Packaging that Pops: How to Stand Out In a Crowded Market with Creative Packaging?
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Let’s face it! People do judge your product by its cover, and you get only one shot to grab attention to make your packaging scream, “pick me!” Creative packaging is what acts like a visual magnet that gets your brand noticed as well as remembered in today’s crowded and fast-moving marketplace.
Some stats for you to chew on about the importance of creative packaging are that about 72% of consumers’ purchase decisions are influenced by the packaging design.
Creative packaging that pops off the shelf, outshines the competition, and stays etched in your customer’s mind stands as the only strategic solution to spark curiosity. Smart and creative packaging design is a branding powerhouse that not only speaks to the true values of your brand but also attracts your ideal audience and helps you differentiate your product in the market while standing out in a daily challenge. Hard to ignore the benefits of creative packaging, today most innovative businesses, be it big or small, are turning to expert packaging agencies and creative design firms for rethinking how their products show up on the shelf.
This blog is nothing but an insight from a creative packaging agency on how to stand out on the shelves with your product in the most strategic structural manner that would drive sales without compromising on creativity.
The psychology behind creative packaging that captures attention
Before we run after transforming your product packaging into creative packaging, it is essential to know why we are doing the same and how your brand can benefit from this transformation. The primary reason behind creative packaging is the fact that great packaging holds the potential to speak to your brand before you can even realise and analyse through your eyes completely.
How? Well, there lies the psychology behind creative packaging that captures attention.
Here are a few psychological factors that work behind making a creative packaging design a success on shelves:
- The 7-second rule
The primary factor is the psychologist’s estimation, which says that it takes just around 7 seconds for an individual to form a first impression, which includes products as well. And when it is about retail, that’s all the time your product packaging gets to either win a consumer or lose a potential consumer. That is where creative packaging backed with professionalism, quality, and intent holds the potential to capture attention more than basic packaging.
- Colour psychology
Creative packaging is not just about making your product look pretty; the idea is to evoke some sense of emotional trigger that is resonant to the consumers and elements that are hardwired in our brains. To achieve the same in creative packaging, colours are one of the best ways to do it. For example, red for grabbing attention and conveying urgency, green for reflecting freshness and trustworthiness, and black and gold for defining premium and luxury. To design a smart, creative packaging, tapping into these psychological colour cues to align emotion with your brand identity stands as an essential part.
- Tactile psychology
The psychology behind creative packaging is not limited only to colour, typography or designing to make the packaging pop; rather, creative packaging is about strategically creating a physical experience for your consumers that would build brand affinity. Achieving the same in your creative packaging design around sensory elements is a great way. These tactile psychology elements could be smooth textures, embossed lettering, soft-touch finishes, or non-conventional shapes that would help your packaging have an increased perceived value amongst consumers. Such a tactile psychology in creative packaging works the best in industries like coffee packaging, luxury beauty, or even tech, where textures imply artisanal quality.
In addition to these psychological factors of creative packaging, multiple elements work together to transform your regular packaging into creative packaging successfully while triggering the right psychological and emotional signals in a consumer, which ultimately influences their purchasing decisions. Such additional psychology behind creative packaging is the neuroscience of standing out, where you design your product into a creative packaging that will be remembered and understand how a consumer’s brand would respond to visuals, texture, colour, and clarity in the secret weapon of every creative packaging design.
How does creative packaging influence your customers’ decisions?
You have to know why creative packaging is essential for influencing the purchasing decision of your consumers, but what about how? How does creative packaging influence your customer’s decision? No doubt there exist multiple statistics saying these percentages of people make their purchase based on packaging, one similar to what we have quoted in this blog, but HOW?
Here’s how creative packaging for your products can influence the decision of your consumers:
- Attention-grabbing
When you walk into a supermarket or even search for products online, you are bombarded with visual noise. Such a saturated condition makes the process of purchasing decisions more overwhelming. That is where creative packaging breaks through the clutter. Be it through bold colours, typography, unique shapes, material, or even unexpected layouts or illustrations that would stop customers in their tracks and spend some extra seconds of attention with your product packaging and maybe something about the creative packaging that would click and make that final purchasing decision.
- Brand value communication
Most brand owners underestimate the true potential that creative packaging holds. As a creative packaging design agency, we can say with confidence that creative packaging is more than an art. When done right, creative packaging holds the potential to strategically communicate your brand value without even saying a word. If designed with backed-up research, creative packaging can narrate to your consumers who you are, what you stand for, and why your product is different.
- Boosts brand recall value
When you have a creative packaging that is visually unique and emotionally resonant can help your product stick in people’s minds. The advantage is that next time they go to shop, your creative packaging is something they would remember, be it in terms of the look, feel, or experience. The advantage of creative packaging, in return, leads to a higher brand recall value and more repeat purchases and eventually brand loyalty.
- Social sharing
Even if having a creative packaging does not end up having a customer conversion, what it does is at least turn them into free of cost marketers for your brand. How? Well, a beautiful or creative packaging is more likely to be photographed, unboxed on social media, shared with friends, or reviewed on TikTok, Instagram, or YouTube. This aspect makes your investment in the creative packaging a part of your content strategy, which organically spreads your brand awareness.
- Justification of a higher price point
If you want to place your product price at a slightly higher price range and you are struggling to make a conversion at that price point, then taking the route of creative packaging is a great as well as a smart way. This is because a well-designed creative packaging gives your product that look as well as the feel of a more valuable product, which in turn can help your brand justify your premium pricing and upsells. Creating such a perception of value through creative packaging becomes a direct result of how your product is presented and not just what the product is as a whole.
In addition to these, how creative packaging helps in influencing the purchasing decision of your consumer are endless. It can be by capturing attention, building trust, triggering emotion, telling your brand story, increasing the perceived value, or even creating a memorable experience. Especially when designed right, your single investment in creative packaging will get you a salesperson, brand ambassador, and an emotional hook all in one.
What are the key elements of creative packaging that would convert?
We spoke so much about the potential of creative packaging that converts, influences consumers’ purchasing decisions, and so on, but what exactly is creative packaging? Which branding and design elements make up creative packaging? Here are a few primary elements that make creative packaging more than just pretty and rather a powerfully persuasive one:
- Clear brand messaging through creative packaging that instantly communicates who you are as a brand and what your product is builds a sense of trust, clarifies value, and directs attention to the right features of your product.
- Eye-catching visual design in your packaging grabs attention both online and on shelves by interrupting the scroll or shelf scan.
- A functional, user-friendly structure of creative packaging enhances the usability factors, along with protecting the product and uplifting the whole unboxing experience.
- Social-media worthy unboxing appeal given through creative packaging would boost the shareability factor after creating a sense of FOMO.
- Call-to-action as a part of your creative packaging encourages your consumers to take the next step and keep your brand in their purchasing decision.
Moreover, creative packaging is one such design decision that you make as a brand owner that would count as a critical business strategy for your brand. Be it combining bold visual appeal, clear messaging, or sustainable design, the right creative packaging does not hold your product a single identity; rather, it adds to your product’s drawing attention, emotion, and loyalty.
How do the best creative packaging design companies build brand identity?
Now, just transforming a generic packaging into a creative packaging does not do the job. Creative packaging is more than a design choice for an agency in the business; rather, it is a business strategy. To build a brand identity of yours through creative packaging is all about designing that wrapper into an experience that not only holds your product at its finest, rather keeps the customer’s attention, emotion, and loyalty engaged.
While it might sound like an easy task to do, the process that goes into designing creative packaging and then analysing it is meticulous. Partnering with the right creative packaging agency might tune down the daunting process a little, but there goes a lot of strategy and vision to truly make a creative packaging.
Want to know how the best creative packaging design agency pulls this off? Here are a few strategies that we follow as a coffee branding agency:
- We start with deep brand discovery
Being a creative packaging design agency, we do not jump into design first. Our initial approach is to dig deep into your brand and understand each element and the whole story of your brand. Starting from the mission and values, target audience and buyer personas, competitive landscape, tone, personality, emotional driver, to covering long-term positioning goals. Having built such a strategic foundation ensures that the creative packaging is authentically aligned with your brand story and does not just turn out to be trendy.
- We translate brand personality into visual language.
Once we have established your brand identity clearly, our team moves on with visually translating that defined brand identity of yours into elements that are instant signals of who you are as a brand on the creative packaging. This translation of your brand identity onto your creative packaging is narrated with the language of colour palettes, typography, imagery, illustration style, and layout and hierarchy. Doing this makes sure that your creative packaging design communicates to your audience without saying much and rather feels like the brand you truly are.
- We use packaging as a storytelling tool.
Our job as an exclusively coffee branding agency is not limited to just designing creative packaging. Rather, we weave your brand identity in the form of impactful storytelling. Our way of weaving your brand identity into the creative packaging is primarily through messaging on the packaging, iconography, design symbolism, and interactive elements such as QR codes, hidden messages, and peel-away reveals for that interactive element in your creative packaging. While designing creative packaging, we understand that a consumer will remember the feelings and experiences beyond the logo.
- We ensure consistency across every touchpoint.
We understand that your creative packaging will be the first point of interaction. Hence, great creative packaging design calls for a tailored experience that is consistent. From website and digital assets, retail displays, social media aesthetics, unboxing experiences, to marketing materials, we make sure the design across the creative packaging is consistent, as consistency reinforces memory. While designing the creative packaging, we make sure that the visual and verbal cues are aligned, which ensures your brand identity becomes more recognisable and trusted.
- We reflect brand values through material and form.
At our agency, designing creative packaging is not just about visuals. Here, we achieve it through tactile and functionality as well. Being a creative packaging design agency, we ensure to select various types of materials, finishes, and even structural forms that align with your brand’s identity to form the best creative packaging design for your brand. From embossed textures, heavy cardstock, kraft paper, soy-based inks, to modular, geometric shapes and magnetic closures. Adding such detailed elements to your creative packaging conveys what your brand stands for without even speaking a word to your consumers.
- We design with growth and scalability in mind.
One final thing that we do in producing the best creative packaging for you is thinking beyond just the first launch. At WeBrandCoffee, we design creative packaging that creates a system which will work across product lines, adapt to new formats or retail spaces while still remaining flexible for new SKUs, collaborations, or seasonal releases. Taking this approach in designing your creative packaging not only ensures that your brand identity is future-proof but also makes your brand future-proof, recognisable, and consistent as you scale in the future.
Apart from these, as a creative packaging design agency, we design for your brand strategically, which separates just a good design into a creative packaging design that acts as an identity-defining one as well.
Minimalism vs. maximalism: What is trending in creative packaging?
While working for Creative Packaging Designs, there are two major types of requirements we have always had, and both are absolutely contrasting. One is minimalistic and another is minimalist. There are always two kinds of brands, one that wants to reflect minimalism through their creative packaging and another that wants to include everything and make up a maximalist creative packaging.
But the real question is that which works the best in terms of creative packaging? While one offers a clean, restrained, and intentional creative packaging, the other expresses bold, expressive, and unapologetically loud representation of creative packaging.
No doubt each of the creative packaging types has its own place, purpose, and audience. However, which one has a tighter grip on the market is the question to answer.
To be honest, the short answer to that is “both, but in very different ways” How? Let us see:
- Minimalism
Defined by simplicity, space, and clear communication, minimalistic creative packaging works the best as it gives your brand a feel of premium, modern, and confident, along with appealing to a more sophisticated and eco-conscious consumer. Moreover, minimalistic creative packaging prioritises clarity and trust in a saturated market. Apart from this, having a minimal creative packaging often ends up aligning your brand with digital aesthetics and Instagram-ready visuals, as it not only suggests quality, purity, and calmness but also narrates a tagline that you are confident in your product and creative packaging that does not need any gimmicks.
- Minimalist creative packaging
On the contrary, a maximalist creative packaging is loud, colourful, highly detailed, and often filled with storytelling. Such creative packaging not only embraces layer visuals, vibrant hues, illustrations, textures, and bold typography but also includes such elements in the creative packaging intentionally. Why this type of creative packaging works for brands is that it instantly grabs attention, be it on shelf or social media, narrates a story at first glance, while being aligned accurately with Generation Z and individuals who are into bold indie brands. Maximalist creative packaging holds the potential to speak to those who are craving for fun, identity, nostalgia, and individuality in the form of creative packaging.
So, to answer what works the best in the form of creative packaging is the one which will thrive along with your brand values and identity. While the current trend is to blend minimalism with bursts of minimalist expression in the form of creative packaging, the right one for you is to craft a creative packaging for yourself that is about contrast, control, and meaning and not excess or even restricted for its own sake. To give you a little insight into creative packaging designs, most branding agencies use these contrasting elements intentionally to make the creative packaging amplify your brand’s voice, stand out, and connect with the right audience even in the long term, without focusing on what is trending. A strategic expression to craft a creative packaging that reflects who you truly are as a brand.
Conclusion
In conclusion, to truly make an impact and get in conversion, you need to define creative packaging as more than a finishing touch. Creative packaging is a strategic advantage that holds the potential to create a bridge between your product and your consumer’s heart, shelf, and screen.
Be it psychologically backed design choices or trendy inspired aesthetics, a creative packaging should have the elements of functional forms, standout packaging that not only reflects the deeper emotion of your product but also prevents your product from being overlooked and instead leverages the creative packaging to showcase your product in the best way possible.
Hence, to achieve the same, partnering with an expert creative packaging design agency that understands and then designs gets your brand psychology and consumer behaviour integrated in the creative packaging. This not only gives your product the pretty package box it deserves, but also your consumers a full experience of product unboxing. Ultimately, crafting creative packaging the right way for your brand truly gives your product the strategic stage to shine and thrive in the market!
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