Thursday, 16 October 2014support was cut, and it cannibalised the core, so it was delisted. But, Arla and Lurpak did the right thing. It shook up a commoditised category, behaved like an icon, and learned valuable lessons for the future. ‘We're brave’ he said.!

Darren was baring his soul and his disappointment was obvious, but he is still carrying a flag for bold innovation, as he set out to demonstrate other examples of virtuous failures;!

The iPhone is worth $22.7bn now, but the Mac Newton, it's forerunner, failed despite $100m investment in 1997-98. Maybe Apple learned lessons that helped with the iPhone’s success? !

Austin Elwood, Tash’s business partner from The Mix then came on as Jeffrey had asked them to ‘top and tail’ the day. He invited us to think about him and Tash as ‘good cop and bad cop’. He underlined their mantra of REAL time, real behaviour. He admitted to have enjoyed the good times as a client before moving into design and then as a partner in The Mix. As an agency you want great work that makes you famous, as a client you need to be able to demonstrate success before it's been successful. So the typical pack process (see slide) encourages mediocrity. He echoed Tash by giving an amusing and entertaining send-up of focus group research and it's use by clients to evaluate minor alternatives.!

Their (The Mix’s) solution is to get to real behaviour, via 3 principles. !

1. Build intimacy !

2. Get to know people properly over time!

3. Get context !

They do this online, with an app called Cumulus, like Facebook, that helps them get a general picture of their lives. Using chat, pictures, and clever questions, they uncover the truth. For example a respondent quote; ‘Rose isn't wine…’ (justifying claimed low consumption of wine). The reality is that they (consumers) think of Rose with friends when it's sunny as something other than wine.!

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Thursday, 16 October 2014The Mix use real time exposure to images, annotation tools, and self made videos showing the real engagement (or lack of) with stimulus.!

The lesson is to make your insight remarkable - bringing insight alive by video, and an audience reminder magazine, etc.!

They got a great reaction from Diageo to their presentation of results (‘I don't like it but I'm a 47 year old bloke so it doesn't matter’) and Tesco (‘Delivering great work, that's what it's all about’). !

!!Finally on to the Q&A;!

• Diane was asked how much research was done on the ready meals packs change she presented? -A lot, and the market changed while it was being done. The price research is about to be tested in reality.!

• How much research is enough? -Geeta took product out on the streets. Austin thought this was great.!

• Are digital tools driving real change or are they gimmicks? -They are not gimmicks but they don't in themselves drive change. It’s more about intimacy than personalisation and customisation. It depends on the category. Maybe some categories, yes, customisation is a tool on top of brand for some products.!

• Sustainability- how's it going? Designers try to maximise sustainability but sometimes other elements of the mix come into play. Sustainability comes from the brand owner and has to be part of the brand story, not used as marketing tool. / It’s not a trend it's a given, we all have to take responsibility for it and keep the costs down. !

• What is the next step in augmentation given that consumers know that consumers know that data flows 2 way? They can opt out, and brands have to give value in exchange for data.!

And with that we were dismissed- armed with insights and thoughts, not too much about the specifics of packaging engineering or design perhaps, but more about how this crucial element of the marketing mix is being managed strategically and practically in today’s Food and Drink industry.!

Tim Nicol | Independent Marketing and Innovation Consultant !

Happy to hear from you: tim@mihcentre.co.uk www.mihcentre.co.uk 07803 050108

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