packaging guidelines

First off, let’s understand what is a Packaging Guideline. It is a purely customised document containing elaborate guides to formulate the perfect packaging for all your products. A Packaging Guideline contains guides for logo placement, logo colours, typography, brand colours, text on packaging, product photography style, etc.

Packaging guides are prepared after conducting in-depth research of your existing/aspiring brand image, the industry, characteristics of target audiences, etc. It also comes with a set of do’s and don’ts which makes the whole packaging process ultra smooth.

If you are a multi-product manufacturer, packaging guideline is for you.

Getting custom packaging for each and every product can cost you thousands of dirhams and exhaust your marketing budget instantly. On the other hand, a packaging guideline gives you the perfect packaging without burning a hole in your company’s treasury. It serves as an SOP for all your company’s packaging requirements. That said, it is essential to get these guidelines made from professional creative agencies rather than generic packaging vendors. Remember: Packaging is the first impression of your product. And unprofessional or inappropriate packaging is a major turn-off. Making your product stand out through packaging is a direct route for getting customer attention.

Why packaging guidelines?

Packaging guideline is a bible for multi-product manufacturers. It is a master document especially curated for a specific brand for all its packaging needs. It enables a brand to follow a certain packaging pattern, a set of brand colours, a specific set of fonts and background elements, etc. across all their product packaging ensuring consistency and product identifiability.

When all your products come under one packaging pattern, it becomes easy for the customer to recognise your brand and all your offerings. In the long run, it gives a competitive edge, fosters repeated sales and builds brand loyalty. Following these guidelines across all product channels upscales brand identity and aids in creating a standardised packaging process.

Packaging Guideline: Your Brand’s Story Teller

What’s your brand story? What makes your brand unique?

The conscious consumers of today are interested in your brand story; they invest in your story before investing in your product. Therefore, story-telling is important. Packaging is understood as a tool to tell your brand story and attract customers at the first glance.

Every brand has a unique story to tell. Whenever a creative agency begins preparing a packaging guideline, the first step they do is pen down a unique brand story. The creation of the brand story is a result of intensive study and research of the brand’s foundational values, vision, mission, geographies, etc.

Telling your brand story with your packaging.

There are multiple benefits of opting for Packaging Guidelines but the most important aspects are consistency, brand identification and professionalism. Having a Packaging Guideline in your hand ensures you and your packaging vendors are on the right track. It gives you a blueprint and answers the following basic questions to get you started with your packaging:

Product Vibe - Every packaging should suit the product’s vibe, its look and feel and most importantly, its functionality. Eg: a tech product should mostly have a cool and groovy packaging that also keeps the product safe.

Packaging guideline captures the essence of the products and based on it formulates a basic packaging framework. Every packaging guideline comes with design templates which serve as full-fledged blueprint and are used as instant references by your in-house printing department or external Chinese vendors who will do only what they do best - Print. Only Print. Not designing, not strategizing, etc.

Typography - What family of fonts will be used on the packaging? For instance, if a product’s target audience is mature working professionals, a subtle font with a minimal undertone would be apt. On the other hand, if the product is meant for kids, the typography should ideally be huge, bright and colourful. Packaging guidelines contain a detailed guide for font usage across all your products.

Brand Colours - Colours help customers identify your products on the shelves. Packaging Guidelines come with a set of brand colours which could be used across all your products making it easier for the customers to identify your products, thereby increasing chances of repeated sales.

Branding and Target Audience - It is important to understand the target market of your product and carry out an in-depth study of their demographics, physiological patterns and behaviour, etc. before selecting the packaging. Every packaging guideline is prepared after a holistic understanding of the target audience and their preferences.

Competition - Before preparing a packaging guideline, a detailed study is carried out to understand why your competition’s product failed or succeeded owing to packaging. Having said this, it is important to make your product stand out from your competition and also learn from your competitors’ mistakes.

Selling - For deciding the right packaging, it is important to understand how it will be sold. For instance, if you are selling your product purely online, people are not able to get the look and feel of the product. Therefore, the packaging must appeal to other senses and your packaging guideline would ensure this happens.

Content - On the packaging, mentioning the content that actually matters to the audience is key to getting their eyeballs. A clutter-free design and text placement makes the customer want to read what’s written and also makes it easy for him to understand how the product is beneficial for him. In case your product sells in malls and shops — if the customer isn’t able to instantly read why he should buy your product, he is most likely to have his attention shifted to the competitions’ shelf.

Apart from offering the aforementioned specifications, a packaging guideline is an ideal packaging solution if you are a multi-product manufacturer. Custom packaging for multiple products can be expensive. Therefore, unless it serves a significant purpose, it could be a waste of marketing budget.

All in all, packaging guidelines is a document allowing your brand to create the packaging of your dreams and that of your customers’ with the help of your packaging vendor. Apart from being highly cost-efficient and budget-friendly, it offers a bundle of benefits to keep your brand packaging shining and winning, in the long-run as well as short-run.

Also Read - A Preparation Guide for Your Brand, for the Dubai Expo 2020

The world still judges the book by its cover. Exactly how the world judges a product by its packaging.

With competition rising by the day, it’s becoming necessary to leave a strong impact on the customer’s minds and packaging is the primary way to do that. To make the customer interested in what’s inside, it is important to first make him interested in the outside.

While you are relying on your vendors in China for product packaging, your competitors are working with professionals and creative agencies to create superior packaging for ensuring maximum product sales. They are working to create packaging that sets the brand apart; packaging that grabs eyeballs and attracts new customers.

What you get from Chinese vendors/freelancers VS What you get from agencies?

If someone truly trusts in their product, they’d invest in its packaging, whatsoever.

Packaging is the first impression of a product and as they say, the first impression is everything. In today’s day and age when things and minds are changing fast, your product can easily get lost if it fails to stand out in the first glance.

Yes, sure ordinary packaging is low-priced and may seem attractive but in the long run, it fails to bring you the right customers. Mostly, low-priced packaging is done by vendors catering to 1000 other businesses like yours or it is done by freelancers found on the internet who you can’t hold accountable. This kind of packaging lacks quality, aesthetics and a personalised touch — thereby letting the customers move to other products which made a more solid first impression than yours through their packaging. The pain-points of someone dealing with Chinese vendors or low-budget freelancers is unprofessionalism, delay in delivery, sub-standard quality, run-of-the-mill design and the list goes on. Most importantly, the packaging loses human connection and that is EVERYTHING. What happens in this case is that the product is packaged just so to complete the order you have placed with the vendor.

In contrast, imagine when your product packaging is created with an aim that the product becomes a rage in the market, that it hits the market with a bang! After the conceptualisation of the product, an intensive research is carried out by the creative team to find the product’s target audiences, competitors’ packaging, and an array of other sub-variables to ideate the packaging that uplifts your product and brand image in the customers’ minds. This is followed by the last stage of packaging which envisages final mock-up design, prototyping, etc.

Unique Packaging VS Packaging Guideline

Unique packaging refers to a product-specific packaging which is created for a particular product keeping in mind its functionality, safety, observing the psychological behaviour of its target audiences, studying the competitive packaging models, demographics, distribution model, etc.

A packaging guideline, on the other hand, is a brand-specific document with a particular set of guides related to logo placement, typography, brand colours, product photography style, etc. A packaging guideline ensures consistent packaging across different product categories. It differentiates the brand from its competitors, thereby making a product easily identifiable on shelves and also making it easy for the customer to identify your brand’s products the next time he comes shopping and for repeated sales. In simple words, packaging guidelines are a collective set of packaging rules to be followed across different product categories, thereby making the brand packaging identifiable and consistent. It is known to positively influence purchase decision-making behaviour and create competitive advantage in the long run.

Your packaging decision depends on who you are

If you are a manufacturer or seller dealing with ‘limited but exclusive’ products, you should be opting for exclusive and unique packaging — packaging that is tailor-made for every product. The packaging of a unique product needs to be just as exclusive and unique. So, in case of less products, bespoke packaging is what you shoup opt for.

If you are a manufacturer dealing with bulk products, a smart decision would be to avoid unique packaging for all products as that would lead to heavy packaging costs. What is best in the bulk product scenario is to opt for a ‘packaging guideline’ — it would not only ensure your brand packaging is consistent but also edgy and competitive.

Conclusion

Investing in the packaging of your product is ultimately investing in your branding, which ultimately leads to continued patronage and ever-growing clientele. The mantra is out and clear: Better packaging = Better brand image = Better product success.

Also, if the inside of a product is awesome. Why should the outside stay behind? Take your time to choose the perfect packaging method for your products. Take a note of your budget, the number of products you have and make an informed decision. The only thing to not do is to do ordinary things which lack heart and soul.

PS: Packaging embodies the brand. If your brand is unique, so should be the packaging.

If you have been planning to get packaging done for your new product launches or simply repackage already existing products, we’ve got you covered. If you are working on a new startup or rebranding an existing one, look no further for all your branding needs. Whether it is a logo redesign, a website redesign, powerful packaging, refreshed messaging, or a complete brand makeover, it’s time you get in touch with professional branding agencies like Vowels to make your vision come true. We specialize in brand consultancy, strategy, brand guidelines, CI manual, brand presentation, and corporate branding.

Extended across multiple countries like the Saudi Arabia, UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman, and Bahrain, we believe in providing exclusive solutions to all your brand problems.

Also Read - The ABC of brand awareness- Find out best ways to increase brand footprint in KSA

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