Pretentious packaging

Let your packaging not be pretentious, as it will in turn make your Brand pretentious and ultimately fail to gain consumer loyalty. The biggest challenge that packaging faces is to come out the way the brand is supposed to be. If your packaging is trying to say all that , which the Brand perhaps is not, the chances of Brand failure is likely to be high.

If your Brand is positioned in the Popular segment, do not try to make it overtly Premium, let there be some kind of a 'This belongs to me and my world feel'. Consumers may look at the pack and conclude that the Brand is pricey , may not pick it off the shelf and may not even look at the price. It is always better to be what you are and thus come across as a meaningful and trustworthy Brand.

Imagine a Packaging very young in its look and character but talking about the values which develop over the years e.g perfection, heritage etc. The Brand will not appeal to the younger audience and the matured profile may consider the claim not reliable just by the look of it.

So what does one do and what controls one must build in the Packaging idea and execution. Off course there has to be abundant clarity on the kind of positioning for the Brand and the kind of target audience the Brand offer is. The packaging needs to draw parallels accordingly, right from the way the Graphics are worked out , to the substrate/ materials used , the size and the overall feel. It is always a great idea to use the packaging to make the Brand aspirational but it should ensure that it does not give the feel of being beyond reach.

The trick lies in how to use cost effective materials and inputs and yet make the Packaging give the right feel for the Brand. The creativity lies in how to build in features which the consumer will value and feels comfortable about paying for. It is this kind of optimization that reflects the developers understanding, which ensures that the packaging reflects honesty of purpose and not be pretentious.