Packaging Facelifts for the Holidays

It’s the 4th of July and as you’re walking the aisles of your local supermarket you see products with packaging designed for the holiday.  Some brands are very effective at designing their products for a special holiday or season. National brands like Budweiser, M&M’s and Coca Cola are recognized for their timely and creative packaging.

The stakes are high when it comes to packaging. Approximately 60-70% of purchase decisions are made in the store and studies show that consumers make choices in as little as 20 seconds!

What causes consumers to gravitate to a specific product at the point of sale? Typically it is the packaging. Limited edition packaging designs successfully engage consumers with the playful spirit of the holiday or season.

You will see more limited edition packaging tailored for the holidays as digital printing and technology make shorter runs economically feasible. In the past, manufacturers have been forced to accept high minimum orders for print jobs due to economies of scale. With digital, the minimum job size issue disappears with little to no setup time requirements, and the cost associated with preparing plates is eliminated.

Digital printing is an efficient way for CPG brands to introduce a new product, test new markets and, as addressed above, promote a brand for holiday or seasonal use. One of the more exciting applications for digital printing is the ability to personalize packaging. A high-profile example of this was Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign. Coca-Cola took advantage of digital printing’s enhanced personalization abilities to print 250 of the most popular names for teens and millennials in the U.S.

Digital printing and serialization has applications for many different companies, and personalization doesn’t have to be based on a person’s first name. Packaging can be tailored by geographic region, by local sports teams or other factors of interest to consumers. Businesses have only scratched the surface of what can be done.